Cambridge Classics Professor Mary Beard and the feminist writer and reworker of fairytales Marina Warner clearly had immense mutual respect - approving and building on each other’s ideas, or expressing differing views with thoughtful consideration.
Throughout the debate they returned to the uses of myth and mythical thinking for making sense of universal cultural concerns and universal concepts, such as love, war, morality, and death.
Noting the profusion of female monsters in patriarchal myths, they simultaneously observed the sympathetic shift in modern representations of monsters such as Shrek.
Affirming the validity of different interpretations of myths, Beard explained warmly, “All the questions you have are the right ones: how would it feel to be a monster?”
She spoke fondly of “my Greeks and Romans”, gazing into the middle distance and demonstrating with her hands the actions of opening books, looking at images and stringing concepts together.
Warner, bird-like and precise, raised a ripple of interested chuckles from the audience when she commented on the symbolic importance Henry VIII assumes in British culture, “Why don’t we choose some monogamous, sweet king?”
The inspiring concepts alluded to in this engaging, all-too-short discussion could have formed the basis for a university course.
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