{"id":609,"date":"2020-02-12T14:04:41","date_gmt":"2020-02-12T19:04:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/amca-lab\/?p=609"},"modified":"2021-03-31T10:00:42","modified_gmt":"2021-03-31T14:00:42","slug":"old-story-new-twist-circe-by-madeline-miller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/amca-lab\/old-story-new-twist-circe-by-madeline-miller\/","title":{"rendered":"Old Story, New Twist: Circe by Madeline Miller"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Join BU classics scholar Emily Pell as she dives into a review of Madeline Miller’s Circe<\/em><\/a>, a fresh retelling of Homer’s tale from the Odyssey<\/em>. Also, for your enjoyment, we’ve included a brief snippet of BU classics scholar Lilly Hinckley’s exclusive interview with the novelist herself!<\/p>\n

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Madeline Miller<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“Madeline Miller<\/a> brilliantly offers a new perspective on the well-known mythological character Circe. Taking inspiration from the Odyssey<\/em>, Miller incorporates familiar mythologies and stories from Greek mythology, including myths of Prometheus and Helios, but tells them from a new perspective. Miller also writes in the first person, giving a stronger voice to Circe<\/strong> and enabling her to look into the emotions and thoughts of the sorceress.<\/p>\n

Miller writes chronologically beginning with Circe\u2019s early life. Circe was the least favorite child of Perse, a naiad, and the Sun god and Titan, Helios. Her early childhood, as a minor unfavored immortal, was brutal and degrading as she was constantly bullied for her horrible sounding voice, which is later described as the voice of a mortal. Circe witnesses the punishment of Prometheus and grows somewhat close to him, learning about mortals and why he chose to defy Zeus to their benefit. Circe\u2019s childhood presents her as relatively na\u00efve, curious, and disliked by her family. Circe falls in love with a moral who she turns into a god, but is then exiled to the island Aiaia. She turns the nymph Scylla into the famous sea monster that plagues sailors after Circe\u2019s beloved mortal turned god leaves her for the nymph. Throughout her adventurous story, Miller expertly depicts Circe\u2019s emotions. How she feels, the betrayal that leads her to turn the nymph into a sea monster, her fear of Odysseus\u2019 men and turning them into pigs, and her timid approach to accepting new lovers. Circe grows out of her na\u00efve, childish character into a strong and fearful woman, yet Miller, in looking into Circe\u2019s mind, shows her careful approach to growing close to others.<\/p>\n

In the original mythology of Circe and other stories she takes a small part in, Circe is often depicted as a villainous dark witch, but with Miller\u2019s new perspective and careful consideration of her early life, she is presented as a protagonist the reader can sympathize with<\/strong>. Throughout the story the reader grows attached to her as a character and Miller creates compelling emotions which the reader can connect directly to Circe.<\/p>\n

Circe<\/em> brings a fresh new look at familiar mythologies.<\/strong> Miller maintains the mythological stories, the main characters, their interactions, and significant components of the myths, while changing the perspective and anticipating the thoughts behind each decision or action taken by Circe<\/strong>. Whether the reader is familiar with original mythologies or not, Circe<\/em> is an interesting, fun, and moving story that is entertaining while simultaneously providing insights to the religious and mythological stories.”<\/p>\n

Keep reading to learn more about Miller’s journey, writing style, and classical background. For the full interview, please see the Spring 2020 edition of Butler University’s undergraduate literary magazine,\u00a0Manuscripts.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Hinckley: It seems to me that classics as a field is shrinking every year. Do you have anything to say on the importance or relevance of classics in the world today?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Miller: I think it\u2019s totally relevant. Culture has changed and technology has changed but people have not changed. Read any ancient text and you will see humanity in all its pride and folly and virtue. People will sometimes ask me, \u201cHow do you make these myths feel relevant?\u201d But I feel that I don\u2019t have to change anything, just allow what\u2019s already there to bloom.\u00a0 Or maybe it\u2019s more like pulling off the veil – the veil of time. Women have struggled with being belittled and undermined and abused for millennia. Circe in the <\/span>Odyssey <\/span><\/i>is presented as a figure of anxiety about female power. She has the power to strip men of their selfhood.\u00a0 We still fear women\u2019s power. We still like to \u201ctame\u201d them as Odysseus tames Circe in the Odyssey<\/em>. One of the really exciting things about being a classics teacher is having students come on the first day, thinking \u201cthis is going to be boring,\u201d and realizing that these stories are anything but boring\u2014they are vital and resonant. One of the most startling experiences of my life was reading the <\/span>Philoctetes<\/span><\/i> and then going to visit my grandmother who had broken her hip and couldn\u2019t get around. She was so frustrated by the limitations of her body and by the fact that she couldn\u2019t do what she wanted to do, and she felt abandoned by some of her friends.\u00a0 That\u2019s what Philoctetes<\/em> is about. It\u2019s all there.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Miller’s other novel “The Song of Achilles”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hinckley: It\u2019s still there. Yeah, that’s awesome! This next question goes along with that. In many of your interviews and in your presentation last night, you mentioned how Greek myths have a sort of timeless universality in what they tell us about humanity- and that\u2019s something we would very much like to believe- but, clearly, there are flaws and missing perspectives in authors like Homer and Ovid. So, how do you grapple with that? And in your perspective, does that lessen the value of those works at all?<\/b>
\n<\/b>Miller: I think it\u2019s important to be really honest about it. I definitely don\u2019t want to sugar-coat the fact that Briseis is being kept as a sex slave. There have been so many adaptations that take a romantic view, where Briseis falls in love with Achilles.\u00a0 But that\u2019s a very disturbing interpretation. So I think we have to be willing to confront the things that are disturbing in the literature. It\u2019s important to keep engaging with it honestly. And it\u2019s extra important because these works are the foundation for so many later works of literature, from James Joyce to the <\/span>Penelopiad <\/span><\/i>to Shakespeare. It\u2019s okay to be ambivalent about them, to love them and still be frustrated with them. <\/span><\/p>\n

