... educated woman on Cephallonia. Pelagia falls in love with Mandras, a local fisherman. She secretly gazes at Mandras swimming naked in the sea with some dolphins; dolphins appear frequently in Classical mythology, they are depicted on frescoes on the bathroom wall in the Palace of Knossos in Crete, however their importance is ambiguous. In Homer's 'Hymn to Apollo' which describes how the Greek God Apollo founded the temple at Delphi after a journey which took him all over Greece in search of a suitable site, in this myth Apollo takes the guise of a dolphin. Pelagia, we soon discover has a mythological strain in her observations and she likens Mandras to a male nymph on account of his exceptional physique, his description is akin to that of Apollo. Alas, Benito Mussolini has decided to invade Greece without informing anyone. De Berniéres allows Mussolini to take centre stage with an entire chapter ...

See this essay or coursework document in full right now