Dear readers, it’s been a while. I didn’t call, I didn’t write, I … am going to stop this now. I have a very good reason why I’ve been such an absentee blogger, though. I have changed my research topic quite substantially, and that’s what I’m going to write about today. Change is a very normal part of any PhD project, or so everyone keeps telling me, hence here I am sharing my big change with all of you. And, if you stick around until the end, I’ll give you some mythic tidbits on hamartia.
Don't worry, it’s still contemporary feminist adaptations of myth, just sans the Canongate Myth Series. My research will focus more broadly on contemporary feminist adaptations of myth rather than focussing only on that series. It was always my intention to bring in other texts to supplement my research, but now they’re taking the main stage.
So what happened to cause this change? I read a couple of really brilliant novels, thinking that I could bring them in where relevant but, as I was reading, a million possible research areas swam before my eyes, and I just knew that I had to broaden my scope to include them. This took me down a winding path of self-realisation, or rather a very expensive Amazon book haul, and I soon realised my research was becoming boundless and massive. I had to stop somewhere. I couldn’t possibly research ALL feminist adaptations of ALL myths, so I decided to focus solely on Greek mythology, where previously I was planning on taking a comparative approach to research Greek, Japanese, and Norse mythologies.
So there you have it.
Contemporary feminist adaptations of Greek mythology.
Admittedly, it’s not so different in theory, but in practice it’s back to the drawing board: picking which novels to research, reading and making notes on said primary novels, a whole new thesis plan, and (soon) rewriting my introduction.
Here are the novels I am now researching:
Margaret Atwood The Penelopiad
Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad retells the events of the Odyssey from the perspective of Penelope. In the Odyssey, Penelope does not really have any characterisation or narrative voice; instead, she is merely a symbol for the women of the era of what a wife should be, as she waits two decades for her husband to return, keeping his kingdom for him and rejecting the suitors. In The Penelopiad, however, she takes centre stage. Except, her narrative is constantly interrupted by the chorus of handmaidens, who were famously killed by Odysseus and his son Telemachus upon his return to Ithaca. The handmaidens shed light on their sexual subjugation at the hands of the suitors, interrogate Penelope's social privilege, and literally put Odysseus on trial for his crimes.
Jeanette Winterson Weight
Weight revisits the Greco-Roman myth of Atlas and Heracles. Atlas is the Titan punished for his role in the Titonomachy (the war between the Titans and the Olympians) by Zeus ruling that he should carry the Cosmos on his shoulders for all eternity. Heracles, during his twelve labours, shoulders Atlas’ burden for a time, to allow Atlas the freedom to help him with one of his twelve labours. This novella engages with theories of masculinity, specifically hegemonic masculinity and homosociality, by interrogating the relative strengths of these two men of mythic proportions. Winterson also challenges her own 'Atlas complex' in the autobiographical interludes.
Ali Smith Girl Meets Boy
Ali Smith’s Girl Meets Boy is an adaptation of Iphis and Ianthe’s myth in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Iphis, a girl, was raised as a boy because her father decreed he would only keep a boy child; Iphis and Ianthe fall in love, and the night before their wedding Iphis is transformed into a boy by the goddess Hera. In Smith's adaptation, the myth is used to consider contemporary ideas of gender fluidity and social activism. For more on this really brilliant myth & Smith's revision of it, check out my previous blog post.
Salley Vickers Where Three Roads Meet
This novel depicts a conversation between Sigmund Freud and Tiresias, where they retell the story of Oedipus. Oedipus’ myth, in which Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother, as prophesised by the Oracle at Delphi, is a story that has already been famously adapted by Freud, for psychoanalytic rather than literary purposes, into the Oedipus complex. Though Vickers is adapting the myth, she is aware that it has already been adapted, and that the adaptation is the version which is well-known, so she has Tiresias tell the ‘original’ or ‘true’ story of Oedipus, while Freud interjects with comments, to show how myths come to us in the modern day by adaptation upon adaptation upon adaptation. There are also some really interesting nuances of the patriarchal domination of erudition and academia, with these two famously learned men utilising the socratic method to discuss another man famed for his wit, while Freud's daughter, Jocasta, and Antigone hint silently from the peripheries.