Hinckley: Oh yeah, definitely. <\/b>Recently, Emily Wilson came out with a new translation of the <\/b>Odyssey<\/i><\/b>. Do you see any similarities between your work and hers? And, as a follow-up question: do you see yourself as a feminist and did you intend for <\/b>Circe <\/i><\/b>to be a piece of feminine literature?<\/b><\/p>\n

Miller: I think that she and I are both looking at these works and trying to find the silenced voices, and other perspectives. I love that she names the Cyclops chapter, \u201cThe Shepherd and the Pirate\u201d- meaning Odysseus the pirate and the Cyclops, the shepherd. She\u2019s also looking at how we \u201cotherize\u201d people. Odysseus feels entitled to come in and loot the Cyclops\u2019 land, and because he\u2019s telling the story we go along with that view of the cyclops as villainous. But Odysseus is the one invading his land.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Emily Wilson and I are also both interested in the women that Odysseus orders to be killed at the end. For generations, they\u2019ve been translated as \u201cthe maids.\u201d The word in Greek \u201cslave,\u201d and using that word, \u201cslave,\u201d as Emily Wilson does, reminds us that this is a slave society\u2014that Odysseus is a slave holder.\u00a0 And as much sympathy as we have for Penelope, she has it a lot better off than the slave women, who have no power at all. I think Emily Wilson is brilliantly attuned to all those things.<\/span><\/p>\n

And yes, I call myself a feminist, and yes, definitely, I think <\/span>Circe <\/span><\/i>is a feminist work. To me that means that Circe is the center and subject of her own story, as opposed to being an object in Odysseus\u2019 story.\u00a0 One of the ways Odysseus describes her is having this beautiful, ornate hair. And he presents it as if she\u2019s all dressed up in her fanciest outfit with her fanciest hair, just waiting for him to show up. That\u2019s clearly a straight male fantasy of how women spend their time.\u00a0 In restoring subject-hood to her, I asked myself: why would \u201cCirce of the beautiful braids\u201d have braided her hair? Well, she spends all her time in the woods, she\u2019s digging up herbs, she\u2019s hanging out with her lions- you\u2019d definitely put up your hair. That\u2019s what I mean when I say I like to write close to Homer. I like to take that detail and flip it so she\u2019s the subject and she looks at <\/span>him<\/span><\/i> as the object and she assesses how attractive <\/span>he<\/span><\/i> is. I don\u2019t know why, but there\u2019s a lot of fear around people calling themselves \u201cfeminists.\u201d I think that there\u2019s all this anxiety that it means that you hate men, which is also what Circe has been accused of over the years.\u00a0 I\u2019m one of these people who believe that feminism helps everyone. As a teacher, I see young men being pushed into roles that don\u2019t fit them all the time. When we loosen up those strictures, everyone benefits.<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(Thank you for reading! Again, for the full interview, please see the Spring 2020 edition of Butler University’s undergraduate literary magazine,\u00a0Manuscripts.<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Join BU classics scholar Emily Pell as she dives into a review of Madeline Miller’s Circe, a fresh retelling of Homer’s tale from the Odyssey. Also, for your enjoyment, we’ve included a brief snippet of BU classics scholar Lilly Hinckley’s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9195388,"featured_media":636,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/amca-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/amca-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/amca-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/amca-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9195388"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/amca-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/amca-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":639,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/amca-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions\/639"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/amca-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/amca-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/amca-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/amca-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}