Screening Divinity

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by Lisa Maurice

Type: Studies
Subject: Genre > Historical films
Keywords: historical films, religion, peplum
Publishing date: 2019
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Collection: Screening Antiquity
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 240 pages
6 x 9 ¼ inches (15.5 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN

978-1-4744-2573-5

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Book Presentation:
Examines screen portrayals of the gods of classical mythology and biblical deities
• Investigates a single issue over a range of genres in cinema and television from fantasy movies to biopics to Bible stories
• Considers the gods of Greek and Roman mythology alongside the biblical God of the Judeo-Christian tradition
• Draws on recent trends in scholarship in both classical reception and film and theology to provide an interdisciplinary study and synthesis between two rarely connected fields
• Examines the portrayal of deity on screen in films such as Le Tonnerre de Jupiter (1903), The Ten Commandments (1956) and Troy, Fall of a City (2018)

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.

About the Author:
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.

Press Reviews:
Screening Divinity offers a good mix of recent, popular, mainstream, and lesser known screen texts, both films and television series/miniseries/films, and emphasizes that while there is a correlation between secularism and the negativity of portrayals in recent years, the number of screen productions is clearly not lagging. Maurice offers good and ample illustrations, and her language and writing style make this an accessible and enjoyable read that will be of benefit to scholars, lay people, and undergraduates.– Meredith D. Prince, Auburn University, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

[...]Screening Divinity is an erudite but at the same time lively and accessible book.– P. Mardeusz, University of Vermont, CHOICE, March 2020

The book is a valuable contribution to the scholarly literature on the cinematic representations of and interactions with the classical and biblical worlds. Rather than treating cinema as an entirely self-referential medium, Maurice situates the films within the broader historical context concerning the role of God and the gods in ancient belief, thought, and practice. This emphasis is important in that it considers film not only as shaped by but also as a part of this intellectual history.– Adele Reinhartz, University of Ottawa, Scripta Classica Israelica, vol. 39 (2020)

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

See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press

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