#classical retellings

[hlblng]

What are everyone's favourite novels/ plays/ books that could be described as retellings of the classics? I'll start:

- Lavinia by Ursula K. le Guin

- Medea. Stimmen by Christa Wolf

- Antigonick by Anne Carson

- Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson (I'm counting it as a retelling)

- Averno by Louise Glück

- An Iliad by Lisa Petersson & Dennis O'Hare

Trying to compile the ultimate master list

#the king must die and the penepoliad are not there because I haven't read them yet!! #But I will! #classics #mythology #classical retellings #anne carson #christa wolf #ursula k le guin #louise gluck #louise glück

[septemberkisses]

— The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

#the song of achilles #song of achilles #madeline miller #greek gods #greek myth retellings #greek mythology #dark academia #dark academia aesthetic #chaotic academia #classic academia #classic academia aesthetic #light academia #dark academia quotes #light academia quotes #literaure #english literature #quotes #booksbooksbooks #achilles and patroclus #patroclus #achilles #trojan war #greek retelling #book excerpt #book quotes #books and novels

[greekmythcomix]

You Are Odysseus

So

I’m a teacher of Classical Civilisation that has taught the Odyssey for over a decade and studied pretty much every myth and story with Odysseus in it.. I think

and I’m writing an Interactive Fiction (choose your own path) version of the Odyssey, inspired by the Homeric phrase “he turned his great heart this way and that”, where you are Odysseus, allowing you to follow his decisions or make your own

and it already has 400 sections to it - written to emulate modern translations of the Odyssey, including the literary features of simile, formula, epithet, and the rest - and 21 different ways to die, and quite a lot of period and theme-appropriate alternatives

(and if I get time, the option to be Telemachus or Penelope, although that might have to wait because it’s already a monster)

and I’ve tested what I’ve made so far on my pupils, other Classics teachers, and some of the leading (and best-read) Greek Mythology podcasters and YouTubers, all of whom have universally loved it (yay!)

(EDIT: Oops and I presented on it at the Classical Association conference last year)

I’m trying to finish it this summer, but need a bit of encouragement to do so

EDIT: and I forgot to say that ideally I’m planning on it being a beautiful BOOK with an old-fashioned cover and lots of ribbons to mark your place ❤️ (ex-bookseller ofc)

so, please let me know if you’d like to know more!

(EDIT: or sign up here go get notified directly when it’s ready: https://ljenkinsonbrown.wordpress.com/you-are-odysseus-signup/ )

#odyssey #greek mythology #greek myth #tagamemnon #greek myth retellings #homer #interactive story #interactive fiction #classics #classical literature #classical civilisation #odysseus #writing #gamebook

[zenosanalytic]

Hottake, apparently but:

Myths are stories and they are meant to be recontextualized. The cultures which created these stories and which all y'all turn to as "primary sources" for them changed them all the fucking time. If you're going to treat a roman propagandist like fucking Ovid as a reliable source then so is Rick Riordan(who, quite honestly, has more respect for the material than Ovid ever did, and I never even READ the Percy Jackson books)

#Our Staff #Mythology #Retellings #Recontextualization #Ovid #Classical Studies #Posting #Fight Me

[fictionadventurer]

Listening to a podcast interview with the directors of Treasure Planet, and one of the most fascinating things is when they talk about how the '90s Disney animation climate was all about making these prestige animated films with stories that could have been done in live action (Hunchback, Pocahontas), and these guys fought to make films that could only be done (or at least be best done) with animation. Because it's kind of the inverse of their current philosophy of making everything live action even if it's a story that's better in animation. So anyway if the live-action Treasure Planet thing is really happening, it's like spitting in the face of this movie's intent.

#treasure planet #disney #also i may just have to keep this one in my back pocket for writing inspiration #because the way they talk about blending a classic story with their new take #and about how they try to distill the story down to its essence #like a caricature that keeps it simple and reveals the true heart of the story #is a lot like how i like to approach retellings #70-30 rule is a good term (that's what they used to describe their blend of past vs future aesthetic) #and thinking about that blend is esp helpful for the story i'm currently mulling over

[belle-keys]

