The God Beneath the Sea
LC Class PZ7.G17943 Go[1] | | |
Followed by | The Golden Shadow |
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The God Beneath the Sea is a
The novel begins with newborn Hephaestus (the titular god beneath the sea) cast from Mount Olympus by his mother Hera. He is raised in a grotto by Thetis and Eurynome and the two goddesses tell him various Greek creation myths. The novel continues with myths of the Olympians and the age of gods and mortals, and concludes with Hephaestus returning to Olympus, having been cast down for a second time after reproaching Zeus.
Garfield, Blishen, Keeping, and Longman collaborated on a sequel entitled The Golden Shadow (1973,
Plot
The God Beneath the Sea is divided into three parts. Part one begins with the image of the infant Hephaestus plummeting from Olympus to the ocean. Thetis saves the baby and takes him to the grotto she shares with Eurynome. They raise the baby, telling him stories of Greek myths and giving him a hammer and anvil to play with. Part one concludes with Hermes inviting Hephaestus back to Olympus at Hera's bequest, and Hephaestus claiming Aphrodite for his wife. Part two tells the myths of Prometheus and Pandora, and part three tells various myths of gods interacting with mortals. The novel concludes with the Olympians unsuccessfully attempting to overthrow Zeus, and Hephaestus returning to Olympus from Lemnos, having been cast down from Olympus for a second time after reproaching Zeus.
Part I
In Part I, "The Making of the Gods", Thetis and Eurynome tell Hephaestus stories of the Titans and Olympians, in hopes of quelling his restless nature. They begin with the myths of the
Hephaestus grows uglier and more violent with age. Thetis and Eurynome give him a hammer, anvil and forge to vent his fury and discover he is a gifted
The gods fashion their home on Olympus, and Zeus seduces Hera by transforming himself into a cuckoo. Their child is hideous and misshapen, and Hera throws the child out into the sky. At the revelation of his parentage, Hephaestus breaks the brooch, and half is washed to sea. His desire for vengeance are tempered by the realization of Zeus' immense power. The narrative then shifts from Hephaestus and the goddesses to recount concurrent events amongst the Olympians, including the arrival at Olympus of Apollo, Artemis, Athene and Hermes.
Pregnant again, Hera overlooks Zeus' infidelities, resolving to remain calm to avoid another monstrous child. Hera gives birth to her second son, Ares, and the immortals come to Olympus to honor the newborn god. Zeus commands Hermes to find a gift for Ares. Hermes finds the lost half of Hephaestus' broken brooch and returns it to Zeus as a gift. Zeus creates Aphrodite in the image of the brooch's nymph. Hermes then reunites the broken half of the brooch with the other half, which is worn by Thetis.
Hera, struck by the beauty of the brooch, demands to know who fashioned the brooch, then dispatches Hermes to fetch Hephaestus. Hermes returns Hephaestus to Olympus; Hephaestus forgives Hera and asks Zeus for Aphrodite as a wife. Ares demands a birthright from Zeus, and Zeus makes him god of hatred, discord and war.
Part II
In Part II, "The Making of Men", Prometheus makes men out of clay and the substance of Chaos to inhabit the earth, fearing that Zeus will give the earth to one of his children as a plaything. At Zeus' behest, Hermes commands Prometheus to destroy his creations. Instead, Prometheus teaches his creatures to sacrifice and worship Zeus. Prometheus offers Zeus the choice of two portions as sacrifice; Zeus mistakenly chooses the poorer portion, and in retribution forbids mankind the use of fire. Prometheus steals fire for them in defiance of Zeus. He continues to watch over mankind, finding strange impurities in the substance of Chaos he'd used to create them. These he scrapes away and hides in a sealed jar.
Zeus commands Hephaestus to make a woman. The Olympians bless her with gifts, and Zeus names her Pandora. Hermes gives Pandora to Epimetheus as a wife. Zeus punishes Prometheus by chaining him to a pillar in the Caucasus, where a vulture eats his liver daily. At night his wounds heal, so that his punishment can begin anew the next morning.
