Hermes and Athena
What has been, will be again,
What has been done, will be done again,
There is nothing new under the sun.
King Solomon
What has been done, will be done again,
There is nothing new under the sun.
King Solomon
In the year of 1995 a massive week long storm slammed into the west coast of North America. The Pacific Northwest lost power for days at a time, but being prepared for such things the residents hunkered down and rode it out. Further south in Sunny California the storm came and went without much fuss, Certainly not enough to halt the release of "Clueless" a film that was never meant to win an Oscar but that had surprisingly deep roots. Any literally afficandio, dragged unwillingly into the theater to "enjoy" the 90's summer fluff, would have recognized the photography scene among the Gulf War references and the Simpsons jokes. This was Jane Austen's "Emma" retold with a nearly vapid but well meaning Beverly Hills girl in the titular character spot. It was an old story, retold point for point, but dressed up in a modern situation.
This is hardly a new literary development, after all there are only 7 or 8 or possibly 12 origonal stories.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, the nineteenth century genius behind "The Scarlet Letter" made something of a living off of this. All authors do in one way or another but he was rather blunt about it when he took up the task of updating the old Greek and Roman legends for the local schoolchildren. While this endeavor has become more popular of late it was a bit revolutionary back before the Civil War and the author felt the need to defend himself in the preface of his "A Wonder Book".
"He [Hawthorne] does not, therefore, plead guilty to a sacrilege, in having sometimes shaped anew , as his fancy dictated, the forms that have been hallowed by an antiquity of two or three thousand years. No epoch of time can claim a copyright in these immortal fables. They seem never to have been made; and certainly, so long as man exists, then can never perish' but by their indestructibility itself, they are legitimate subjects for every age to clothe with its own garniture of manners and sentiment, and to imbue with its own morality."
This is hardly a new literary development, after all there are only 7 or 8 or possibly 12 origonal stories.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, the nineteenth century genius behind "The Scarlet Letter" made something of a living off of this. All authors do in one way or another but he was rather blunt about it when he took up the task of updating the old Greek and Roman legends for the local schoolchildren. While this endeavor has become more popular of late it was a bit revolutionary back before the Civil War and the author felt the need to defend himself in the preface of his "A Wonder Book".
"He [Hawthorne] does not, therefore, plead guilty to a sacrilege, in having sometimes shaped anew , as his fancy dictated, the forms that have been hallowed by an antiquity of two or three thousand years. No epoch of time can claim a copyright in these immortal fables. They seem never to have been made; and certainly, so long as man exists, then can never perish' but by their indestructibility itself, they are legitimate subjects for every age to clothe with its own garniture of manners and sentiment, and to imbue with its own morality."
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