— On Cassandra of Troy

"Cassandra" by Florence and the Machine // "Cassandra" by Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys // "A Thousand Ships" by Natalie Haynes // "The Cassandra Scene in Aeschylus' Agamemnon" by Seth L. Shein // "Ajax and Cassandra" by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein // "Elektra" by Jennifer Saint // "Cassandra of Troy" by Jan Drenovec // "mad, mad, mad" by @diradea // "mad woman" by Taylor Swift // "Helen and Cassandra" by Al Stewart // "Cassandra of Troy" by Evelyn de Morgan // "The Daughters of Troy" by Euripides

#cassandra of troy #tagamemnon #web weave #web weaving #mental illness #the iliad #trojan war #classics #ancient greece #mad woman #art history #apollo #euripides #elektra #greek retelling #greek women #light academia #psychic #dark academia

[unsightlythinker]

I see a song of past romance

I see the sacrifice of man

I see portrayals of betrayal

And a brother’s final stand

I see you on the brink of death

I see you draw your final breath

I see a man who gets to make it home alive

But it’s no longer you…

*insane strings*

#epic the musical #jorge rivera herrans #the underworld saga #underworld saga #No Longer You #odysseus #tiresias #prophet #blindness #divine sight #my gods. mason olshavsky absolutely killed it as tiresias! #this is by far my favourite sequence from the underworld saga. #(well. this and the pre-chorus in ‘Monster’) #it’s so…catchy! #and there is just so much to dissect in terms of characterisation and foreshadowing! #I have rather a soft spot for seers and prophets #especially those that appear in works of classical and world mythology (including retellings) #homer’s iconic blind self-inserts

[s-aint-elmo]

no thoughts head empty the oppressive stagnancy of legacy in ever after high dragging me round the block yet again

it's such a shame that we get so little explanation about the actual mechanics of destiny, which is the entire premise of the show, bc it's so juicy. like what power does destiny hold when you rip away milton's lies and centuries of assumptions and traditions. esp bc despite raven signing herself as the evil queen in the real storybook of legends, when the snow white fairytale actually happens in dragon games she's playing one of the seven dwarves and her mother has reprised her role. like how much of that was because of the characters' actions and how much was destiny pulling on old, familiar threads. keeps me up at night.

a lot of this is probably just like, plot holes and writer hot potato but i like making it that deep, that's half of the fun. my personal interpretation is that fate is a wild thing that desires repetition and they developed the system of fairytale legacy bloodlines to keep those repetitions predictable and contained, instead of wreaking havoc whenever and wherever they please. 

which lends itself to some really juicy exploration of how legacy is a duty as much as it is a privilege, and how to be a princess or a witch or a hero or a dragon is to be the same thing in the end: the lamb destiny slaughters on the altar to sate the ever-ravenous narrative. to keep the flock safe. keep the unknown that prowls beyond the beaten path at bay. because if a there is always a mother who will be cruel, or a maiden who will fall into a sleep like death, or a child who will become a bird, isn’t it better to know who, and how, and when? isn’t better if it’s you, who has known your whole life that you must be eaten, be poisoned, be stripped of your humanity, rather than anybody else, who wasn’t raised to see it as an honour instead of a great and terrible injustice?

#ever after high #mine #remember when apple asked snow white for advice on yester day and she had nothing useful to say? bc all the problems in her life were #solved by a smile a friend and true love's kiss? #and apple got to experience being disappointed by the parent she placed on a pedestal for the first time ever? that was really fun #don't even get me started by how the class of classics are all called by the names of their roles that is sooooo fun and fucked up #the mantle of your legacy is so large and so heavy that it swallows you up entirely #ik it's for convenience's sake but simply imagine with me. surrendering your true name once your tale begins to bind to the retelling #more strongly. invite the eye of the narrative to fix on you. set destiny on its well-worn tracks and drive it smoothly #to happily ever after #i love the idea of the retellings being ritualistic to an extent. there is so much you could do w destiny #how destiny is a crutch too that prevents u fr growing as a person bc there is nothing life can start that u haven't already seen finished

[shasivyy]

Some of the main characters from my Frankenstein retelling.

{When darkness shines}

Adam. (Victor Frankenstein’s creature)

Dew. (An original character created by me for a big role in the retelling, which includes being the love interest of Adam.)

