Influence of Greek Myths

My friend novlist*star* is doing a class project on the influence of Greek myths on 19th cenmtury English novels. Below is a poll. Please give your best judgement as to your perception of the extent of that influence, if any. She will collect this data for her class project. All voters are welcomed.

Note: The length of the questions were limited in the poll. The full context of all the above questions are the following:

1- Greek myths become the foundation of most19th century English novels. Their themes and structures are integral to many novels.

2- Greek myths are alluded to in many 19th century English novels but the novels shape themselves. The novels share the same themes of the Greek myths, but the novels take their own structure.
The example for this point is Frankenstein by Mary Shelly

3- Greek myths are alluded in many novels, but they are only allusions to clarify a scene or character. They do not integrate into the novel's themes or structure.
The example for this point is The Mill on the Floss novel by George Eliot. It is when Maggie is compared to Medusa.

4- There is no relationship at all between Greek myths and the 19th century English novel.

My perception is that 19th century English novels use allusions to Greek myths, but that is as far as it goes. The themes are 19th century themes and I can't think of any novels that formulate the novel itself as a mythic text. Frankenstein, the example given, does come close, but I think that's more the exception than the rule.

I'll be curious to see what everyone else says. My knowledge of English 19th century literature is sorely limited but the idea of mythology directly or subconsciously guiding the development of a story or its characters is an interesting one. While I don't feel justified in hazarding my own ignorant vote, I'd say that in general mythology has helped to shape the common views of tragedy and romance we have now.

So basically I just was no help whatsoever. :P

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Originally Posted by higley

I'll be curious to see what everyone else says. My knowledge of English 19th century literature is sorely limited but the idea of mythology directly or subconsciously guiding the development of a story or its characters is an interesting one. While I don't feel justified in hazarding my own ignorant vote, I'd say that in general mythology has helped to shape the common views of tragedy and romance we have now.

So basically I just was no help whatsoever. :P

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You didn't vote though. I think she needs to collect data. :)

Okay okay. :D I voted as knowledgeably as I could.

There's not an "Other" category? I don't pretend to have read everything from the 19th century, but I believe almost all literature - and storytelling in general - Is an amalgamation of MULTIPLE previous sources... Not just one.

So I believe trying to single out an influence such as just "Greek Myths" is going to be extremely difficult. And I wish you the best in trying to figure it out ;)

I voted, simply to give your friend the data they wanted.

Honestly, I have read more 19th century poetry than novels, more of which contain allusions to Greek mythology than anything else, particularly in Romanticism - Keats, Shelley, Byron, Tennyson, Coleridge? Some seem borderline Romanticism with Victorian-era poets, but have enough references to Greco-Roman mythology worth mentioning. Novels? Perhaps not quite as much, but the general influence of literature among literature in this era of, assumingly, Western literature seems enough to consider that much of it bluntly originated from Greco-Roman material.

I am constantly recognising plot devices and characters from the Greeks. In literature from all ages. Perhaps they are universal human themes, but the Greeks got there first. (Or wrote it down first) We see hubris, pathos, bathos, we see Clytemnestras, cassandras and cyclopses.

If you are talking about deliberate allusional content, it is fairly common in works of that time, often included to illustrate a point.

I think how those myths are used in the text (as a major theme on development of characters, as an indication for how to interpret characters/events etc, or just as an allusion to the situation there and then) is mainly down to the author.

Has the author the mind to discern in that myth a major theme or not. If he has, like Brontë, he puts it in his books. If he hasn't, then he doesn't and just thinks about a certain situation he read somewhere and puts it in the text. (I can't think of an example, I'm afraid)

I am not too familiar with English literature and I am slowly working my way through it.

To humour you I will just vote for the foundation, as my experience in 19th century is that it is very profound and that those writers spent a lot of time thinking. So it is well possible that they spent time studying myths as well. It was the closest to my opinion. Can't you put something that combines the two as stated above?

Those 19 century writers would certainly be very clued up on the classics. But they had a problem with the different moral values between the two societies. Heros that robbed, cheated, raped and murdered just didn't fit the bill. Their 19 century agendas were different, the good guys had to win, or at least recieve a reward for their piety.

I'll probably vote for the second option, but I need to think a bit more first.

Not sure. There's lots in poetry but I actually think there's more influence on 20th century American Drama and European Drama.

