Antiquity in popular literature and culture

Spiritus flat ubi vult academicus. It seems evident that the study of antiquity and the study of antiquityâ (TM)s persistence will continue to be distributed ubique terrarum. This pleasing circumstance was exemplified in January 2014, at the Adam Mickiewicz University in PoznaÅ", an institution named after Polandâ (TM)s influential nineteenth-century epic and lyric poet. As part of an ongoing series of such academic meetings, the university hosted the Seventh International Conference on Fantasy and Wonder. Its topic was Antiquity in Popular Literature and Culture. Several of the papers given in PoznaÅ" appear in this volume in revised form. They demonstrate the continuing presence of the past, or, to put it slightly differently, the importance of the past in the present and, by extension, for the future.