Amaltea (ISSN-e 1989-1709) is a journal of myth criticism founded by José Manuel Losada in 2008, intricately linked to Asteria, International Association of Myth Criticism. It looks at how ancient, medieval and modern myths were accepted in literature and the arts from 1900 to the present day. It publishes articles in English and Spanish.
Amaltea. Revista de mitocrítica is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access." Full-text articles published in Amaltea. Revista de mitocrítica are open-access and published under a CreativeCommons License Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.en. Reproduction, distribution or public communication of these articles with commercial purposes requires the Editor’s prior written. Redistribution for academic purposes is permitted, provided that the source and authorship are properly acknowledged, and that the journal is credited with the first publication, by adding a link to the journal's official URL. If available, the DOI of the article in question should also be included.
Puck Through Time: Myth, Theatre, and Scenic Reinterpretations in A Midsummer Night’s Dream
This article analyzes the figure of Puck from a mythocritical, historical, and performative perspective, examining both his folkloric origins and his reinterpretation in contemporary stage and audiovisual adaptations. Drawing on medieval sources documenting the Anglo-Saxon puca, the study traces the process that transforms this ambiguous being into the dramatic character shaped by Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The analysis focuses on three interpretations: Michael Hoffman’s film (1999), Tamzin Townsend’s theatrical adaptation (2007), and Julie Taymor’s stage production (2013). The study argues that the myth of Puck is continually reactivated through different performance languages, reflecting broader aesthetic, ideological, and cultural transformations.
Copyright (c) 2026 Amaltea. Revista de Mitocrítica
Digital mythic genealogies in patriarchal Anglophone horror narratives: feminine hybris and Wiki-oracle nemesis in Annora Petrova creepypasta
This paper explores Annora Petrova epistolary creepypasta as a gender technology that conceptualises feminine agency as a communal threat. The intersection of myth-critical analysis and feminist close reading allows mapping recurrent mythemes and constellations, as Genesis Eve’s access to forbidden knowledge, the hybris ascent and nemesis corrective punishment. The Wiki-oracle embodies an authorised truth regime that prescribes an inescapable punitive end. Femininity’s self-incriminating voice operates as biopower ventriloquism to legitimise the cruelty pedagogy of violence against femininity, the stigmatisation and ostracism of the scapegoat, and the expulsion from paradise. Thus, canonical Anglophone viral narratives endure disciplinary mythemes.
Poetry, dramaturgy and counterwriting in La soledad de Asterión by Santiago de Luca
La soledad de Asterión: pieza teatral en nueve curvas (2019), by the Argentine writer Santiago de Luca, rewrites the myth of the Minotaur in contemporary Latin American theater. This play establishes explicit links with the work of Borges and possesses a poetic tone in many passages, evident through the use of various literary devices and metaphorical language. This relationship is also evident in the way De Luca delves into the subjectivity of the Minotaur. Thus, the objective of this essay is to analyze the connections that can be found between the work of Santiago de Luca and that of Borges, in order to elucidate to what extent the interconnection between literary genres and counter-scriptural procedures allow the contemporary play to carry out a creative transformation of the myth and, at the same time, productively dialogue with Borges’s work.
Copyright (c) 2026 Amaltea. Journal of Myth Criticism
Disidencias sexo-genéricas y mitología clásica en La mala costumbre
This article analyzes the representation of sex-gender dissidences in the novel Bad Habit (2023) by Alana S. Portero, from a queer and transfeminist perspective. Through a mythocritical approach, it examines the connections between certain characters in the novel and figures from Greco-Roman mythology, in order to understand how these parallels contribute to the reconfiguration of traditional narratives. This study focuses exclusively on the characters who maintain an explicit link with this mythological imaginary. The article also explores the symbolic and poetic charge of the novel as a means of constructing new forms of identity.
The voice that Drowns Pygmalion: Classical Myth under Madeline Miller's Revisionism
The present study focuses on the short story Galatea (2013) by Madeline Miller, a rewriting of the myth of Pygmalion as told by Ovid in his Metamorphoses. The study has aimed to analyze, from the perspective of Classical Reception studies, the strategies followed by the author to subvert the myth, which allows us to reflect on her supposed revisionist approach ( Ostriker 1982). From the analysis, it can be inferred that the myth is used as a vindicating tool, an object of resistance through which it is possible to reexamine both Classical Antiquity—which has played a relevant role in the construction and legitimation of patriarchal discourse—as well as our present.