Madeline Miller The Song of Achilles
The Song of Achilles. Oh, where to begin? Let me count the ways I love thee. This is the novel that began to convince me to depart from the Canongate series, and it's not hard to see why. If you want to read the oldest, gayest love story of all time, but don't have the will or the way to read the Iliad, then look no further than Miller's novel. It blew me away how faithful this novel is to the events in Homer's epic poem, as well as drawing upon wider sources such as the little-known and unfinished Achilleid. This novel, like the epic poem before it, paints a beautiful picture of love and devotion, between Achilles and Patroclus. They challenge every traditional notion of masculinity, with cross-dressing, healing, dancing, and fighting. Their preoccupations with legacy and memory hint at classical reception theories, making you question the legacy of myths from the ancient world in modern times, wondering why you know the names Odysseus, Achilles, and Agamemnon but not the eight English King Edwards, four Williams, or - my personal favourite - Stephen. By the end of this novel, I had tears streaming down my face because, despite knowing how the story goes, I was blown away by Patroclus and Achilles, music and conflict, life and death.
Madeline Miller Circe
Circe. Should be pronounced Kirk-a, since the Greeks have no soft 'C' sounds. Tends to be pronounced Surse-a, like a certain Westeros Queen. Was pronounced Surse by me, until a particularly embarrassing supervision meeting. However you say it, know that this name is synonymous with the epithets Witch of the island of Aiaia, challenger of Titans, lover of Hermes, Daedalus, and Odysseus, mother of a king, and owner of lions and wolves and wilderness. This is a novel of fire, the powerful flame of the sun god Helios, the blaze of witchcraft in his four children, and the fire of determination that refuses to be extinguished in Circe, no matter how many hierarchies belittle her and greater gods seek to suppress her. This is a novel that contemplates power balances, thinking of 'power' both literally in terms of the gods' varying powers and dominions, as well as the power dynamics between, well, nearly everyone: men and women, gods and mortals, mothers and sons, fathers and daughters. If The Song of Achilles is a faithful adaptation of the Iliad, Circe makes us question why we ever bothered with the Odyssey, when the real hero is confined to Book X.
Pat Barker The Silence of the Girls
Pat Barker is best known for the perspectives of womanhood, working classes, and wartime in her novels, and The Silence of the Girls has all three. This novel retells the stories of Briseis in the Trojan war. In the Iliad, Briseis is a ‘prize’ (sex slave) given to Achilles as a spoil of war; she is then ‘stolen’ by Agamemnon and used as a bartering tool. Achilles refuses to fight for Agamemnon then, and essentially goes on strike, for which Briseis is of course blamed. She is returned to Achilles (her first captor, killer of her family and sacker of her city) and he returns to the fight, when Patroclus is killed by Hector. In this ancient epic, there was no way Briseis could consent to, or rebel against, her objectification and sexual enslavement. In fact, from the Iliad to modern adaptations (with innumerable art, literature, and film taking inspiration from this story in between), the relationship between Achilles and Briseis is interpreted as romantic. Barker, though, has other ideas. She focusses on these issues of consent. Briseis is deliberately called a ‘slave’ and lingers on imagery of rape, oppression, and squalor in order to highlight both Briseis’ historic powerlessness and contemporary discourses surrounding women’s sexual subjugation, especially in wartime. For anyone interested in warfare, particularly Medieval, WWI, and WWII, you will see a curious mixture of these in Barker's novel, suggesting that this is any war, Achilles is any famed general, and Briseis' experience is both horrific and horrifically common when it comes to female bystanders and men's wars.
Kamila Shamsie Home Fire
Shamsie's novel is the odd one out, if we're playing that game. At no point does she make it clear that Home Fire is an adaptation of Antigone's myths - but once you know it, it's hard to miss. Polyneices becomes Parvaiz, Ismene becomes Isma, and Antigone becomes Aneeka. The well-known tragedy Oedipus Rex becomes a story of contemporary anxieties regarding "islamic extremism" and the disastrous consequences of islamophobia and indoctrination that come from the media and politicians' often thoughtless - and, perhaps worse, calculated - comments and calls for action. I read this novel when every other post on Facebook and every headline was about Shamima Begum, and I realised exactly what Shamsie was trying to tell me, about the islamophobia in Britain and IS abroad, about the sins of the father (Oedipus becomes Adil Pasha) and their impacts on the children, and about the ways that cultural iconography of myth can be politicised.
***
So there you have it, my new and improved PhD project. Let me know what you think, and if you have any recommendations/questions/comments. So don't worry, I haven't forgotten you all, I have just been extremely busy recalculating everything. I also haven't forgotten my promise at the beginning of this blog post, about hamartia...