A lot of the influential authors of the time use typical Greek tragedy ingredients... The tragic hero who makes a tragic mistake because not having full knowledge of a situation is regularly present, and the Byronic hero seems to be created after the tragic hero. That is, the tragedy has already occurred in his youth and it turned the hero's character into the Byronic one, and so we have sympathy with him. The story/plot constructions and hero characters rely heavily on heroes with human flaws or who have made mistakes, and they are thrown into situations and circumstances beyond their powers of control. The latter too is common for Classic Greek tales.

So, yes, I would say Greek myths make the foundation to 19th century writing

Greek culture in general is evident in all western literature and art works. To single out greek myths as influencing factor of 19th cent english literature reads therefore like a bad joke.

There is another possibility that you neglected in the poll. To wwit, ancient myths and modern literature address the same themes and some of the same situations, so modern writers can draw from myths to make allusions that clarify their works, or they can write something new that does not allude to myth but addresses the same facet of humanity in a way that parallels the treatment from ancient myths.

Earthlings simply do not write about many different things, because they are interested in only a few matters such as reproduction, aggrandizement, revenge, survival, etc.

Interesting - I wish Novlist*star* all the luck with this project. It's a tough one! :eek:

I do not think I know enough about 19th century English novels to make a well founded stand on this subject. If I have to vote, I would say choice #2 "Greek myths are alluded to in many 19th century English novels but the novels shape themselves."
It goes too far to call them the foundation of all those books written in the 19th century. I personally think the foundation of a book comes from the writers frame of mind, and his/her experiences and fantasies. Not from other stories, as much as those might have shaped the writer.
Option #3 can only be used if writers expected their readers to really know the Greek myths. I mean, otherwise it would not be clarifying - would it? I am not sure enough about the 19th century way of living to say this is true, but it does make me think that books were written for the elite... Were they? Maybe, as those were the ones who had the time to read and opportunity to go to school... As you can read, I am really not sure whether to vote 2 or 3 :lol:
Option number 4 can only be true if the writers were not familiar with the myths. I don't think that's the case - after all, it's right after/during Romanticism

I do not think this is necessarily limited to the 19th century novels. I think earlier literature/stories does influence later literature. And as there are many parallels between Greek myths and other myths and stories... Well, in the end - if you look for a link I am sure you can find it in any book of your choice :D.

peter L speakith what i thinkith.

i'd add that post grecian novels shape themselves not bc the writer has something different to say than the greeks but bc the writer has simply created a new way to say the same thing. style is creativity and vice versa

sorta late in the school year for a paper, no?

The problem, is that realist novels try to ignore any mythological structuring - despite being built on cultural myths that are even older than the Greek tradition. Frankenstein is clearly a sort of reinterpretation of Prometheus, mixed with Miltonic influences, but most of the other "good" novels tend not to be. It all depends really - the 19th century early novels, for instance, were quite boring, and the best ones are hardly representative of the whole, and quite often, were hardly popular in their time. The later novels, tended to be within a realist vein, with George Eliot, and Dickens being the best of the lot, and generally mask any sort of structuring pattern.

Ultimately, the main structures come from The Bible more than Greek traditions, but the concepts of Greek narrative still pervade. The tyrannically teleological endings on all the books, for instance, are a continuation of the trends started in Greek Drama, with the notion of order needing to be restored, and catharsis achieved.

On the whole though, I would say the shift headed more toward Gothic attributes, that seem a product of the late 18th century, with influences heading back to the Middle Ages. Realism, the playing off of fiction as a true reflection of society, and the Gothic, are not particularly indebted directly to Greek myth, I would argue.

That being said, looking across the Ocean, perhaps you'd find more mixes in American literature - I wouldn't know, I'm no expert on Early American Literature, and my knowledge doesn't bend past the major writers of the time. Certainly though, the Gothic, and the Biblical again seem the most dominant, in addition to a blending of an indigenous national mythology.

Hawthorne uses greek myths, he even wrote a short stories re-writing for kids of greek myths (I think the correct is roman myths, since it seems drawn from Ovid, but then, so most stuff are). Poe have his lots of references as well.
The problem is the question, Greek myths are so archetypical that we barelly can avoid them. Shakespeare, The Bible, 1001 Nights are the usual opitions (but then, they are also under the influence of greeks), in the end the question can only be answered by the individual works.