Cuny, Diane y Perrot, Arnaud (eds.). Suites d’Homère de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance. Turnhout (Belgique). Brepols Publishers, Recherches sur les Réceptions de l’Antiquité, 2024, 371 pp. ISBN. 978-2-503-60755-9.
The Orphic ‘fleeting glimpse’ in some of its Remediations
The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice was revitalized and perpetuated during the first decades of the twentieth century in literature and other arts. Influenced by literature, painting and music, cinema has retold and re-enacted the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in many variations, from Fritz Lang’s Destiny (1921) to Jean Cocteau’s Orphic trilogy (1930-60). It is impossible to show the whole process of the myth’s trans-mediation, from orality to internet, but by revisiting the Orphic theme in some of its various modernist re-mediations and by analysing and comparing its pictorial and cinematographic expression we will gain insight not only into its adaptations and transformations, but also into the technology involved in these processes (media archaeology). My approach focuses on the technical reproducibility of the invisible, and analyses its pictorial, poetic and cinematographic expression in the cultural exchange between Rodin, Rilke and Cocteau.
Copyright (c) 2025 Amaltea. Journal of Myth Criticism
Penelope within the postfeminist frame, contemporary retelling to the mythic figure through The Penelopiad, Margeret Atwood and The Memoirs of Helen, Amanda Elyot.
Margaret Atwood’s Penelope (The Penelopiad) offers a reinterpretation which questions traditional epic values through a cynic narrative, full of autonomy, sarcasm and individualism. Standing out from her classical counterpart, Atwoods version reflects on the contradictions originated by the 2000’s postfeminism ambience, when femininity and autonomy were built around competitive dynamics and interiorized misogyny. Eliot’s Helen (The Memoirs of Helen) counterparts her as an exponent of critical, collective feminism that questions feminine arquetipes through the mythical structure. Revising its historical evolution, this works aims to understand each reinterpretation, as their place and significance in contemporary culture.
En mitad de tanto fuego by Alberto Conejero: Patroclus, protagonist of a new counter-epic
This article explores the endurance of the Patroclus myth in Alberto Conejero’s play En mitad de tanto fuego. It begins by tracing the myth’s diffusion through a mythopoetic examination of its literary construction, before turning to a structural and symbolic analysis of the play’s sole character, Patroclus. By invoking collective memory, the figure of Patroclus condenses temporal opposites—past and present, beginning and end—emerging simultaneously as the assertion of a presence and the persistence of an absence. His final message is decidedly anti-war, thereby proposing a counter-epic of the soldier in love.
Edited by Allan E. C. Wright, Premodern Monsters: A Varied Compilation of Pre- modern Judeo-Christian and Japanese Buddhist Monstrous Discourses. Vernon Press, 2025, 206 pp., ISBN 979-8-8819-0141-7
«The rainbow is enclosed in the coffin». Dissolving without a trace: remythologization in the work of Joan Miró
In different spiritual traditions, the rainbow symbolises the relationship between heaven and earth, a key theme in Joan Miró’s pictorial work. According to the artist himself, his work pours a «sacred mythology». In one poem Miró writes: «the rainbow is enclosed in the coffin», as if evoking the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist practice of the dematerialisation of the gross physical body into the subtle «rainbow body» that the yogī achieves with death. An «escape into the absolute», into the lapis lazuli blue «perfect void», which requires before the gross body dissolves without trace: «one must cease to be Miro», «free oneself from the false self».
Copyright (c) 2025 Amaltea. Revista de mitocrítica
Myths in Philippe Le Guillou's initiatory triptych: about the new enchantment of the world through myths and great heroes
The aim of this paper is to contribute to the study of the novels of the contemporary French writer Philippe Le Guillou. Thanks to the methodological basis of thematicism and the prism of mythocriticism combined with comparative literature, we outline here the main signs of the longing for a new enchantment of the world through the insertion of myths in his initiatory triptych formed by the novels Livres des guerriers d'or (1995), Les sept noms du peintre (1997) and Douze années dans l'enfance du monde (1999). The aim of the work is above all to reflect the author's personal strategy based on returning to the great stories with the great mythological or biblical heroes and thus underlining the ancestral wisdom and the relevance of the imaginary cultural heritage of the West as well as the spiritual dimensions of life.
