{"product_id":"the-goddess-myth-in-contemporary-literature-and-popular-culture-a-feminist-critique-9781496837059","title":"The Goddess Myth in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture: A Feminist Critique","description":"\u003cb\u003eHonorable Mention for the 2022 Elli Köngäs-Maranda Prize awarded by the Women's Section of the American Folklore Society\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eGoddess characters are revered as feminist heroes in the popular media of many cultures. However, these goddess characters often prove to be less promising and more regressive than most people initially perceive. Goddesses in film, television, and fiction project worldviews and messages that reflect mostly patriarchal culture (included essentialized gender assumptions), in contrast to the feminist, empowering levels many fans and critics observe. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Building on critiques of other skeptical scholars, this feminist, folkloristic approach deepens how our remythologizing of the ancient past reflects a contemporary worldview and rhetoric. Structures of contemporary goddess myths often fit typical extremes as either vilified, destructive, dark, and chaotic (typical in film or television); or romanticized, positive, even utopian (typical in women's speculative fiction). This goddess spectrum persistently essentializes gender, stereotyping women as emotional, intuitive, sexual, motherly beings (good or bad), precluded from complex potential and fuller natures. Within apparent good-over-evil, pop-culture narrative frames, these goddesses all \u003ci\u003esuffer\u003c\/i\u003e significantly. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eHowever, a few recent intersectional writers, like N. K. Jemisin, break through these dark reflections of contemporary power dynamics to offer complex characters who evince \"hopepunk.\" They resist typical simplified, reductionist absolutes to offer messages that resonate with potential for today's world. Mythic narratives featuring goddesses often do, but need not, serve merely as ideological mirrors of our culture's still problematically reductionist approach to women and all humanity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eMary J. Magoulick\u003c\/b\u003e is professor of English at Georgia College and State University. Her work has been featured in the \u003ci\u003eJournal of Folklore Research\u003c\/i\u003e, the \u003ci\u003eJournal of American Folklore\u003c\/i\u003e, the\u003ci\u003e Journal of Popular Culture\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eDigest: A Journal of Foodways \u0026amp; Culture\u003c\/i\u003e. She has also been included in the edited volumes \u003ci\u003eEncyclopedia of Women's Folklore and Folklife\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eThe Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales\u003c\/i\u003e; and \u003ci\u003eReading Leslie Marmon Silko: Critical Perspectives through \"Gardens in the Dunes.\"\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"University Press of Mississippi","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50448799924498,"sku":"9781496837059","price":38.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_9891def5-edf7-4cf9-ab6e-4ed83aa5cb95.jpg?v=1729738018","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-goddess-myth-in-contemporary-literature-and-popular-culture-a-feminist-critique-9781496837059","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}