Maybe that image is a bit too explanatory, as it seems to say it all. This was a term used by Aristotle in his Poetics in the 4th Century BCE, and it referred to the error or failure that leads to the downfall of the protagonist in Tragedies. It's actually a mistranslation to call it a 'fatal flaw', since this implies that the cause of the downfall is the character's personality, or that it's their fault. So take that, seemingly perfect image. Hamartia often goes hand-in-hand with hubris, which you're probably more familiar with. Hubris is the Greek word for 'insolence' or 'affront', and it refers to the pride of the protagonist, which leads to their downfall.
Perhaps the most famous example of hamartia and hubris is in the character of our old pal Oedipus, who has already been mentioned twice in this post. I'm sorry that 1. I am so repetitive and, 2. that I am repeating the story of Oedipus, who we all know too well from our favourite psychologist with mummy issues. Before Freud adapted Oedipus' story, he was the protagonist of his own Tragic play, Oedipus Rex ('Oedipus the King'). Oedipus heard a prophesy that he would kill his father and marry his mother so, seeking to outsmart the prophesy, he ran away from his home. He comes upon a place where three roads meet, and hastily kills a man with whom he has quarrelled. He continues on to Thebes, where he answers the riddle of a Sphinx and wins the hand of the queen, Jocasta, whose husband had recently disappeared and was presumed dead. They have four children together and rule happily for a number of years, until a plague takes Thebes. Desperate, Odysseus seeks prophesies and solutions, and it ultimately falls to the blind Seer Tiresias and an unfortunate farmer to tell him the truth: that his wife was, in fact, his mother, who had left him exposed on a hill to die as an infant, and the man he had killed at the crossroads was his father. Jocasta hangs herself, and Oedipus blinds himself, and his children face many years of tumult and tribulations.
Oedipus' hamartia could be a number of things. For those who believe that hamartia is a character flaw, they often blame his unwavering belief in himself and his intellect, or the fact that he acted too hastily both at the crossroads and in Thebes after besting the Sphinx. Actually, since hamartia refers to the that which causes the protagonist's downfall, the true hamartia of Oedipus is his lack of information. He doesn't know that the parents who raised him were not his real parents, he couldn't know that he killed his father at the crossroads, or that his mother was the queen he then married. This lack of knowledge causes his downfall. His hubris, though, is more straightforward. He hears a prophesy of the gods - that he will kill his father and marry his mother - and he believes he can outmanoeuvre the gods, relying on his wits and good graces. He then presumes to call on the gods when his city is plagued, and stubbornly argues with the famed Seer Tiresias and the humble shepherd when they tell him the truth.
Okay, it's over. We got the inescapable Oedipus analysis out of the way, and we can continue on with our nice feminist revisionist myth blog now.
Hopefully the hamartia title makes more sense now, as I hope that my change in research is not the fatal flaw that leads to my inevitable tragedy. Though, according to Aristotle's Poetics, I hardly qualify as a tragic hero. I am neither a man, nor a person of good breeding; since I lack these economic and social privileges, the audience would probably enjoy my demise much less. I'd hope so, dear Readers, I'd hope so.
Margaret Atwood The Penelopiad
Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad retells the events of the Odyssey from the perspective of Penelope. In the Odyssey, Penelope does not really have any characterisation or narrative voice; instead, she is merely a symbol for the women of the era of what a wife should be, as she waits two decades for her husband to return, keeping his kingdom for him and rejecting the suitors. In The Penelopiad, however, she takes centre stage. Except, her narrative is constantly interrupted by the chorus of handmaidens, who were famously killed by Odysseus and his son Telemachus upon his return to Ithaca. The handmaidens shed light on their sexual subjugation at the hands of the suitors, interrogate Penelope's social privilege, and literally put Odysseus on trial for his crimes.
Jeanette Winterson Weight
Weight revisits the Greco-Roman myth of Atlas and Heracles. Atlas is the Titan punished for his role in the Titonomachy (the war between the Titans and the Olympians) by Zeus ruling that he should carry the Cosmos on his shoulders for all eternity. Heracles, during his twelve labours, shoulders Atlas’ burden for a time, to allow Atlas the freedom to help him with one of his twelve labours. This novella engages with theories of masculinity, specifically hegemonic masculinity and homosociality, by interrogating the relative strengths of these two men of mythic proportions. Winterson also challenges her own 'Atlas complex' in the autobiographical interludes.
