Screening Divinity

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.