Pygmalion is an archetypal mythological figure, which reflected in many poems, drama plays and short stories. Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw, clearly referenced to this mythical archetype. In 1921, Shaw wrote Back to Methuselah (1921). Pygmalion, written at the end of his second decade as a playwright. Shaw never freed himself from the irritating demands of these unconscious images. Another decade passed and Pygmalion appeared again as an actual character in Back to Methuselah.
References
[1]
Morford, M. (2007) Classical Mythology. Oxford UP, Oxford
[2]
Hawthorne, N. (1846) Mosses from an Old Manse. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston.
[3]
Douglas, H. (2013) Online Etymology Dictionary—Archetype.
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=archetype
[4]
Shaw, G.B. and Fisher, J. (1963) Pygmalion. Royal Victorian Institute for the Blind Educational Centre, Melbourne, Australia.
[5]
Gadhiraju, C. (2017) Myths of Creation: A Study of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. International Journal of Advanced Education and Research, 2, 64-66.
[6]
Slaney, H. (2017) George Bernard Shaw: Pygmalion. In: Zajko, V. and Hoyle, H., Eds., A Handbook to the Reception of Classical Mythology, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, 419-431. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119072034.ch29
[7]
Matlaw, M. (1958) The Denouement of Pygmalion. Modern Drama, 1, 29-34.
https://doi.org/10.3138/md.1.1.29
[8]
Shaw, G.B. (1921) Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch. Constable and Company Ltd., London.
