SOURCE: "Countee Cullen's Use of Greek Mythology," in CLA Journal, Vol. XIII, No. 1, September, 1969, pp. 68-77.

In the following excerpt, Dorsey argues that Cullen often invented the circumstances of Greek myths when incorporating them into his poetry in order to create irony and to achieve originality.

In The Crisis for November, 1929, Countee Cullen reviewed Claire Goll's novel, Le Nègre Jupiter Enlève Europe. Regarding the title, the review contains the following criticism:

The mythical allusion does not seem to me altogether well-chosen, for Europa was a young and beautiful maiden whom Jupiter, who never allowed the vast and exacting duties of godhead to interfere with his amatory holidays, bore off and seduced after having first transformed himself into a bull in order that Juno might not recognize her dallying and recreant spouse. But Jupiter was the king of all the gods, more of an autocrat than the...