What Makes 'Circe' Different From Other Greek Retellings?

Is Circe not the more ambitious book? The Song of Achilles is this perfect, focused novel within the Trojan War framework. It’s a masterclass in emotional compression and it’s a beautiful, haunting novel. But Circe is this sprawling, messy novel that tries to tell dozens of myths and follow the character of Circe throughout millennia, and tackle all of these big themes: agency, motherhood, creation, and immortality. It’s not as perfectly honed as The Song of Achilles, sometimes even dull, but it has a much greater payoff for me. It’s the difference between a perfect sonnet and a massive novel. The Song of Achilles is beautifully perfect, but it’s a work of less scope. It re-centers the story of the Trojan War around one of itsDeprecated side characters, but it’s a relatively small story. Circe, on the other hand, is a giant novel that feels like it could have been much worse than it is.

This ending keeps bringing me to a place of appreciation. The witch, mistress of pharmaka, has concocted one final brew. It’s not to rend or charm another but rather is to be consumed by herself. In fact, this final act of hers is one of the most personal and ultimate that there is. The woman and witch have reached the pinnacle of her very craft in that she has acquired the most profound of knowledge: herself. What she has learned allows her to determine her own nature. The ending suggests that the greatest magic or most unique aspect of her brand of it is that it allows for change to herself, and in this fragile, finite, material that is herself, the greatest magic of all is exercised in this courage to alter herself. That is where the real enchantment lies.

Motorcycle romance novels are a subset of the romance genre. The setting of these novels are within the raw, rebellious world of biker culture, merged with the emotional depth of a romantic love story. While many protagonists in novels are isolated or part of an unusual group, the members of a motorcycle club live on the outskirts of mainstream society and consider freedom and danger to be part of their way of life. In motorcycle romance novels, not only are the heroes typically clad in leather, and the heroines tough, but their world is a unique and often dark place. Typical romance novels feature conflicts that stem from misunderstandings and from societal expectations that are extraordinary or irrationally restrictive. In contrast, the novels in this genre feature characters who are dealing with real danger as they battle rival gangs and seek to survive on the many battle scarred streets of this tough world. So why read a motorcycle romance novel? Many motorcycle romance heroes are what are called antiheroes. They are not perfect. They can be flawed and even be morally ambiguous in some respects. They may even have a less than pristine past. But when they fall in love, they can change. In many cases, it is the love of a woman that helps the man to grow and to change in very positive ways. He may have to learn to trust in order to get close to his love interest. A heroine can also find her own strength in a male-dominated world of motorcycle clubs and culture. She can be strong and independent, and many such females find that they are able to reach within themselves to find inner strength that they never knew that they had. In the motorcycle romance novels that are the best, the relationships can be very messy. But, that is also part of the beauty of them. They can also be passionate. And, yes, on occasion, even a little bit destructive. But, that is part of what makes them so interesting. Because you never know from one moment to the next what is going to happen. You never know when things are going to blow up. This makes for a very exciting read. Examples of such books would include Reaper’s Property by Joanna Wylde, which features a hero who is president of a motorcycle club, and Hell’s Knights by Bella Jewel, which features a post-apocalyptic world where a lone motorcycle-riding knight is on the road alone. So why read motorcycle romance novels? First, they’re about more than a bike. Motorcycle clubs are families and the heroes and heroines of these novels live in a closed community where codes and loyalties are everything. It’s not uncommon for motorcycle romance novels to explore the conflict between a hero’s loyalty to his club and his loyalty to his love interest. Because motorcycle clubs are made up of families, even the language and rituals of MC life enter into the novel. For example, the patches that members wear, their rides, their clubhouses — all of these become part of the fabric of the novel and so become characters in their own right. It’s a unique take on the romance novel and offers a thrilling, adrenaline-fueled alternative to the more traditional office romance or royal marriage plot. Instead of a love that conquers all, these novels portray a love that fights hard to exist in a world where things don’t always go according to plan.

