Date of Submission
Spring 2022
Academic Program
Written Arts
Project Advisor 1
Mary Caponegro
Abstract/Artist's Statement
When I set about this project I was driven by a long-standing interest in Mythology and folklore. As a kid my favorite stories were always those that delved into the magical and fantastical. The grand tales of adventure and the thrilling stories of the creatures that inhabited, or inhabit (if you are to believe such things) our world alongside us, as well as worlds beyond. My intrigue began at a very young age, when my grandmother would read me the “Just So Stories” by Rudyard Kipling, tales for children of how animals came to be the way that they are. As I attended school in Hawaii, I attended a “Hawaiiana” class several times a week; in this class we learned traditional chants, pieces of the language, and (my favorite) Hawaiian myths. I would run home and tell my parents about the Hawaiian gods, and the legends of brave warriors and fallen kings. A bit later I was introduced to Greek mythology, reading classic stories such as “The Odyssey” and “The Iliad.” I continued to read and watch various iterations, both classic and modern takes on these stories and tales of mythological wonder.
In writing this series of short stories I have further widened my knowledge of such things. Delving back into myths and tales that I had half-forgotten as well as researching and reading about ones I had never heard of before. I found the process both tedious and wonderful. I wanted to maintain a level of accuracy to my source material, yet I also wanted for this to be a work of fiction, a twist on the stories and the creatures that have already been established. There were several times throughout where I questioned myself, debated on the addition of something that was not strictly true; in hindsight, these are the sections that I am most proud of, the parts of the stories that are mine.
Open Access Agreement
On-Campus only
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Stergion, Bodhi Zion Robinson, "Of the Mythic and the Mystical" (2022). Senior Projects Spring 2022. 41.
https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2022/41
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