Gosh, if this works I shall have learned how to create a new Folder all by myself! I hope the Group Administrator will not mind!
I cannot find a recording of it posted on the internet, but on 10 January 2024 Emily Wilson gave an interview about the work of translation that I was able to watch online, for the London Review of Books, having learned about it by following Professor Wilson on Twitter (X, if you are Elon Musk). Apologies that I did not think at the time to post anything about it on this group.
I submitted a question online, as the audience were allowed to do, about her plans for her next book. Emily Wilson said she had already begun writing it, and it would be her first work of fiction: a book of short stories based on some of the many ancient myths connected to the Trojan War that are not mentioned, or scarcely mentioned, in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.
She mentioned that it will include the legend of how in the generation before the War portrayed by Homer, Herakles [Hercules] and Poseidon had also conquered Troy when they had been employed to build its stone walls but the Trojans failed to pay them. Also the story of Ganymede, abducted to be the cup bearer of the Olympian gods.
What the good professor will be like as a writer of fiction, and whether decades of studying, teaching and translating other authors' literature will have taught her things about how to write it, I do not know.
Modern fiction based on Greek Mythology, including linked to the Trojan War, is a flourishing field at the moment, especially by women, who tend to give the female characters more prominence, and often more sympathy, than they often get in the ancient originals. I expect that will be true of Emily W's stories as well.
On the whole I think that is progress, although like anything else it could be taken too far. The time may come when our literature and drama contains so many 'strong women' characters, and so much about the faults of the male gender, that we start to long for occasional silly female characters and men with robust common sense just for variety.
How easy it will be for yet another entrant to succeed commercially in an already crowded field of modern fiction I do not know, although the success of Emily Wilson's Homer translations will give her name recognition and ensure that publishers and reviewers pay attention.
Works published in recent years retelling ancient mythology include some by people who were active in this group.
Others I have recently admired whose subject is connected to the Iliad or the Odyssey include Natalie Haynes' 'A Thousand Ships', which I am currently reading, 'Circe' by Madeline (note, if Googling it, she is not Madeleine) Miller, of which I posted a review yesterday in this group's General/ Member's Reviews Folder, and Pat Barker's 'The Silence of the Girls'.
The bleak portrayal in the latter work of the suffering of the women and girls on the losing side in the Trojan War, after their husbands and brothers have been killed, is, though, the reason that I began my last paragraph with the word 'admired' rather than 'enjoyed', although on balance I suppose I did enjoy it. But it is not for the faint hearted.
I cannot find a recording of it posted on the internet, but on 10 January 2024 Emily Wilson gave an interview about the work of translation that I was able to watch online, for the London Review of Books, having learned about it by following Professor Wilson on Twitter (X, if you are Elon Musk). Apologies that I did not think at the time to post anything about it on this group.
I submitted a question online, as the audience were allowed to do, about her plans for her next book. Emily Wilson said she had already begun writing it, and it would be her first work of fiction: a book of short stories based on some of the many ancient myths connected to the Trojan War that are not mentioned, or scarcely mentioned, in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.
She mentioned that it will include the legend of how in the generation before the War portrayed by Homer, Herakles [Hercules] and Poseidon had also conquered Troy when they had been employed to build its stone walls but the Trojans failed to pay them. Also the story of Ganymede, abducted to be the cup bearer of the Olympian gods.
What the good professor will be like as a writer of fiction, and whether decades of studying, teaching and translating other authors' literature will have taught her things about how to write it, I do not know.
Modern fiction based on Greek Mythology, including linked to the Trojan War, is a flourishing field at the moment, especially by women, who tend to give the female characters more prominence, and often more sympathy, than they often get in the ancient originals. I expect that will be true of Emily W's stories as well.
On the whole I think that is progress, although like anything else it could be taken too far. The time may come when our literature and drama contains so many 'strong women' characters, and so much about the faults of the male gender, that we start to long for occasional silly female characters and men with robust common sense just for variety.
How easy it will be for yet another entrant to succeed commercially in an already crowded field of modern fiction I do not know, although the success of Emily Wilson's Homer translations will give her name recognition and ensure that publishers and reviewers pay attention.
Works published in recent years retelling ancient mythology include some by people who were active in this group.
Others I have recently admired whose subject is connected to the Iliad or the Odyssey include Natalie Haynes' 'A Thousand Ships', which I am currently reading, 'Circe' by Madeline (note, if Googling it, she is not Madeleine) Miller, of which I posted a review yesterday in this group's General/ Member's Reviews Folder, and Pat Barker's 'The Silence of the Girls'.
The bleak portrayal in the latter work of the suffering of the women and girls on the losing side in the Trojan War, after their husbands and brothers have been killed, is, though, the reason that I began my last paragraph with the word 'admired' rather than 'enjoyed', although on balance I suppose I did enjoy it. But it is not for the faint hearted.