Ali Smith Girl Meets Boy
Ali Smith’s Girl Meets Boy is an adaptation of Iphis and Ianthe’s myth in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Iphis, a girl, was raised as a boy because her father decreed he would only keep a boy child; Iphis and Ianthe fall in love, and the night before their wedding Iphis is transformed into a boy by the goddess Hera. In Smith's adaptation, the myth is used to consider contemporary ideas of gender fluidity and social activism. For more on this really brilliant myth & Smith's revision of it, check out my previous blog post.
Salley Vickers Where Three Roads Meet
This novel depicts a conversation between Sigmund Freud and Tiresias, where they retell the story of Oedipus. Oedipus’ myth, in which Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother, as prophesised by the Oracle at Delphi, is a story that has already been famously adapted by Freud, for psychoanalytic rather than literary purposes, into the Oedipus complex. Though Vickers is adapting the myth, she is aware that it has already been adapted, and that the adaptation is the version which is well-known, so she has Tiresias tell the ‘original’ or ‘true’ story of Oedipus, while Freud interjects with comments, to show how myths come to us in the modern day by adaptation upon adaptation upon adaptation. There are also some really interesting nuances of the patriarchal domination of erudition and academia, with these two famously learned men utilising the socratic method to discuss another man famed for his wit, while Freud's daughter, Jocasta, and Antigone hint silently from the peripheries.
Madeline Miller The Song of Achilles
The Song of Achilles. Oh, where to begin? Let me count the ways I love thee. This is the novel that began to convince me to depart from the Canongate series, and it's not hard to see why. If you want to read the oldest, gayest love story of all time, but don't have the will or the way to read the Iliad, then look no further than Miller's novel. It blew me away how faithful this novel is to the events in Homer's epic poem, as well as drawing upon wider sources such as the little-known and unfinished Achilleid. This novel, like the epic poem before it, paints a beautiful picture of love and devotion, between Achilles and Patroclus. They challenge every traditional notion of masculinity, with cross-dressing, healing, dancing, and fighting. Their preoccupations with legacy and memory hint at classical reception theories, making you question the legacy of myths from the ancient world in modern times, wondering why you know the names Odysseus, Achilles, and Agamemnon but not the eight English King Edwards, four Williams, or - my personal favourite - Stephen. By the end of this novel, I had tears streaming down my face because, despite knowing how the story goes, I was blown away by Patroclus and Achilles, music and conflict, life and death.
Madeline Miller Circe
Circe. Should be pronounced Kirk-a, since the Greeks have no soft 'C' sounds. Tends to be pronounced Surse-a, like a certain Westeros Queen. Was pronounced Surse by me, until a particularly embarrassing supervision meeting. However you say it, know that this name is synonymous with the epithets Witch of the island of Aiaia, challenger of Titans, lover of Hermes, Daedalus, and Odysseus, mother of a king, and owner of lions and wolves and wilderness. This is a novel of fire, the powerful flame of the sun god Helios, the blaze of witchcraft in his four children, and the fire of determination that refuses to be extinguished in Circe, no matter how many hierarchies belittle her and greater gods seek to suppress her. This is a novel that contemplates power balances, thinking of 'power' both literally in terms of the gods' varying powers and dominions, as well as the power dynamics between, well, nearly everyone: men and women, gods and mortals, mothers and sons, fathers and daughters. If The Song of Achilles is a faithful adaptation of the Iliad, Circe makes us question why we ever bothered with the Odyssey, when the real hero is confined to Book X.
Pat Barker The Silence of the Girls
Pat Barker is best known for the perspectives of womanhood, working classes, and wartime in her novels, and The Silence of the Girls has all three. This novel retells the stories of Briseis in the Trojan war. In the Iliad, Briseis is a ‘prize’ (sex slave) given to Achilles as a spoil of war; she is then ‘stolen’ by Agamemnon and used as a bartering tool. Achilles refuses to fight for Agamemnon then, and essentially goes on strike, for which Briseis is of course blamed. She is returned to Achilles (her first captor, killer of her family and sacker of her city) and he returns to the fight, when Patroclus is killed by Hector. In this ancient epic, there was no way Briseis could consent to, or rebel against, her objectification and sexual enslavement. In fact, from the Iliad to modern adaptations (with innumerable art, literature, and film taking inspiration from this story in between), the relationship between Achilles and Briseis is interpreted as romantic. Barker, though, has other ideas. She focusses on these issues of consent. Briseis is deliberately called a ‘slave’ and lingers on imagery of rape, oppression, and squalor in order to highlight both Briseis’ historic powerlessness and contemporary discourses surrounding women’s sexual subjugation, especially in wartime. For anyone interested in warfare, particularly Medieval, WWI, and WWII, you will see a curious mixture of these in Barker's novel, suggesting that this is any war, Achilles is any famed general, and Briseis' experience is both horrific and horrifically common when it comes to female bystanders and men's wars.
