Ramblings

Over on BookRiot, Lyndsie Manusos asks where are the Greek authors among the retellings of Greek mythology. She seeks “to give a perspective and a voice. To show a lens with which to view what we haven’t, or even knew to look for, before.” She quotes Eleanna Castroianni, who says

The readership and the gatekeepers are from the U.S., and the U.S. has not really made the connection that Greek mythology is someone else’s mythology.

She thus raises issues worth considering as we all reflect why we are the ones to tell a story. As I recently saw on a QueryManager form: “If you are writing from a marginalized perspective but are not part of that community, why are you the right person to write this story?”

With both Greek and Roman stories, of course, the issue is complicated by the long history of reception of their cultures (art, architecture, myth,  literature, philosophy, etc.). Manusos does raise the history of Classical Reception, though weirdly starts with Neoclassicism in the 18th cent. CE. What about the Renaissance centuries earlier? Or even earlier? Ancient Greece and Rome has long informed and influenced younger cultures (as they had, in turn, been influenced by older SWANA cultures). This centuries-long interweaving leaves those cultures (Greece and Rome) not in a marginalized position, but indeed a position of dominance. 

This issue recalls to me something I read in a review by Holly Ranger of Susanna Morton Braund, Zara M. Torlone (ed.), Virgil and his Translators (2018). In one paper in the collection, Richard F. Thomas considers the issue of domestication in translation. This follows Venuti in his 1998 book The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference. For those unfamiliar with this issue, Venuti says,

Domestication and foreignization deal with ‘the question of how much a translation assimilates a foreign text to the translating language and culture, and how much it rather signals the differences of that text.

Ranger, in her review, questions the power dynamics between the Greek and Latin originals and their English translations. She says,

This reviewer felt that the chapter’s argument was predicated on the use of Venuti’s critique of domestication as a straw man. Thomas notes that ‘[i]n the case of translation of Roman poetry, [Venuti’s] considerations and reservations seem to recede’ (245); yet domestication is not simply concerned with the aesthetic relationship between source text and target text, but also (following Deleuze and Guattari) the relationships of power between major and minor languages, and cultural and linguistic hegemony—as revealed in, say, the neocolonial action of a domesticating (‘majoritarian’) translation of a Farsi text in an English that whitewashes the source text’s cultural values. Latin, like ancient Greek, occupies a curious position as the only language in relation to which English may be said to hold the ‘minoritarian’ position; a careful analysis of these dynamics was missing here.

Similarly, Ancient Greek and Roman mythic literature stands in a majoritarian position over English literature in a way that few or no others do. The cultural hegemonic influence of Greek myth and literature on English literature has a long history, tracing at early as Chaucer and Middle English in the 14th cent. CE, e.g. his Troilus and Criseyde set in the Trojan War – or earlier (one could think of the 11th cent. Old English Apollonius of Tyre, although it may be more a translation than an original work).

Nevertheless, Manusos raises good issues to consider. Certainly these are questions I have asked myself as I write mythic retellings (and have a MG [Middle Grade] novel draft set in Sami culture that I put aside because I decided I was not the person to tell it).  As someone who has devoted my life to the study of the ancient Mediterranean cultures (I have my PhD in Classics, with a dissertation on Ancient Greek religion, have lived and done research in Greece, and currently teach Greek, Latin, and myth), I have decided that I am a right person to write the stories I’m writing. Some of the other non-Greek re-tellers of Greek myth come from a similar background as Classicists (Madeline Miller, for example).

Yet I would love to see more Greek writers retelling their myths (and getting book deals to do so). Manusos mentioned The Threads that Bind by Kika Hatzopoulou as a good place to start. I happen to have just started that book after reading a review of it on The Mary Sue that focused on it as a climate change novel (I’m not yet far enough in to say more yet).

But beyond the big, familiar ancient myths, I’d love to see more obscure tales, even post-Classical folktales getting their due. Manusos also quotes Natalia Theodoridou

Some of us have been told that the mythological figures we’re interested in retelling are too obscure for American audiences. I hope publishers are brave enough to be willing to venture beyond the well-trodden occasionally. Perhaps we just need to have more faith in readers’ ability to cope with the unfamiliar.

I recall Roger Zelazny drawing on the kalikantzaros folktales in his This Immortal (itself an interesting look on balancing the interests of contemporary living societies with preserving the antiquities/heritage beneath – an issue Greece has to deal with when new building projects require emergency archaeology first). Greek culture doesn’t end with antiquity and I’d love to see the post-Classical myths also getting their due, especially by Greek writers.

And for publishers who worry about taking on more “obscure for American audiences” myth or folktale, I have four words: Guardians of the Galaxy. Or maybe just one word: Ant-man. Both obscure before being drawn in by the MCU. Surely the GMU (Greek Myth Universe) can draw in well done, more “obscure” tales.