Victor will be the next to introduce 👀

#artist #art #Retelling #retellings #Frankenstein #victor frankenstein #frankensteins monster #mary shelly's frankenstein #bride of frankenstein #classic #classic story #classical art #original character #original art #digital art #artists #fyp #fanart #fanarts #Frankenstein art #frankenstein's creature #Frankenstein fanart

[kalee60]

The prince's bride

As SHIELD and Hydra teeter on the edge of a faction war, a brainwashed Soldier, the Winter Prince is an unwitting pawn in a larger game and is forced into a betrothal to one Alexander Pierce. Kidnapped by mercenaries, then rescued by a pirate who is extremely familiar, the Winter Prince starts to regain his memories.

In the course of his adventure’s, he’ll meet Brock - a master tactician who will do anything to get ahead in life; Hulk - a gentle giant; Natasha - the Russian who thirsts for revenge; and Gravik - the skrull mastermind behind it all. Foiling all their plans and jumping into their stories is Steve Rogers, the Soldier's one true love and a very good friend of a very dangerous pirate.

Or the Princess Bride AU that literally no one wanted except me… (and maybe one other person…)

~*~*~

Soooo... I'm back with another adventure - and why the hell not, let's try a princess bride AU. Am I crazy? Probably. Will this work? Who knows. Have I had fun twisting this fic together? Absofuckinglutely.

This is my ultimate love letter to one of my favourite childhood (who am I kidding) adulthood movies - and if it sounds like your kind of adventure... click on in and enjoy a swashbucklingish story full of familiar quotes and two idiots finding their true love.

~*~*~

Part one - click here

#stucky #Steve x Bucky #princess bride AU #Pirates #action adventure #retelling of a classic #kind of #is this self indulgent? #yes. but do i care? no #my writing #kalees AU extravaganza

[sadeyedlady-writes]

I’m doing a thing! It’s a retelling of the plot of The Brothers Karamazov from Grushenka’s perspective. You can read it on ao3.

#my fics #the brothers karamazov #grushenka #agrafena alexandrovna svetlova #братья карамазовы #tbk #russian lit #russian literature #brothers karamazov #fyodor dostoevsky #dostoevksy #fanfic #fanfiction #classic lit #classic literature #ruslit #retelling #books #ao3 writer #writers on tumblr #historical fiction #fan fiction #classic books #female protagonist

[nerdyqueerr]

The Ulysses Dies At Dawn research project thesis is COMPLETE. Lets fucking do this

#this is how i announce to tumblr dot com that im writing a paper on UDAD for my classics and their reception course #its very ambitious and the course itself isnt great but like #i went to office hours and im making it work #its about the synergy and the cobbled-together retelling narratives. or smth. #synergy is a good word.... anyways #will keep yall updated #also huge shoutout to makers of the mechs brainrot docs i will be using your transcripts #the mechanisms

[satanghostface]

I was reading discourse on achilles yesterday and I'm still thinking about some people calling him a r*pist and others saying that other books they've read that are from a woman's perspective completely shifted the perception they have of TSOA's Achilles. And to me that makes little to no sense.

Here's what I come from: Achilles is a character from the Illiad, and the poem itself is pretty much fanfiction. I mean, the person and warrior that Achilles is based on probably existed, and it might have been called Achilles even, but i think we all agree that the rest is dubious.

Since the illiad is like the OG story, people tend to look at it as if it's canon and we'll go with that logic. You have the canon work and poets go off on their own versions of these characters writing tragedies, more epics, thesis, all sorts of stuff, and it goes on for centuries until we reach The song of Achilles and Percy Jackson and all the other 100s retellings coming out which are fanfiction of fanfiction.

And you're letting one fanfiction distort another fanfiction? It's bonkers to me because as someone who has to read the classics and grew up on fanfiction, I don't see that happening elsewhere. Between academics, if we're discussing a myth, we mention the different versions, and we can choose one to go on from, sure. But even so, I never saw someone sound so affected by different perspectives on the same character in class.

And if we're talking on the world of street fanfiction, I most definitely don't find people going "Oh this fanfiction of hermione betraying the order and marrying voldmort changed my perspective of Harry Potter's hermione" you know? -- if that sounds like a stupid example, it's because it is. It's just to show that my whole point is that it's insane to me to let a book ruin another book when the authors are creating different versions of the same characters, which basically turns them into different characters with the same names. Especially since you know, it's all made up. And this isn't real criticism to the people forming their opinions or the authors, respect to all of them.

But it’s a little maddening watching people roll into arguments to discuss what piece of fiction is more real and relevant when they're all in the same level of glorified AO3 works.

