Myths are like Ogres are like Onions

 

My PhD is now on feminist adaptations of Shrek. I hope you will all support me in this career change. Let's get Shrexy! 

I'm sorry, I could NOT resist that little April Fool's hook. But I stand by my blogpost title: myths are like "ogres are like onions". As we all know, onions have layers; ogres have layers... and myths have layers. This - unfortunately sans the Shrek - is the focus of the final chapter of my PhD: 

"I want to tell the story again" 

Palimpsests: Paratexts and Intertexts 

In this chapter, I'm arguing that mythic adaptations can be understood as palimpsests. Literally, a palimpsest is a manuscript upon which later writing has been layered upon earlier writing; metaphorically, “palimpsest” has come to refer to newer meanings being layered upon earlier ones. As Linda Hutcheon writes in A Theory of Adaptation, ‘To deal with adaptations as adaptations is to think of them as […] inherently “palimpsestuous” works, haunted at all times by their adapted texts’ (2006: 6). In terms of mythic adaptations,  the newer meanings inscribed by contemporary authors are layered on top of the meanings ascribed onto myth throughout history. 

‘When we call a work an adaptation, we openly announce its overt relationship to another work or works’ (Ibid., 6) 

When working with adaptations, one has to be aware of the earlier works that are being adapted, yet adaptation is ‘a process of creation’  because it is not simply repeating the earlier work, it ‘involves both (re-)interpretation and then (re-)creation’  (Ibid., 8). ‘Therefore, an adaptation is a derivation that is not derivative - a work that is second without being secondary. It is its own palimpsestic thing’ (Ibid., 9). 

With contemporary women’s adaptations of Greek myth, one can identify the layers of meaning throughout the history of Classical reception: from the original oral myths, to their first instances of being written and preserved, to their replication and long histories of loss, retrieval, translation, and adaptation for various purposes.

For example, when you read about the wrath of Achilles in Homer's Iliad, you're influenced by the oral tradition that led to the compilation of the epic poem, you're influenced by the choices the particular translator made and they, in turn, were influenced by the translations that came before them. Classical epics are influenced by their preservation and treatment in the medieval period. The Iliad's Achilles is now necessarily affected by Shakespeare's treatment of him in Troilus and Cressida. You're also, unfortunately, influenced by Brad Pitt, because his portrayal of Achilles for the Hollywood movie Troy has become infamous. 

Myths are like ogres are like onions. They have layers. 

But there is an extra layer to the palimpsestuous onion of feminist adaptations of Greek myth. 

(Cor, that was fun to write)

As well as all of the layers of mythic history, the authors within the scope of my thesis have an active understanding of each other’s work, as proven by reviews, interviews, and theses. 

In trying to prove this claim, I felt a little bit like this: 

But my crazed yarn-map actually looked more like this: 

As an act of benevolence and mercy, I will spare you from the details of all the theory that went into this chapter. All you really need to know is that a ‘paratext’ is all the stuff around the text, but not the text itself. For Gerard Genette, who coined the term, paratexts = peritexts + epitexts 

Peritexts = the stuff included in the physical book but not the text itself, e.g. blurb, what’s on the cover, prefaces, dedications, and so on. 

Epitexts = the stuff that occurs outside of the physical book, e.g. promotions, interviews, and so on. 

Some paratexts are controlled by the author and some paratexts are controlled by the editors. 

In all honesty, it took me a really long time to wrap my head around all of this — theories of intertextuality and editorial influence are really not in my wheelhouse. This was definitely the most difficult barrier I have faced in my PhD writing so far. Nevertheless, I persisted, and now I understand it. Honestly. Completely. Kind of. Mostly. 

Anyway, I sketched out in the chapter all of the paratextual awarenesses I could get my hands on. Emily Hauser wrote her PhD thesis on Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad and Ursula Le Guin’s Lavinia; Natalie Haynes has written a review of almost every text in my thesis, including key works of Classics discourse; a bunch of the books in my thesis include quotes on the covers from other authors; the authors tweet about each other’s work; and so on and so forth. 

I’m getting yarn-mappy again, aren’t I? 

The point was to prove that there is a ‘literary ecosystem’ (Ratner 2018: 733) that connects all of these texts. Or, if we venture into gynocriticism — and, at this point, why not? — ‘a female literary tradition’ built on the intertextual relations between women writers (Showalter 1990: 189). 

These authors all know about each other’s works. So what? This has two really important implications for my research: 

1) The authors have an awareness of the current literary momentum of the genre of feminist adaptations of Greek myth.

2) This awareness presents itself in the texts. This paratextual awareness becomes intertextual. There are references within the novels to the work of the authors’ contemporaries, to the novels that are also contributing to the present popularity of female authors adapting Greek myth. 

This is where it really got fun for me, because I got to point out all of the allusions to other works within the novels themselves - that is, intertextual references. In Madeline Miller’s Circe, she references her earlier work, The Song of Achilles: I think every TSOA fan’s heart broke again when Odysseus said to Circe, about Achilles, ‘The best part of him died, […] His lover Patroclus. He didn’t like me much, but then the good ones never do’ (Miller 2018: 185). This shows an interesting relationship, a continuation, between Miller’s two novels, almost comparable (if we want to go there) to the relationship between Homer’s two epics; so, one way that intertextuality can be used is within a single author’s body of work, to create sequential epics akin to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. 

And then you’ve got Natalie Haynes’ A Thousand Ships, which is a truly excellent polyphonic retelling of the Trojan War, from the perspective of all of the women affected by it: Hecuba, Andromache, Cassandra, Iphigenia, Oenone. You even get a little glimpse into Helen’s perspective, which I can promise you is RARE in these retellings (I’d argue that Helen is mostly unadaptable). This novel is rife with intertextuality, but I focus mostly on the epistolary interludes, where Penelope writes letters to Odysseus while he takes his sweet time getting home from Troy (i.e., while he’s doing the Odyssey). I argue that Haynes’ Penelope echoes the voice of Atwood’s Penelope in her 2005 novella for the Canongate Myth Series, The Penelopiad.

JCTC Production of Euripides' Trojan Women (2018) (Source)

So we’ve seen how a paratextual awareness becomes intertextual. From there, I argue that this had led to a phenomenon within the literature of women writing about their current literary circumstance within the novel itself or, more specifically, women writing about women writing about myths.  

This is not to be confused with the time that I, a woman, wrote a blog post about writing called ‘Writing About Writing’. Of course not; that’s not confusing at all. 

This adds another layer to the onion, but we will have to save it for another day, because a donkey and I have to go rescue a princess from a tower. I'm sorry for tricking you into reading an entire blog post about intertextual theory, I feel that I have exploited Shrek's good name and image for my personal gain.