The Artemis Archetype in Popular Culture

Many female figures in recent fiction, film, and television embody the Artemis archetype, modeled on the Greco-Roman goddess of the hunt. These characters are often identified as heroines and recognized as powerful and progressive pop icons. Some fit the image of the tough, resourceful female in a science fiction or fantasy setting, while others are more relatable, inhabiting a possible future, a recent past, or a very real present. Examining both iconic and lesser-known works, this collection of new essays analyzes the independent and capable female figure as an ideal representation of women in popular culture.

Susan Redington Bobby is an associate professor of English at Wesley College. She is the editor of Fairy Tales Reimagined: Essays on New Retellings (McFarland, 2009), the author of Beyond His Dark Materials: Innocence and Experience in the Fiction of Philip Pullman (McFarland 2012), and the author of a critical essay in the His Dark Materials Casebook (Palgrave 2014).

Eileen M. Harney is an assistant professor in the English Department at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. Her research interests include the treatment of gender in medieval traditions and texts, contemporary depictions of female bodies and the heroic female character, and gender constructs in comics, television series and films.

Edited by Susan Redington Bobby and Eileen M. Harney

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 236
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2016
pISBN: 978-0-7864-7846-0
eISBN: 978-1-4766-2375-7
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments vi
Introduction—Tracking the Elusive Goddess: Artemis’ Presence in Pop Culture (Eileen M. Harney) 1

“Alone, I can’t be the Mockingjay”: Katniss Everdeen and the Artemis Archetype (Jessica Auz and Kaitlin Tonti) 9
“Paradise exists in the shadow of the sword”: The Feminist Avenger in Cara Hoffman’s So Much Pretty (Sara Hosey) 35
Huntress, Hacker, Heroine: Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander as a Modern Incarnation of Artemis (Kathleen Lynn Kress) 52
The Artemis Archetype in the Films of Kathryn Bigelow (Randall Clark) 75
Healing the Divided Self: Kara “Starbuck” Thrace and the Call to Artemis (Susan Redington Bobby) 94
Race and Sexuality in the Artemis Female: Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (Chinyelu Agwu) 122
Sword, Stoicism, Salvation: Michonne’s ­Post-Apocalyptic Evocation of Artemis (Brittany Hirth) 144
Struggling for Dominance: Artemis Confronts Other Olympian Goddesses in the Works of Joss Whedon (Eileen M. Harney) 170

Afterword—“Staring at the same tree missing the forest”: Artemisian Heroines in Our Midst (Susan Redington Bobby) 201
Comprehensive Bibliography 209
About the Contributors 221
Index 223