Pandora eventually finds Prometheus'
Part III
Part III, "Gods and Men", begins with the tale of
The novel then tells of
The novel tells myths of
Meanwhile, Hera and the Olympians conspire to imprison Zeus in a net while he is distracted raining thunderbolts on Asopus. Thetis fetches
Development and themes
Blishen and Garfield began work on The God Beneath the Sea after discovering that Greek mythology had had similar impacts on them as primary school children. In Blishen's words, "these stories seemed to illuminate, to make clear, what was going on around me in my small and unimportant life. They were about love ... They were about the desire for power, about jealousy, about triumph and great defeat."[6] Garfield suggested they should "write the stories for today's children" and remove the "upholstered Victorian quality" of the stories as told to themselves.[7]
The authors aimed to restore the power the myths had had for the Greeks, and for themselves as children. They decided to tell the myths not as separate stories but as "a fresh and original piece of fiction"[8] and a single, continuous account of the origins of the world, of man's struggle against his surroundings, and of man's struggle with his own nature.[7] They hoped while writing the book to present the myths as "a total coherent account of the human situation, the human predicament, and human opportunities."[8] One of the main difficulties they encountered was selecting a sequence of myths from "the enormous expanse" of Greek mythology[8] to form a single story that would increase the power of the work.[9]
They shared a concern about recent developments in children's literature and society's attitudes towards children. They felt that older children's literature had been moving closer to adult literature, and that the book had taken them "further than [they'd] ever been taken before" towards that end. They felt it necessary to address "meaningful violence" and "the strongest of human passions" in the novel, because these were "the preoccupations with which our children are, we know, at the moment filled."[9]
Blishen and Garfield used four source texts:
About the writing process the authors told Junior Bookshelf (August 1971), "We wrote together, much of the time. One of us would actually commit the words to paper. There were often long silences. These might be broken, not by a grave suggestion as to further text, but by some wild burst of laughter. Much of the matter we were dealing with was most grim and tense. Laughter – and some schoolboyish joking – helped."[2]
Development of the illustrations
Charles Keeping drew fifteen illustrations for The God Beneath the Sea. His work was widely acclaimed by critics, but Keeping himself was dissatisfied with the illustrations.[11] He was not enthusiastic about working on the book when approached by Garfield, as he disliked the Greek myths. The myths had been presented to him in school "in the most boring fashion" and as an art student he found Greek art "cold and dispassionate." He saw the customary method of illustrating Greek myths in a stylized mimicking of Greek vase painting as "an utter bore."[12]
After Garfield told Keeping he was using Robert Graves as a source, Keeping read The Greek Myths[12] and found them "quite disgusting" and "completely devoid of any love. This is all lust, rape, revenge and violence of every possible kind."[11] Keeping looked for a deeper significance and philosophy in the stories, finding links to the Bible and other stories from other cultures and religions, and "some basic human passions."[11] In attempting to "cover all the ground [Garfield and Blishen] covered with fifteen drawings", Keeping felt he had "to take a group of shapes that would project what this meant to me."[11]
Keeping decided not to use Greek costume as he was concerned readers would react the same way he used to: "What does it mean? What does it do? Am I just delving into the past?"[11] He also avoided modern dress as "this would be old fashioned within another fifteen years",[11] deciding in the end to dispense with "any form of recognizable costume" while avoiding "anything that is appertaining to our particular moment in time."[13] He used "a figurative art. There's nothing else in it... except people, their emotions and their reactions to emotions."[13]
Keeping called his completed illustrations for The God Beneath the Sea "a set of drawings much to my disgust not all awfully good."[13] He saw them as violent and cruel illustrations of violent and cruel people, and attempted to visually project this by taking "a symbolic line, so if you look at them you will find there's a symbolic overtone in them."[13] At the time of the book's publication, Keeping was looking forward to working with the authors on the sequel The Golden Shadow, as he hoped "to redeem some of the mistakes of the first one."[13]
Literary significance and reception
The
Writing
It was considered a controversial book at the time of its publication,
Positive reviewers saw the book's writing style as reinvigorating Greek myths for modern readers. History Today praised the book's "poetic writing" and "sense of the terror and mystery of the universe."[21] A review in The Spectator called it "a remarkable book" that "should evoke a response from anyone clogged within the classics, wanting to see the poetry afresh."[22] Ted Hughes reviewed the book positively, noting the authors' attempt to "crack the Victorian plaster" of "moralizing dullness... concentrated on the Ancient Greeks". For Hughes, the novel made the myths "vividly new"; the authors "stripped away the pseudo-classical draperies and produced an intense, highly coloured, primitive atmosphere."[23] The Classical Journal stated the novel's chief strength was "a liveliness and vigor, of both style and action."[17]
The novel's narrative structure was singled out by reviewers with similarly divided verdicts. For Manning, the novel's opening, "an excellent device ...to allow the book to start dramatically", and subsequent moments of pace and tension, are ruined by chronic over-writing.
