Paleothea: the Ancient Goddess

I’ve been working up to writing this post for over a month, ever since Wendy responded to The Dangers of de-Mystification. I can’t address the whole thing in one post, so this will have to be a series. But by the end of this post, I hope to demonstrate a little better what the problems with appropriating myths might be.

What Wendy took issue with was not my dilemma, but the foundational concept underlying my dilemma: Are We Authentic? Her post is well written, and I suggest you read it, but there are two points that I want to respond to in particular: 1) that even if we’re not “authentic,” it’s okay to re-use other people’s stories

Are all of those mentioned above, and many more, examples of appropriation as the legends and myths travel with us to new places and times? Very possibly. But is it wrong, is it a sort of cheating? No. They all serve our very human need to explain ourselves, not just to ourselves, but to the universe, to our ancestors and descendants.¹

and 2) we very well may be more authentic than the source material we have available to us

I can’t agree that your ‘appropriation of Greek Goddesses isn’t authentic’. Oh yes, the records we have today come down to us mostly in male voices, from men who lived in a society that feared and hated women, but are we much different than that today? … I don’t believe the myths and characters from ancient Greece were born in a vacuum, but that they were revised, re-written and co-opted from earlier times, changed to appeal to the audience of the day. … So… a reinterpretation for today’s women and purpose is as authentic as the Greek myths were in their time.²

She is right, of course, that stories are constantly being reframed, and, indeed, that is how they continue to live and remain meaningful. And she is right that, “in reality, we cannot know what they thought,” and that our reframing may give voice to people we cannot hear in the textual sources. The problem comes, however, when you erase someone else’s voice to do that. And it’s really a problem, when that erasure reproduces oppression. And that’s exactly what is meant by appropriation; that’s why it’s not a neutral word. Read the rest of this entry »

I loved this book, but it’s taken me a year to figure out why. Sure, the writing was good - a more lit-y than the genre fic I usually read, something I had to chew and savor instead of swallowing down like cotton candy (which is NOT to say that genre is always cotton candy … but I LIKE cotton candy reading). The narrative itself swept me up and held me (although it took a little bit for me to get into it, I admit). I really liked the main character. I liked the way he talked about sex.  I thought it was enormously creative. Reading it made me feel light and alive.

And yet I would normally give something four stars that had all of those things. Five stars, saying, “I loved it,” needs something more. Something which is unique to my reading of it, instead of everyone else’s. A person reason. I just realized what it is.

I have read a bunch of fiction that plays with Greek Myths, from The Penelopiad and The King Must Die to The Lightning Thief and Roman Blood. I often enjoy these books, but I am almost always frustrated by them as well. The problem is that making Greek myths relevant and interesting often decontextualizes them so much that they lose what makes them truly meaningful and timeless. Of course, there are NEW ideas that have the potential for deep meaning as well, but I always grumble to myself, why did they have to erase the original meaning to do it?!

This book does not erase the original meaning of anything. It does not attempt, to explain the original meanings in their depth. Instead, it seems to simply celebrate that they WERE meaningful. But [author: Tom Robbins] doesn’t stop there. He examines history. How meaning (and identity) grows over time. How it lives. And in doing so he brings the ancient Greek characters to life again. