I'm still working, perhaps just for my own amusement, on my book re: the superhero idiom, and decided to elide this example of what I'm currently calling "the supermundane."
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Since Sumerian literature
remains fairly obscure, I can better contrast the two supermundane modes with
examples taken from the better-known culture of archaic Greece. For most
persons, Greek mythology is a major source of the Greater Supermundane, thanks
to the Greeks’ adaptation of even their most obscure myths into drama and
poetry. The exploits of figures like Heracles, Jason and Odysseus hardly need
to be outlined here. But a few stories anticipate later developments in the
Lesser Supermundane. In Gothic fiction, one major trope is that of deceivers
who use devices to fake ghosts or demon-hounds, and this trope is loosely
prefigured by the tale of King Salmoneus. The monarch conceives that he is the
earthly avatar of Zeus, and he tries to emulate the Thunder-God by flourishing
torches for “lightning” and using noisemakers to simulate “thunder.” The story
doesn’t mention whether Salmoneus fools any of his subjects. In any case, the
real Zeus disapproves of the imposture and wipes out both the king and his
city.