Back in those days that came long before cable television, movies, radio, and the internet, people spent a lot of time on Greek and Roman subjects. There probably wasn't that much else to do, so those topics got lots more attention back then than they get now that we have more diversions.

I don't really know enough to vote, since I never realized that Greek mythology had such a monopolistic influence on English literature. All I know (or think I know) is that the folks of the 18th and 19th centuries were a lot more up-to-speed on Greek and Roman matters than we are today, and they used that knowledge frequently.

Thanks to everyone. I guess Novelistic is a little shy ;) on getting on here. But I think you all helped out considerably.

Like I say in my post on the subject, I fail to see how myths really infleuenced 19th century novels, but you guys mostly think otherwise. I will have to look closer and see if I see what you're seeing. :)

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

Hawthorne uses greek myths, he even wrote a short stories re-writing for kids of greek myths (I think the correct is roman myths, since it seems drawn from Ovid, but then, so most stuff are). Poe have his lots of references as well.
The problem is the question, Greek myths are so archetypical that we barelly can avoid them. Shakespeare, The Bible, 1001 Nights are the usual opitions (but then, they are also under the influence of greeks), in the end the question can only be answered by the individual works.

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Yes, but keep in mind, these are novels. Poetry certainly was influenced by these forms, but for the most part, I am rather unable to make the connection to the English novel. Keats' Endymion clearly is rooted in Greek mythology, but Walter Scott's work? Austen"s, Dickens's, Eliot's? Not really. The romance comes closer, perhaps, but even that doesn't seem particularly Greek - it seems rooted in a mythology apart from all that.

Faust is clearly a Greek-heavy text, but I wouldn't say Dorian Gray particularly is. Perhaps one could argue that conceptions of existence were Greek influenced, but even that seems a stretch when applied to the English novel.

The most dominant thing building the diegesis of 19th century English novels seems to be concepts of English life - history, domestic culture, architecture, marriage, and the changing environment.

Essentially though, at the beginning of the 19th century, the novel as this form was generally viewed as "women's literature", unfit for the educated minds of the male elite, but fit for women as an innocent distraction.

In a sense, this concept of the novel as women's fiction still holds - certainly the greatest readers of novels have, and still are women (women read staggeringly more novels than men do in the major English speaking countries) and the form was crafted with that in mind. The original romances, popularized by Gaskell and Scott generally were designed with that in mind, and content seems built around distraction within an idealized romantic sphere, not much different than our modern conception of The Romance Novel.

Of course, Dickens, Hardy, and others really broke this, but behind most of them, with the exception of perhaps Hardy, there seems to always be a didactic moral element, that must correspond with the teleology at the end. Either some lesson is learned from the death of the characters, or from the marriage of the characters, but ultimately the moral is present, in virtually every text.

But Greek content, ultimately, was used, it would seem, at this time as structuring for a set of structures within poetic frames - poetry at this point being generally limited to the male bourgeoisie, with a little bit of exposure of the popular poets, notably Tennyson, and so forth, to bourgeois women. The series of myths then, would be familiar, and therefore would work better, whereas the novel, being aimed generally at less educated people - people who didn't go to school and study the classics - doesn't seem to use those structures openly.

The early novels, I would argue, more so than anything else try to aestheticize and over-dramatize the mundane and the ordinary - domestic life, marriage and love - in order to create a super-real world to attract women. Later, the form altered itself to try and create a radicalized seemingly "realistic" projection of reality (which was rarely realistic) in order to project a didactic message within the changing cultural environment. In here, the mythological - the metaphorical structures - of the Greeks could not particularly exist, unless as a comparative form, as mentioned in the Medusa reference in Eliot's novel.

As I remember it Long 18th C and 19 C novels I read didnt really link to classics as such, not the ways say Joyce's Ulysess did. Or some of the modern scifi etc.
BUt there is a strong sense of - especially in the Long 18thc male writers as I recall, background knowledge of the classics, so the odd line of greek or latin pops up. the odd allsuion to a mmoral from a whats it called not myth or legend the other thing?
But I am more up on the long 18th really. :nod:

JBI says it very well there in post #21. That is basically what I was thinking. I just didn't have the patience to flesh it all out as he does. ;)

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Originally Posted by prendrelemick

I am constantly recognising plot devices and characters from the Greeks. In literature from all ages. Perhaps they are universal human themes, but the Greeks got there first. (Or wrote it down first) We see hubris, pathos, bathos, we see Clytemnestras, cassandras and cyclopses.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

The problem is the question, Greek myths are so archetypical that we barelly can avoid them. Shakespeare, The Bible, 1001 Nights are the usual opitions (but then, they are also under the influence of greeks), in the end the question can only be answered by the individual works.