Kamila Shamsie Home Fire
Shamsie's novel is the odd one out, if we're playing that game. At no point does she make it clear that Home Fire is an adaptation of Antigone's myths - but once you know it, it's hard to miss. Polyneices becomes Parvaiz, Ismene becomes Isma, and Antigone becomes Aneeka. The well-known tragedy Oedipus Rex becomes a story of contemporary anxieties regarding "islamic extremism" and the disastrous consequences of islamophobia and indoctrination that come from the media and politicians' often thoughtless - and, perhaps worse, calculated - comments and calls for action. I read this novel when every other post on Facebook and every headline was about Shamima Begum, and I realised exactly what Shamsie was trying to tell me, about the islamophobia in Britain and IS abroad, about the sins of the father (Oedipus becomes Adil Pasha) and their impacts on the children, and about the ways that cultural iconography of myth can be politicised.
***
So there you have it, my new and improved PhD project. Let me know what you think, and if you have any recommendations/questions/comments. So don't worry, I haven't forgotten you all, I have just been extremely busy recalculating everything. I also haven't forgotten my promise at the beginning of this blog post, about hamartia...
Maybe that image is a bit too explanatory, as it seems to say it all. This was a term used by Aristotle in his Poetics in the 4th Century BCE, and it referred to the error or failure that leads to the downfall of the protagonist in Tragedies. It's actually a mistranslation to call it a 'fatal flaw', since this implies that the cause of the downfall is the character's personality, or that it's their fault. So take that, seemingly perfect image. Hamartia often goes hand-in-hand with hubris, which you're probably more familiar with. Hubris is the Greek word for 'insolence' or 'affront', and it refers to the pride of the protagonist, which leads to their downfall.
Perhaps the most famous example of hamartia and hubris is in the character of our old pal Oedipus, who has already been mentioned twice in this post. I'm sorry that 1. I am so repetitive and, 2. that I am repeating the story of Oedipus, who we all know too well from our favourite psychologist with mummy issues. Before Freud adapted Oedipus' story, he was the protagonist of his own Tragic play, Oedipus Rex ('Oedipus the King'). Oedipus heard a prophesy that he would kill his father and marry his mother so, seeking to outsmart the prophesy, he ran away from his home. He comes upon a place where three roads meet, and hastily kills a man with whom he has quarrelled. He continues on to Thebes, where he answers the riddle of a Sphinx and wins the hand of the queen, Jocasta, whose husband had recently disappeared and was presumed dead. They have four children together and rule happily for a number of years, until a plague takes Thebes. Desperate, Odysseus seeks prophesies and solutions, and it ultimately falls to the blind Seer Tiresias and an unfortunate farmer to tell him the truth: that his wife was, in fact, his mother, who had left him exposed on a hill to die as an infant, and the man he had killed at the crossroads was his father. Jocasta hangs herself, and Oedipus blinds himself, and his children face many years of tumult and tribulations.
Oedipus' hamartia could be a number of things. For those who believe that hamartia is a character flaw, they often blame his unwavering belief in himself and his intellect, or the fact that he acted too hastily both at the crossroads and in Thebes after besting the Sphinx. Actually, since hamartia refers to the that which causes the protagonist's downfall, the true hamartia of Oedipus is his lack of information. He doesn't know that the parents who raised him were not his real parents, he couldn't know that he killed his father at the crossroads, or that his mother was the queen he then married. This lack of knowledge causes his downfall. His hubris, though, is more straightforward. He hears a prophesy of the gods - that he will kill his father and marry his mother - and he believes he can outmanoeuvre the gods, relying on his wits and good graces. He then presumes to call on the gods when his city is plagued, and stubbornly argues with the famed Seer Tiresias and the humble shepherd when they tell him the truth.
Okay, it's over. We got the inescapable Oedipus analysis out of the way, and we can continue on with our nice feminist revisionist myth blog now.
Hopefully the hamartia title makes more sense now, as I hope that my change in research is not the fatal flaw that leads to my inevitable tragedy. Though, according to Aristotle's Poetics, I hardly qualify as a tragic hero. I am neither a man, nor a person of good breeding; since I lack these economic and social privileges, the audience would probably enjoy my demise much less. I'd hope so, dear Readers, I'd hope so.
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