In the Beginning.

You know that feeling when you’re right at the beginning of a massive project? You know the one, where you feel as though you’re standing at the foot of the mountain you’re about to climb, and you know that you’ve trained for this and you’re excited, but now you’re right up close to the mountain and damn if it doesn’t look like it’s somehow gotten bigger. You’re anxious, but you know the entire adventure is ahead of you, and it begins the moment you take that first step. 

This is my first step. 

I am right at the beginning of my PhD. I am studying English Literature at the University of Glasgow. I am researching the use of mythology in contemporary feminist literature. I am basing my research on the female authors within the Canongate Myth Series, a series in which contemporary authors rewrite and adapt ancient myths. 

I am going to use this blog to post snippets of my research as it develops, so stay tuned if you’re interested in Mythology (mostly Greek and Roman, but I’ll also be dipping my toe into Norse and Japanese); Contemporary Literature (think Margaret Atwood, Jeanette Winterson, A.S. Byatt, and more); and, perhaps most importantly, Feminism. This is a Feminist BlogTM. Here, I will be interacting with some of the most pressing feminist issues of the modern day, from academics to activism to actually what it means to be a feminist today, namely the gospel according to Caitlin Moran. 

As anyone doing a higher degree in the Arts and Humanities will tell you, though, research is never purely academic. I expect that this blog will also follow my emotional journey through the PhD process, charting my highs and lows, and sharing the experience of doctoral studies with you, rather than just sharing the research proper. A PhD, by all accounts, is a long journey. Mentally, in terms of your research, it’s the biggest undertaking any of us will have done so far, and emotionally, that pressure is bound to get to us. On the other hand, the greater the effort, the greater the prize; the bigger the writers’ block, the better it feels when you break through it; the more complex the research knot, the more rewarding it feels when you puzzle your way out of it. I will share it all with you, dear readers. 

*** 

This year, Emily Wilson became the first woman to translate the Odyssey into English, and she used it as a platform to discuss how misogyny was added into the text by the previous, male, translators. She said that every translator makes a choice, and previous translators chose to include “visible misogynies”. Instead, she adapted the poem with a feminist nuance.  

Her translation begins: 

“Tell me about a complicated man.

Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost

when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy,

and where he went, and who he met, the pain

he suffered in the storms at sea, and how

he worked to save his life and bring his men

back home. He failed to keep them safe; poor fools,

they ate the Sun God’s cattle, and the god

kept them from home. Now goddess, child of Zeus,

tell the old story for our modern times.

Find the beginning.”

(Wilson, 2018)

This opening really resonates with me right now. Odysseus strikes us as a lonely figure on the precipice, “how he wandered and was lost”, which finally turns Odysseus into a character I can identify with, and it feels complex and turbulent before it has even begun, “the pain / he suffered in the storms at sea,” much like my research. Moreover, it is the beginning of a great adventure, both the well-known voyage of the Odyssey, as well as the odyssey of adaptation, of taking something well known and rewriting it into something contemporary and relevant. It feels as though Wilson is saying directly to me, “Now goddess, child of Zeus, tell the old story for our modern times.” … I am going to do my best. 

“Find the beginning.” 

This is the beginning. 

My next post will be about introductions. I’ll be introducing you all to my research, and I’ll be writing about introductions - why they feel so hard to write, and my skeleton plan for introductions that has yet to fail me.