Philip Pullman cites The God Beneath the Sea as an inspiration for his fantasy literature.[25] A 2001 article in The Guardian named The God Beneath the Sea the ninth best children's book of all time, calling it "[v]isceral, overpowering, defiantly undomesticated" and "the best ever rendering of the Greek myths in modern English."[26]
Illustrations
In contrast to the writing's mixed reception, critics were unanimous in acknowledging the power of Charles Keeping's illustrations.
The U.S. publisher
See also
Notes
References
- ^ a b c "The god beneath the sea" (first U.S. edition). Library of Congress Catalog Record. Retrieved 2012-11-20.
- ^ a b c
Carnegie Winner 1970. Living Archive: Celebrating the Carnegie and Greenaway Winners. CILIP. Retrieved 2018-02-27.
- ^ CCSUBurritt Library. Retrieved 19 July 2012.
- ^
The Golden Shadow in libraries (WorldCat catalog).
"The golden shadow" (first U.S. edition). Library of Congress Catalog Record. Retrieved 2012-07-29. - ^ Blishen, Edward; Garfield, Leon, The God Beneath the Sea, p. 87.
- ^ Blishen, Garfield, Keeping (Nov 1970), p. 48.
- ^ a b Blishen, Garfield, Keeping (Nov 1970), p. 49.
- ^ a b c d Blishen, Garfield, Keeping (Nov 1970), p. 50.
- ^ a b Blishen, Garfield, Keeping (Nov 1970), p. 51.
- ^ Blishen, Edward; Garfield, Leon, The God Beneath the Sea, p. 167.
- ^ a b c d e f Blishen, Garfield, Keeping (Nov 1970), p. 53.
- ^ a b Blishen, Garfield, Keeping (Nov 1970), p. 52.
- ^ a b c d e Blishen, Garfield, Keeping (Nov 1970), p. 54.
- Times Literary Supplement. No. 3709. 4 June 1973. p. 381.
- ISBN 978-0-8103-9356-1.
- ^ a b c Townsend, John Rowe (20 October 1973). "Fantasy and legend". The Spectator. 231 (7582): XVII.
- ^ a b Mavrogenes, Nancy (February–March 1983). "Recent Versions of Greek Myths". The Classical Journal. 78 (3): 249–255.
- ^ a b Nye, Robert (9 December 1970). "Hit or myth". The Guardian.
- ^ S2CID 144160666.
- ^ Times Literary Supplement. No. 3583. p. 1254.
- ^ a b Freeman, Gwendolen (December 1970). "History books for the young". History Today. 20 (12): 889.
- ^ a b Hutchinson, Tom (5 December 1970). "Not for infants". The Spectator. 225 (7432).
- ^ S2CID 162307987.
- ^ Contemporary Review. 218 (1265): 332–333.
- Independent on Sunday. Archivedfrom the original on 18 June 2022. Retrieved 15 October 2009.
- ^ Spufford, Francis (30 November 2001). "The greatest stories ever told". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 October 2009.
- ^ Alderson, Brian (16 May 1973). "A storyteller's spring". The Times. p. 8.
- ^ a b Alderson, Brian (29 August 1973). "Growing Point". The Times. p. 6.
- Citations
- Blishen, Edward; Garfield, Leon; Keeping, Charles (November 1970). "Greek myths and the twentieth century reader". Children's Literature in Education. 1 (3): 48–65. S2CID 143855134.
- Blishen, Edward; Garfield, Leon (26 October 1970). The God Beneath the Sea. Illustrated by Charles Keeping. London: Longman. ISBN 0-582-15093-0.
External links
- The God Beneath the Sea in libraries (WorldCat catalog) —immediately, first US edition