How did hyacinths, the popular flowers, get their name? And what have they to do with homoerotic love, wind, discuses, and Greek mythology? As ever, we’re here to answer these questions, by taking a closer look at the classical myth of Hyacinth and how he came to give his name […]
Centaurs are surely the most famous human-animal hybrids from classical mythology, along with the Minotaur. But what do centaurs represent? These creatures – part-human, part-horse – turn up in a number of different myths from antiquity, but the meaning of these stories, and what the centaurs symbolise, varies from tale […]
The myth of Eros and Psyche has exercised writers’ and artists’ imaginations for several millennia, but what are the details of the myth? Below, we summarise the story of these unlucky lovers, and provide an analysis of the myth’s meaning and symbolism. Surprisingly, although the myth is usually referred to […]
The Valkyries are a key part of Norse myth. But who are the Valkyries, and what role do they play in the stories of northern Europe? Many of us are familiar with the piece of music by the German composer Richard Wagner, ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, which has been used […]
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Although it was a last-minute addition, the myth of the Fisher King plays an important part in one of the greatest poems of the twentieth century: T. S. Eliot’s modernist poem The Waste Land (1922). But what is the story of the Fisher King, […]