#An invocation of a muse how to#
#An invocation of a muse plus#

The painter played by Franco Nero uses his much younger mistress as his muse. The writer's muse in Film, Film, Film is rather unreliable in her appearance.In As Good as It Gets, Greg Kinnear's character gets his artistic groove back by drawing Helen Hunt.Holland is inspired by student Rowena and begins writing music again.

Happens literally in Xanadu: a struggling artist is inspired by (and falls in love with) an authentic Greek Muse (goddess).

In Albert Brooks' film The Muse 1999 he gets a real Muse.

Azrael, the story's villain is revealed to be a former muse who was sent down to hell for refusing to fight against Satan.

And she will not be happy if you try to credit her with Home Alone.

There's a literal muse in Dogma, a magical stripper played by Salma Hayek.

Shakespeare in Love, wherein the playwright's titular romance allows him to iron out the wrinkles in his play-in-progress (working title: Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter).

This, after Colin Meloy's over-educated literary fashion, was used at the beginning of The Decemberists' 'The Perfect Crime No.

The invocation starts out by mirroring the opening of the Iliad, but degenerates into a vicious rant against the Muse, who is an actual character in the story and something of a bitch.

Dan Simmons's Illium opens with an invocation to the Muse by the narrator, since it's based partially on the Iliad.

Alexander Pope refers now and then to a muse in The Rape of the Lock, which was based on the tussle over the haircut of his friend Arabella Fermor.

John Milton asks for Urania, Muse of astronomy (and thus, knowledge of God's creation) to inspire him at the beginning of Paradise Lost.

#An invocation of a muse plus#

Dante doesn't invoke the muses until the second part of The Divine Comedy, but at the beginning of Paradiso, the third part, he invokes all nine plus Apollo himself.

The Achilleid begins with Statius praying for Apollo himself to inspire him and does so by appealing to his previous experience writing epic poetry.

#An invocation of a muse how to#

The Thebaid begins with the author asking the Goddesses of Song to decide how to tell the story of Thebes and where in its long history to begin.Virgil invokes a muse both at the beginning and middle of The Aeneid.Homer invokes the Muse (probably Calliope) at the start of both The Iliad and The Odyssey.When athletes need inspiration, it is often rallied by pom squads. For someone who functions as the opposite and is also the artist's love interest, see Love Makes You Uncreative. Or Muse Abuse, although it often follows.

Not to be confused with the British rock band Muse. Not incidentally, the same story provides a codifying example of Muse Abuse. The magazine Strange Horizons mentions among a List of stories we've seen too often 'Creative person meets a muse (either one of the nine classical Muses or a more individual muse) and interacts with them, usually by keeping them captive.' Neil Gaiman has commented in his online journal: 'I have a fairly good memory, and don't recall ever reading any captive-muse-for-someone-with-writer's-block stories before I wrote mine.' This would make Gaiman's story (detailed below) the Trope Codifier, at least for the supernatural version of the trope. Of course, art often mirrors life in this regard, and many fictional artists have muses of their own-sometimes, in fact, literal Muses from classical Greek mythology. If said woman is an actress, she'll be cast in the main female role in every one of the director's movies, at least until their relationship breaks down. This concept is often invoked by many real-life creators by attributing a real-life person special to them as their 'personal muse.' Usually occurs with a female muse for a male creator, but the inverse (or a combination thereof) is not too uncommon. In a sense, this posits that all great works of art are linked to the divine and their creators are merely vessels for which divine forces can channel their energy. These entities exist to seek out creative people and inspire them to create great works of art. In Greek Mythology, there is a subset of spirits/goddesses under the guidance of Apollo known as muses. Homer, The Iliad, Book II (translation by Robert Fagles)