MODERNIZING MYTH · Spring 2025 · Torch: U.S.
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the Iliad, Barker has brought women, a group at best ignored and most often oppressed, to the forefront of her narrative. Madeline Miller does the same for the gay community in her Song of Achilles, highlighting the common same-sex relationships in ancient Greece. Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad retells the story of Odysseus’s faithful wife, Penelope, from her own perspective, revealing her frustrations and pain and giving her character dimension beyond her relationship with her husband. Each of these retellings draws from the same source as the Aeneid, the Oresteia, and "Iphigenia among the Taurians." They have distinct parallels- bringing peripheral characters or narratives to the forefront, using familiar stories to make a different point, and creating plotlines to illustrate their point. Whether that point is the divinely ordained might of Rome, the idea of eye-for-an-eye revenge, trying to capture the lives of women or the prevalence of homosexuality in Ancient Greece, the medium is the same. Each of these authors develops and adds nuance to a preexisting myth, making it more relevant and more far-reaching.
Ovid, another Roman author, rewrote disparate myths for an upper-class Roman audience, who had by this time conquered Greece and absorbed Greek culture. He did not believe in the power of these stories—on the contrary, he viewed them as the relics of an obsolete culture—but he used them to comment on Rome’s society at the time. He infused these threadbare tales with his own interpretations and embellishments, adding description and dialogue and emphasizing emotions and psychology. His work, Metamorphoses, had a recurring theme of change. When writing, Ovid was trying to reveal what he determined were fundamental truths of human nature at the time, dwelling on themes of moral complexity, power dynamics, hubris, or pride and desire and its consequences. He thought of these stories as representations of human experiences and emotions and accepted them not at their face value but for their deeper psychological understanding. Ovid tried to educate and provoke his largely complacent Roman audience, using these stories as a mirror held up to themselves.
Thousands of years later, Nina McLaughlin has offered up her own retelling of Ovid’s stories in her own voice. Much as Ovid reimagined dated Greek stories for “modern” Roman sensibilities, McLaughlin chose a side character, different time frame, or novel point of view to bring modern insight into her new compilation, Wake Siren. She focused on women, rewriting the stories to give female characters who had often been raped, harassed, or taken advantage of more emotional depth and a background. She rendered these characters, and these stories, in a variety of ways- set either in ancient Arcadia or at a 7-11 down the street, narrated by an abusive god or a victimized nymph or the granddaughter of Pygmalion and Galatea. Each of these rewritings accomplishes a similar function as Ovid—forcing a complacent society, accustomed to millenia of sexism, to think about its shortcomings.
Even ancient authors such as Hesiod, who had no conscious agenda in his mythical retelling, shaped these fluid stories in his own way. Hesiod’s primary mythological work, the Theogony, created a coherent narrative of how the world was created, how it exists, and how it works. He attempted to justify the gods’ power and moral authority when they were so clearly morally flawed themselves, to establish an account of how humanity turned into what it was, and warn against hubris and disrespecting the gods. His myths, although less obviously changed, are just as much a product of his own philosophy and worldview as Ovid or McLaughlin’s.
Ancient myths exist as a skeleton of facts and outdated names upon which an author can impose any interpretation he or she chooses. Since ancient times, authors have used these stories to convey their own messages. Myth re-interpretations have seen a boom in popularity these past few years, but what seems like a contemporary fad is really a continuation of a tradition that has been around for centuries. Each of these stories has something different to teach us, so we might as well gather by the fire and listen.
Each of these authors develops and adds nuance to a preexisting myth, making it more relevant and more far-reaching.