The author is dead, long live the author: exploring authorship and readership in Greek mythography.

As is evident from the shelves of popular bookshops and research libraries alike, classical myths have appealed to a broad public from time immemorial. In fact, the scholarly study of these myths draws greatly from so-called mythographic writings, that are lesser-known prose texts which, unlike the imaginative creations of poets, approach myths from a non-artistic perspective to capture their essential plots. Contrary to recent trends in other genre studies, the importance of authors and readers in the process of literary communication has not yet fully made its way into current scholarship on mythography. Worse still, present scholars often tend to erase the author and his reader by depicting the mythographer as a slavish compiler of earlier texts who is deprived of all self-determined creativity and by extending the intended audience to anyone interested in Greek mythology, ranging from school boys to the educated upper class, as a result of which the reader is denied to have had any influence on the orientation of the text. In reaction to this distorted view, the present project will try to prove that mythographers have made well-considered choices when selecting, adapting and presenting the available information. In this process, they were guided by the requirements of their own project, their attitude towards their predecessors and contemporaries, the changing framework of the contemporary literary context and the expectations of their potential readers.

Keywords:Authorship, Greek mythography, Classical mythology, Readership, Reception studies

Disciplines:Language studies, Literary studies