The Literary Legacy of Mythology: Contemporary Retellings and Adaptations

सार

Mythology has been an ever-present source of inspirations for literature, influencing literary work across time and culture. The classical myths are a recurring theme in contemporary writing, and are increasingly the subject of reinterpretation, bringing ancient narratives into the modern world and offering new lenses on problems of memory, gender, power and social justice. This study will delve into the literary heritage of mythology by examining how modern retellings and adaptations of the traditional mythic narratives manipulate and restructure these narratives, but keep their over-arching themes intact. The paper, inspired by adaptation theory, intertextuality studies, myth criticism, and comparative literary analysis, examines some of the literature produced by authors like Madeline Miller, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman and Rick Riordan. The study employs a qualitative comparative methodology to examine how these writers reconstruct mythological characters, alter the narrative structures and question the traditional understandings in order to demonstrate how their literary work enables them to incorporate the values of their own time and the issues of their ideology into the text. The results show that modern interpretations are not simply remodels and re-creations of ancient myths, but rather innovative re-appropriation that creates a dialogue between the past and the present. They enhance the voice of the marginalized characters, highlight the cultural diversity and show how myths can be adapted for the modern times. Additionally, the study contends that mythology is a vital literary tradition that allows writers to address human experiences that are common to humanity and to communicate to a changing society. The study illustrates how mythological narratives are not merely past occurrences, but are still relevant today, and what this can mean for comparative literature, adaptation studies, and myth criticism as well. It proves that the mythological stories of the past continue to be relevant in the present and that they are redefining the meaning of the mythological stories for modern readers.