Harte, Jeremy. Fairy Encounters in Medieval England. Landscape, Folklore and the Supernatural. University of Exeter Press, 2024. ISBN: 9781804130957. 222 pp.
Bad day when they saw you leave the kingdom of the beasts
In her book of poems (2020), the poet and philosopher Chantal Maillard rewrites the "prosopomyth" of Medea. In this long dramatic monologue, Maillard projects her ethical concept of "compassion", coined in her essay La compasión difícil (2019), onto the magician of Yolco. We will analyse the themes of Medea's "prosopomyth" that appear throughout the poem and observe to what extent and in what way they are used to explain and exemplify the concept of "compassion". To do so, we use the philosophical terminology of evil and compassion established by María Zambrano, Ana Carrasco-Conde and Maillard herself.
Copyright (c) 2024 Amaltea. Revista de mitocrítica
“I was not a nobody, but no one knew what I was”: A Mother’s Reclamation of her Story in Madhavi S. Mahadevan’s Bride of the Forest
The ideological stronghold of mythology in the cultural consciousness necessitates the production of counter-ideologies that decenter the normative narrative with more subversive and progressive tales. The story of Madhavi from the Indian epic Mahabharata is upheld as a tale of a devoted daughter who is blessed with a privileged womb, which is prophesied to give birth to great kings, and a boon of chirkaumya, the ability to regain virginity. Devoid of any rights over her own body, Madhavi becomes instrumental for Gaalav, the disciple of Vishwamitra, in fulfilling his promise of eight hundred white horses with black-colored left ears as gurudakshina (tradition of repaying one’s teacher) to his teacher. Her womb is bartered, allowing men to exchange her indefinitely as a commodity with utilitarian value. Her voice, desires and feelings are undermined by the structural needs of the masculine tale. This paper seeks to read the novel Bride of the Forest by Madhavi. S. Mahadevan in the context of motherhood studies and postfeminism through the examination of the character Madhavi. It inquires into the representation of the maternal figures who are mapped on a power spectrum to posit that both agency and victimhood co-exist in uncomfortable ways.
Simon Young & Davide Ermacora. The Exeter Companion to Fairies, Nereids, Trolls and Other Social Supernatural Beings. University of Exeter Press, 2024. ISBN: 978-1-80413-104-6. 274 pp.
Ortiz-de-Urbina, Paloma y Macsotay, Tomas (eds.). Recepción de Richard Wagner y Vanguardia en las Artes Españolas. Mitos y Materialidades. Dykinson, 2024, ISBN: 978-84-1070-337-7, 389 pp.
John Clark. The Green Children of Woolpit: Chronicles, Fairies and Facts in Medieval England. University of Exeter Press, 2024. ISBN: 978-1-80413-136-7 . 260 pp.
Mills, Kevin. Myths and Ancient Stories. Narrative, Meaning and Influence in the West. London. Bloomsbury Academic, 2024, 199 pp. ISBN. 978-1-350-34685-7
The mystery of Medea: the original meaning of the character in literature and cinema
Within cinematographic art – unlike literary art – the character of Medea has been brought to the screen in the absence of condemnatory meanings of a moral nature. The primordial essence of the myth of Medea in the cinema is presented unrelated to the philosophical, scientific and rational point of view, since its ultimate meaning escapes even the literary language itself. Certainly, the most outstanding cinematographic creators have given life to this mythological figure in relation to the ineffable, that is, as an imaginary archetype that produces meaning: united with the symbolic, the silence, mystery and art.
Narrativity and myth in epic fantasy open-world videogames. Textual, environmental and performative myths
This essay studies narrativity and myth in the video game. With this objective, we explore the relevance of the narrative elements in this medium, such as the characters and the space, with the inclusion of a unique characteristic: the interaction. Based on the connection of the video game with space stories, such as epic fantasy, we delve into the relevance of myth in open-world video games to propose a classification of myths in this medium: textual myths, closer to tradition and expressed in verbal form; environmental myths, the result of the hypermedia condition of the video game and the player's archaeological behavior; and performative myths, created by the player with his decisions and movements. Finally, this proposal is developed through a brief analysis of two open-world video games: World of Warcraft and Dark Souls III.