Stories about ancient heroes are often told as either character studies or as plot-driven epics. I think both are valuable and in the market today you can get your fill of either kind of story. The character studies make the ancient figures feel like people you know, with a complex interior life and many motivations. The plot-driven epics capture the sweep, scale and politics that made these stories the template for much fantasy. Some times I want to read a heart-wrenching, tragic love story about Patroclus, and other times I want to read about a siege, with great siege engines and huge battles. Thankfully there is plenty of both on the market.

This is a great supplementary textbook, it is highly recommended for generating interest and giving students a narrative account of ancient myths. However, as with any primary source, it should not be substituted for students’ reading of said source, as well as other neutral summaries and accounts of the myths. A student could easily come away with the Fry version of a particular myth, and as a result it would be best to use this textbook outside of the classroom as supplementary reading for self-study or purely for pleasure. The writer successfully portrays the glorious human flaws of the ancient gods and heroes and helps readers feel that they have encountered each of the main characters in the book, thereby coming away with a far better understanding than they would have received from a list of all of the ‘facts’ about the myths of ancient peoples. In the long run such a ‘taking on board’ of these stories in this way will no doubt prove to be far more valuable than the correction of simple facts for the continuation of the stories of these long-dead cultures.

My old classroom copy of Book 10 opens with the survivors of the Laestrygonians in a state of melancholy and they set sail for Circe’s island. Odysseus arrives at the island and sends Eurylochus and twenty-two men to investigate the smoke. They are invited in, seated and served a drunken draught by Circe. She taps each of them on the head and they transform into pigs and are driven off to pens. Eurylochus returns to Odysseus and the hero sets off for Circe’s house alone. On the way he meets Hermes disguised as a young man and is given a moly to eat and told what to do. He goes to Circe’s house, drinks a potion and resists her wand. He throws himself at her feet and she recognizes him as the Odysseus that the prophecies have been talking about. She agrees to help him and after he makes her promise to help him he is restored to his men and they become lovers for a year and then guests. The book ends with a description of their preparations to set off for Hades.

I read the Tales in high school, but I never really got it. They bored me to tears, and I was generally confused as to why they existed in the first place. Maybe now that there are modern adaptations, I can finally appreciate the old man through one of them. Anyone else appreciate the Tales later in life through an adaptation?

Manga and manhwa have a very different take on Greek myths, and again there’s a huge range of ‘steam’ levels, from pretty risqué Josei and mature-audience manga to seriously hardcore stuff. Notable for their emotional and extremely sensual ‘steam’ is Lore Olympus (Webtoon), but there’s loads more where that came from – try browsing Webtoon for more, and looking for mature manga anthologies for even more of a mythological fix with lots of naughty bits. The way the tension builds up in a manga or manhwa is a totally different animal from a novel, and is largely based in the artwork and the way the characters look at each other – even more so than in a prose work, where the tension is mostly in the words.

I notice that many multi-headed creatures are found in threshold situations. Cerberus is found at the entrance to the underworld, while the Hydra is found in a swamp. In both cases, the extra heads of the creature may symbolize the chaos of the threshold between two states of existence: life and death, or order and chaos. That this kind of duality is present in these myths is what makes them stay with me.

Scholars believe that The Odyssey was passed down orally through generations of storytellers before it was ever written down as a book. There are many, many differences between different versions of the book, and most of them come from translations and from different editorial choices that were made over the centuries. Some translators have wanted to preserve the poetic style of the book and have written in verse—Fagles did a wonderful verse translation of The Odyssey many years ago. Recently there have been many more modern translations—and one of the interesting things about them is that they have also been able to strip away many centuries of patriarchal bias. There are abridged versions of the book for children, graphic novel versions, and even novels that follow the stories of secondary characters. The book itself is not changing, but our way of reading the book is very different depending on the version we read. Check out the opening of a few different translations online. You will very quickly get the translator’s voice.