Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
New Wine in Old Bottles: Creating
New Myth from Old in Gregory Maguire’s
The Wicked YearsKaren GrahamUniversity of Aberdeen
An iconic image is one that has achieved wholly exceptional levels of widespread recognisability and has come to carry a rich series of varied associations for very large numbers of people across time and cultures, such that it has to a greater or lesser degree transgressed the parameters of its initial making, function, context and meaning.
—Martin Kemp, Christ To COKE: How Image Becomes Icon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) p. 3
From Icon to Myth
Bobby McFerrin, “Do The Wizard of Oz”
Most intellectual development depends upon new readings of old texts. I am all for putting new wine in old bottles, especially if the pressure of the new wine makes the old bottles explode.
—Angela Carter, ‘Notes from the Front Line’, Shaking A Leg: Collected Journalism and Writings (London: Vintage Books, 2013)
From Icon to Myth
All myths presuppose a previous narrative, and in turn form the model for future narratives. Strictly speaking, the pattern of promise and fulfilment need never end; no sooner has one narrative promise been fulfilled than the fulfilment becomes in turn the promise of further myth-making. Thus, myths remake other myths, and there is no reason why they should not continue to do so, the mythopoeic urge being infinite.
—Laurence Coupe, Myth (London: Routledge, 2009) p.100
From Icon to Myth
—Craig Davidson, Because, Because, Because, Because, BE-CAUSE!
Oz lives contiguously with us. The Yellow Brick Road, the Emerald City, and the great Witch’s castle to the west— these haunts are more than tourist traps and hamburger stands. They are this century’s Pilgrim’s Progress and Via Dolorosa and Valhalla. Oz is myriad as the Mediterranean with its spotted Homeric islands; Oz is vast as Middle-earth and moral as Camelot. This is to say, of course, that Oz is a mirror. Turn it about and, in the mirror, OZ nearly says ZOE, the Greek word for life. Of course we recognize Oz when we see it. Of course we find ourselves there. If we can’t find ourselves there, well, we don’t have much chance of recognizing ourselves here. As some farmhand or other might have said to Dorothy, or she to the Wizard.
—Gregory Maguire, “Foreword: Oz And Ourselves”, Oz Reimagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond, Ed. John Joseph Adams & Douglas Cohen (Las Vegas: 47 North, 2013) p. 4
Oz is…
—Craig Davidson, Because, Because, Because, Because, BE-CAUSE!
Saint Aelphaba of the Waterfall – she was a Munchkinlander mystic, six or seven centuries ago. Don’t you remember? She wanted to pray, but she was of such beauty that the local men kept pestering her for – attention.’ They all sighed, in chorus.
‘To preserve her sanctity, she went into the wilderness with her holy scriptures and a single bunch of grapes. Wild beasts threatened her, and wild men hunted after her, and she was sore distressed. Then she came upon a huge waterfall coursing off a cliff. She said, “This is my cave,” and took off all her clothes, and she walked right through the screen of pounding water. Beyond was a cavern hollowed out by the splashing water. She sat down there, and in the light that came through the wall of water she read her holy book and pondered on spiritual matters. She ate a grape every now and then. When at last she had finished her grapes, she emerged from the cave. Hundreds of years had passed.
—Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (New York: Regan Books, 1995) p. 281