Rewriting the Myth of Atalanta: Cross-Dressing and Gender Equality in Emily Hauser’s For the Winner
This article studies Emily Hauser’s For the Winner (2017), a contemporary reimagining of the myth of Atalanta. This novel belongs to a women-authored literary mode that gives prominence and a voice to classical female characters and myths. Close examination of the politics of cross-dressing, as well as how Atalanta’s mythic identity is reconstructed as a heroine undaunted by gender lines reveals that Hauser’s approach constitutes a central site for ascribing meanings of determination, agency, and gender equality, thus culturally repositioning the male-centredness of her canonical representations and providing a feminist reinscription of the myth.
Hubris and Nemesis: the Myth of Oedipus and Identity in Crossed: Wish You Were Here
The themes of past sins have occupied our collective imagination since the dawn of humankind. The ways in which characters are faced with their nemesis have changed throughout history, but the structure of the myth permeates our culture even nowadays. In this essay, Shaky from Simon Spurrier’s Crossed: Wish You Were Here is analysed and compared to Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex to determine if this myth still accurately represents some of our oldest fears, if its structure still serves the purpose of identifying anxieties in our culture, and it the Oedipal process can help explain Shaky’s search for identity.
Mythological Rewritings in Contemporary Korean Poetry: Cheoyong’s portrait
Mythology is a constant source of literary material for the contemporary writer who finds in it timeless elements, which, nevertheless, resonate with new vibrations today. On this ground, this paper analyses the modern image of Cheoyong, a Korean mythical character whose origins date back to the late Silla period (9th century), in poets Shin Seok-Cho (1909-1975) and Kim Chunsu (1922-2004). In these poets' works, we can see a reformulation of the myth from a contemporary perspective and an adaptation of Cheoyong's character to the changing nature of modernity without losing the links with tradition.
Copyright (c) 2023 Amaltea. Revista de mitocrítica
Ecofictions and semantic basins: mythologies of the end of the world in The Walking Dead and Raised by Wolves
We are witnessing a cultural paradigm shift, in which the religious vision of humanity "overlaps" with the advent of an atheistic, positivist and scientific vision. The objective of this article is to investigate, through two series on digital platforms (“The Walking Dead” and “Raised by Wolves”), defined as ecofictions, how the Durand semantic basins give birth to this trend, in which a new "inflation" of the river with a titanic name is glimpsed. Thus, the famous benefactor of man continues to emerge in the postmodern apocalyptic and posthumanist antiutopias, as a modern sage, prophet and civilizing demiurge of the new world.
Vaz da Silva, Francisco. The Meanings of Enchantment. Wondertale Symbolism Revisited. The Kalevala Society, 2023. ISBN: 978-952-9534-05-0. 218 pp
Oliver Stone's Alexander: The Myth of Proteus and Postmodernity
Oliver Stone´s Alexander is a film which was not well received by audiences and critics, however it is a film which offers interesting contemporary reflections through the mythology that appears. The myths deal with the main character´s characteristics and fate, forming part of a conglomerate of allusions that can be brought together in the figure of Proteus, within a relevant message in the current postmodernity.
El polifacético coyote como pícaro en la tradición oral y en el arte
A lo largo de este artículo analizaremos las múltiples facetas del famoso coyote en la tradición oral de los nativos americanos siguiendo la clasificación de Mac Linscott Rickets. Relacionado con un héroe cultural, con el ladrón que roba el fuego, el vagabundo, el imitador y el Creador y Destructor de vida, el espectador se siente identificado con su niño interior y busca encontrar una respuesta a las dicotomías de la vida. Este personaje polifacético hablará a través de Leslie Marmon Silko en Storyteller luchando por preservar las tradiciones antiguas y al mismo tiempo adaptarlas a un mundo moderno, tan distantes entre sí. En la misma línea, Harry Fonseca también lo representará como un cowboy, un seductor y un santo.