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Agreed, and archetypical seems a good word to describe many plots in Greco-Roman works, whether we speak of poetry or plays, derived by oral traditions or not. Who can say that the heroic deeds of Odysseus, Achilles, and Aeneas did not make an eternal imprint upon literature to follow? The greed and domination of King Agamemnon? The inevitability of fate Sophocles wrote of in Oedipus? The relentless sadness of Electra? The countless tales of Greek mythology?
Along the same lines of this discussion, whether we speak of 19th century Western literature or not, I think we can say a lot as to how widely we continue to read Greco-Roman literature; we have even gone so far as to form common phrases originating from such works - we describe our weaknesses as our "Achilles heel," intense waters even in modern art will sometimes show a Poseidon/Neptune-like figure, though Roman, many allusions to Bacchus still exist among winos and pleasure-seekers, and some will still remark of someone especially attractive having a "face that could launch a thousand ships." In essence, we have created a bit of an elementary oral tradition ourselves of Greco-Roman literature, whether we know of their origins or not. As stated in my previous post, I think many Romantic and Realist poets and playwrights (as JBI mentioned Goethe's Faust, I regret forgetting this fact) alluded to Greek literature more than novelists, and I have no doubt that they did quite a bit of "homework" to display these allusions with such accuracy as far as to almost continue certain Greek tales. As many writers during the 19th century wrote rather universally (wrote poetry, novels, plays, essays, etc.), I would think it unfit to say that strictly novelists did not study all previous literature, too, including that of the Greeks and Romans, but Keats or Shelley, for one, clearly referenced the Greeks with more frequency and strength than Dickens or Chopin.

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Originally Posted by JBI

Poetry certainly was influenced by these forms, but for the most part, I am rather unable to make the connection to the English novel. Keats' Endymion clearly is rooted in Greek mythology, but Walter Scott's work? Austen"s, Dickens's, Eliot's? Not really. The romance comes closer, perhaps, but even that doesn't seem particularly Greek - it seems rooted in a mythology apart from all that.

Faust is clearly a Greek-heavy text, but I wouldn't say Dorian Gray particularly is. Perhaps one could argue that conceptions of existence were Greek influenced, but even that seems a stretch when applied to the English novel.

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Indeed, some poets referenced Greek literature and mythology more than others, though I feel a bit more familiar with Keats than Scott. Austen, Dickens, Eliot? I agree, nothing really to speak of comes to mind, though the first two read more like brain candy than anything else, compared to other 19the century writers, explaining why they seem easily Hollywood-ized, but that has a whole different, unrelated discussion to it.
As to The Picture of Dorian Gray, speaking of far stretches, I might say that it has some reference to Narcissus in Ovid's Metamorphoses, but any art seems certainly bound to different interpretations. As you compared Faust with Wilde's novel, Goethe very obviously wins in who alludes to Greek literature and mythology more, even going so far as to include Helen of Troy in the majority of the second act, but Dorian Gray may have enough narcissistic qualities to claim that Wilde may have done a bit of studying in Greco-Roman literature and thrown a few of its ingredients.

I think a lot of the writers may have imitated certain writers ie. Milton, whose work sometimes made references to greek mythology. But, I think in a lot of cases the use of greek symbolism, where it is seen, in the 19th century is more coincidence than pure reference.

So my answer would be that the novels shaped themselves, in a way.

i wish i had more to say on the subject, but i feel like my vote pretty much concludes how i feel. They are allusions. But the novels are not DIRECTLY affected by greek mythology.

I agree a little with all. Specifically, I believe that authors, in part, may have a basis for their stories, but in the end everyone ends up giving the story its own flavor, very much depending on the authors' views of the world, and such views may or may not have a contact with Classical Literature. I think the most accurate option would be number two.

The Vote has Ended.

I would like to thank Virgil, for his helping.
http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/5360/thankyout.jpg



Also, I express my gratitude to all who have contributed in voting.

Thank you so much for all. And I am so sorry; I cannot replay on the all comments because I am under a strong pressure.

