Recently published novels have significantly improved either in titles, conflicts, and messages. This trend benefits the readers who want variety in reading novels. One of the variants that makes interesting reading is a novel that brings a cultural message along with a great setting as a background for the novel. Lately, this kind of novel has achieved great response from readers. Reading this kind of novel may allow readers to comprehend new insight into a particular culture and at the same time get they involved in the conflicts presented. This kind of approach is different from most other kinds of novels. These nuances differentiate cultural related novels from other fictitious novels which focus their stories on imaginative conflicts developed by the authors, situations that seldom or never happen to common people.
Throughout the ages, Greek culture has enthralled its students. Their myths, gods, and literature have fascinated not only the Greeks all over the world but others alike. Poets have been fond of retelling myths, defined as traditional stories of immortal beings. According to Bierlein (1997) in Parallel Myth, myth itself is “a thread that holds past, present and future together”, for it is “a pattern of beliefs that give meaning to life”. The ancient Greeks believed in many gods. They thought of their most important gods, numbering twelve, as living on Mount Olympus. They were Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, Hermes, Demeter, Dionysus, Hephaestus, and Ares (Howatson, 1993). Writing about the literature of Greece, The Encyclopedia Americana (1984) mentioned that the literature of Greece was a masterly expression of the Greek soul and an inexhaustible source of inspiration for each succeeding generation. “Set to music, it sang of every phase of the people’s life: work, love, war, and death,” says the above quoted encyclopedia. It sang also of the beauties of nature and events of ancient times |