Mythology in Iliad: Historical Gods and Superheroes

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

BA student of English literature, Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty/College of Humanities, and Social Sciences, University of Malayer, Malayer, Iran

Abstract

The application of Mythology and immortal characters in literature by the authors, poets, and playwrights of Western Classical Literature is quite evident; Characters which are immortalized in the minds and memories, many people worship them for their domination and gallantry, extraordinary creatures who never die, get sick, get injured or grow old; including these eternal characterizations are found in; ‘‘Pandora’’ in ‘‘Hesiod’s Pandora’s box’’, ‘‘Hercules’’ in ‘‘Ovid’s Metamorphoses’’, ‘‘Laius’’ in ‘‘Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex’’, ‘‘Niobe’’ in ‘‘Sophocles’s Antigone’’, ‘‘Sappho’s poem(Leto and Niobe)’’, and ‘‘Aeschylus’s Niobe’’, and finally ‘‘Ulysses’’ in ‘‘Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey’’. In this study, researchers have tried to give, at first, an overview of Mythology and then of the Iliad as the first and the oldest surviving work reflecting Mythology in Western Literature. In other words, an outline of Mythology in the darkest episode of the "Trojan War" has been studied to show the connection between Mythology and Western Literature. This paper has been compiled using the ‘‘content analysis’’ of ‘’Iliad’’ translated by ‘’Richmond Lattimore’’ and through the ‘‘library search’’ with the resources mentioned at the end. The results show that there is a fundamental connection between the creation of myth in the doctrinal views and works of Western Literature. Researchers have tried to examine this connection in the Iliad as a sample of epic and mythological works of Western Literature that is the product of the application of the authors, poets, and playwrights from the realm of Mythology in recreating religious and non-religious convictions mingled with ancient quotations.

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