:)

I think that Greek myths have influence on literature as a whole not only on the 19th century literature for they are the first stories in humanity & they where the first literature that had influence on literature as a whole...

Personally, I've read more 19th-century poetry than novels. JBI made a point that Greek influence shows up all the time in poetry, and I agree. Tennyson is my favorite and he definitely loved his Classics, but I think he was more the exception than the rule. From what I've seen, there's less Classical influence in the novels of the time period.

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Originally Posted by PeterL

There is another possibility that you neglected in the poll. To wwit, ancient myths and modern literature address the same themes and some of the same situations

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Yes, I agree that the Greeks wrote a human condition that is pretty much universal, but that does not mean that we should give all the credit to the Greeks. It could simply be that great writers of all cultural mileaus ultimately write on these themes.

For instance, I'm reading a book that argues that in its early days Christianity took on many aspects of other cultures (including Classical archetypes) - to make "pagans'" conversion easier. In that sense, it could be argued that even predominantly Christian texts have Classical roots. It all depends on how deeply you want to read and how much you want to say such-and-such archetype is distinctly Greek.

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Originally Posted by Jane_Li

I think that Greek myths have influence on literature as a whole not only on the 19th century literature for they are the first stories in humanity & they where the first literature that had influence on literature as a whole...

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First stories in humanity? The tradition itself, as a written form, is no older than 3000 years old (being written down mostly in Alexandria much later), similar to the age of the Vedas, Upninishads, and far younger than the Oracle Bone writing of Ancient China (though that wasn't predominantly narrative), or the pictographic writings of Sumeria, Egypt, or various other systems from all over the world. Greek culture isn't the oldest, and the oral tradition there isn't, since life there wasn't the first place, so evidently it its stories aren't the oldest.

On the whole though, they are pretty old, and based on a rather misinformed reverence for classical models, due to the fall of Rome, and the subsequent descent into what was thought of as a "dark age", Greek myths became a sort of foundation for literature (more often than not found with Roman equivalents transposed into the Greek frame). The reliance on Greek then, can be attributed to a self-conscious, masochistic culture, that somehow kept seeing itself as inferior.

The novel though, has generally been apart from there. The reason is, quite simply, it is dominated by narrative, over metaphor. Metaphor is less central, and therefore the myth is replaced with concrete examples, or fanciful imaginings. The educated Greek system, reserved for an elite schooled in Greek and Roman thought, would generally not really suit the audience at any rate - certainly the myths by this point had lost their original flavor in a world ruled by change backed up by a perceived sense of social injustice, and failed opportunity. The 18th century preoccupation of rich wig-wearing aristocrats writing idylls about shepherdesses had, quite simply, lost its flavor, as the audience - the reading public - began to change rapidly.

Later on, the Greek would make a comeback, as all mythology would, in a sense, because the myths themselves were reshaped, thanks to the help of a body of scholarship, preaching that these myths were fundamental to the subconscious of Humanity, and were the structures of all our thought - notably, the book "The Golden Bough", which had a direct influence on Eliot, for instance, as well as other works, including Freud, Jung, and later thinkers like Campbell and Frye.

Without this interpretation, or reverence, quite simply, it can be argued, the Greek flavor didn't hold. The tastes of exoticism were pulled mostly toward a sense of Gothic - the romantic castle where the murders took place, or a sort of spooky church or glen. I won't hesitate to throw Scotland as a whole into the frame of "literary preoccupation", in a sort of colonial, romanticized view of Scotland, facilitated by Walter Scott, as well as highly romanticized themes brought in from Medieval traditions, also facilitated by Walter Scott. There quite simply, was no preoccupation with the Greek tradition within the frame of 19th century romanticized settings, the way such settings attracted renaissance writers.

I think there is little basis for the argument. Poetry, I can understand, but novels? Certainly not most 19th century novels.

It would be better to do the influence of Greek tragedy, as you can fit characters and novels much easier to that.

Allusions are everywhere, i challenge the collective masses of lit.net to find a book without one (obviously not including picture books and children's "learn to read" novels but then again, if it was so obvious, i wouldn't be typing this right now would I?).

Greek literature and mythology have inluenced almost the whole of Western literature.

