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by Lisa Maurice (Author)
Lisa Maurice examines screen portrayals of gods - covering Greco-Roman mythology, the Judeo-Christian God and Jesus - from the beginning of cinema to the present day. Focussing on the golden age of the Hollywood epic in the fifties and the twenty-first century second wave of big screen productions, she provides an over-arching picture that allows historical trends and developments to be demonstrated and contrasted.
Engaging with recent scholarship on film, particularly film and theology as well as classical reception, she considers the presentation of these gods through examination of their physical and moral characteristics, as well as their interaction with the human world, against the background of the social contexts of each production.
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'What happens when theology meets the box office? Jesus, Zeus, Athena, Moses, Hera, Aphrodite and the Virgin Mary - no book has ever tackled a cast list like this before. In this unique study, Lisa Maurice deftly exposes the challenges and the compromises in representing divine figures whether they be Christian, Jewish or Pagan.' Alastair Blanshard, The University of Queensland Examines screen portrayals of the deities of Classical Mythology and the Bible How can we depict a deity on screen? How do we present the frequent immorality of the Greek gods while still maintaining an element of divinity? How do we interpret the deities of Judaism and Christianity in the modern Western world? From Le Tonnerre de Jupiter (1903) to The Ten Commandments (1956) to Troy, Fall of a City (2018), Lisa Maurice examines the whole history of screen portrayals of gods - covering Greek mythology, the Biblical God and Jesus - from the beginning of cinema to the present day. Engaging with recent scholarship on film, particularly film and theology as well as classical reception, this new work considers the presentation of these gods through examination of their physical and moral characteristics, as well as their interaction with the human world, against the background of the social contexts of each production. Lisa Maurice is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Classical Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Cover image: Immortals, Tarsem Singh, 2011 (c) Relativity Media Cover design: Stuart Dalziel [EUP logo] edinburghuniversitypress.com ISBN 978-1-4744-2573-5 Barcode
Author Biography
Lisa Maurice is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Classical Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Israel. She has published on ancient education, Plautine comedy and her research now primarily focuses on classical reception. She is the author of The Teacher in Ancient Rome (Lexington, 2013) and of many articles, and is the editor of three volumes in the Brill Metaforms series on the reception of the ancient world in popular culture.