I hope this makes sense to someone else

#greek myth retellings #classics #greek mythology #tsoa #tsoa achilles #ancient greek literature #fanfiction #achilles discourse #patrochilles #mention of abuse #literature #mine #percy jackson #the trojans #trojan war #the illiad #odysseus #patroclus #history

[greekmythcomix]

How I teach the Iliad in highschool:

I’ve taught the Iliad for over a decade, I’m literally a teacher, and I can even spell ‘Iliad’, and yet my first instinct when reading someone’s opinions about it is not to drop a comment explaining what it is, who ‘wrote’ it, and what that person’s intention truly was.

Agh. <the state of Twitter>

The first thing I do when I am teaching the Iliad is talk about what we know, what we think we know, and what we don’t know about Homer:

We know -

- 0

We think we know -

- the name Homer is a person, possibly male, possibly blind, possibly from Ionia, c.8th/9th C BCE.

- composed the Iliad and Odyssey and Hymns

We don’t know -

- if ‘Homer’ was a real person or a word meaning singer/teller of these stories

- which poem came first

- whether the more historical-sounding events of these stories actually happened, though there is evidence for a similar, much shorter, siege at Troy.

And then I get out a timeline, with suggested dates for the ‘Trojan war’ and Iliad and Odyssey’s estimated composition date and point out the 500ish years between those dates. And then I ask my class to name an event that happened 500 years ago.

They normally can’t or they say ‘Camelot’, because my students are 13-15yo and I’ve sprung this on them. Then I point out the Spanish Armada and Qu. Elizabeth I and Shakespeare were around then. And then I ask how they know about these things, and we talk about historical record.

And how if you don’t have historical record to know the past, you’re relying on shared memory, and how that’s communicated through oral tradition, and how oral tradition can serve a second purpose of entertainment, and how entertainment needs exciting characteristics.

And we list the features of the epic poems of the Iliad and Odyssey: gods, monsters, heroes, massive wars, duels to the death, detailed descriptions of what armour everyone is wearing as they put it on. (Kind of like a Marvel movie in fact.)

And then we look at how long the poems are and think about how they might have been communicated: over several days, when people would have had time to listen, so at a long festival perhaps, when they’re not working. As a diversion.

And then I tell them my old and possibly a bit tortured simile of ‘The Pearl of Myth’:

(Here’s a video of The Pearl of Myth with me talking it through in a calming voice: https://youtu.be/YEqFIibMEyo?sub_confirmation=1

And after all that, I hand a student at the front a secret sentence written on a piece of paper, and ask them to whisper it to the person next to them, and for that person to whisper it to the next, and so on. You’ve all played that game.

And of course the sentence is always rather different at the end than it was at the start, especially if it had Proper nouns in it (which tend to come out mangled). And someone’s often purposely changed it, ‘to be funny’.

And we talk about how this is a very loose metaphor for how stories and memory can change over time, and even historical record if it’s not copied correctly (I used to sidebar them about how and why Boudicca used to be known as ‘Boadicea’ but they just know the former now, because Horrible Histories exists and is awesome)

And after all that, I remind them that what we’re about to read has been translated from Ancient Greek, which was not exactly the language it was first written down in, and now we’re reading it in English.

And that’s how my teenaged students know NOT TO TAKE THE ILIAD AS FACT.

(And then we read the Iliad)

#man this week has been hard for classics teachers #Iliad #greek mythology #tagamemnon #greek myth #odyssey #homer #greek myth retellings #comix #greek myth comix #classics teacher #teaching #myth #history #ancient greek history #horrible histories #the idiots #teaching resources #teacher rant #Youtube

[onwingsofwords]

sometimes I think about watching it but I don't hate myself enough to actually do it

#classical mythology #the iliad #greek mythology memes #song of achilles #helen of troy #greek mythlogy retelling #greek myth memes #greek mythology #iliad meme #iliad adaptations

[cosmic-metanoia]

Hades as the "Villain"

~not my typical content but.....~

Hear me out.

WHAT IF....the reason why some Greek mythology retellings *incorrectly* write Hades as villainous is because he minimizes engagement with his toxic Olympian family and ACTUALLY sets boundaries with them?!

(tags are for exposure - some of them did a great job of Hades's portrayal!)

#percy jackson #lore olympus #a touch of darkness #greek mythology #punderworld #hadestown #hades game #hades #greek myth retellings #greek gods #ancient greek mythology #greek myths #classical mythology #disney hercules