I can't see how you avoid seeing allusions. If any character goes on a journey isn't that an allusion to the Odyssey? If there's a fight scene isn't that an allusion to the Iliad? I read Nicholas Nickleby at the same time as the Iliad and I was continually seeing him as slightly :D more benign Achilles. But did Dickens have that allusion in mind? I guess he had to. If you know the Greek myths, as we do, as the Victiorians did, then you can't help bringing them in.

I can't choose any of the options:

Greek myths are part of the foundation of all novels, but so are Christian myths and much else.

Novels cannot shape themselves, they require an author who is shaped by many influences.

Allusions always do more work than just clarifying a scene or character. They give a scene greater aesthetic value, they are never just cognitive.

There is obviously a relationship between Greek myths and everything in modern culture! (If sometimes distant...)

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

I can't see how you avoid seeing allusions. If any character goes on a journey isn't that an allusion to the Odyssey? If there's a fight scene isn't that an allusion to the Iliad? I read Nicholas Nickleby at the same time as the Iliad and I was continually seeing him as slightly :D more benign Achilles. But did Dickens have that allusion in mind? I guess he had to. If you know the Greek myths, as we do, as the Victiorians did, then you can't help bringing them in.

I can't choose any of the options:

Greek myths are part of the foundation of all novels, but so are Christian myths and much else.

Novels cannot shape themselves, they require an author who is shaped by many influences.

Allusions always do more work than just clarifying a scene or character. They give a scene greater aesthetic value, they are never just cognitive.

There is obviously a relationship between Greek myths and everything in modern culture! (If sometimes distant...)

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Sometimes the newer work is commenting on the allusion too and revising the original myth. So the new work sometimes clarifies the original myth.

but it isn't just myths that influence a writer...there are so many elements for that.Art can't be created out of thin air.There's always an influence needed,so that inspiration comes.

most educated people then had had a classical education and Greek allusions could be understood by most. One author fond of using Greek allusions in metaphor and simile was Alexandre Dumas pere. The Count of Monte Cristo is full of such allusions .... simply because most readily understood them without looking them up in a classical dictionary.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

I can't see how you avoid seeing allusions. If any character goes on a journey isn't that an allusion to the Odyssey? If there's a fight scene isn't that an allusion to the Iliad? I read Nicholas Nickleby at the same time as the Iliad and I was continually seeing him as slightly :D more benign Achilles. But did Dickens have that allusion in mind? I guess he had to. If you know the Greek myths, as we do, as the Victiorians did, then you can't help bringing them in.

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Good points, mal4mac, but I may not go that far. Undoubtedly, undocumented journeys exists before the oral tradition of The Odyssey and countless more battles existed before the composition of The Iliad. Both of Homer's works prove old and aged, but perhaps not that old. The Victorians and Romantics (first and second generation) placed a lot of emphasis on Greco-Roman myth and literature, some more obviously than others, but some glimmer of originality must exist there also, whether depicted in less obvious allusions or not; in my opinion, not everything written in that era seemed a tribute to Greco-Roman literature. Nicholas Nickleby does not, in its entirety, have to refer to The Iliad; the journeys, trials, and tribulations of Moby Dick do not completely allude to The Odyssey; Hans Christian Andersen's tales do not entirely refer to Aesop's Fables; and, despite what Dr. Sigmund Freud said, not every male and female conflict, such as portrayed in The Portrait of a Lady, bears a center in Sophocles' Oedipus.
Not only in western literature, but also in western thought, I believe common values exist, and, considering that most writers seem at least half-well-learned, we build much of our education, from early to late, in Greco-Roman myth and literature. We have surrounded ourselves so entirely with this genre of literature, that it has ended up even in common phrases, as we now refer to our undeniable weaknesses as our "Achilles' heel(s)," we call someone strong as having "Herculean strength," the "Allegory of the Cave," I have no doubt, seems one of the most commonly cited and abused metaphors, and, in popular business, the Starbucks emblem bears a siren, singing to lure customers to its second-rate islands that exist on every other city block. Whether an acclaimed writer or not, how we each have enveloped ourselves in Greco-Roman myth from a young age to current, it would astound me if we could not refer to such literature in our writings (whether in the 19th century or contemporary), thoughts, speech, etc., but some element of creativity must exist, even in the obvious allusions of Joyce's Ulysses, because it requires no genius to write a widely-read book (yes, I really said it), yet it takes no idiot to fully comprehend Greco-Roman literature.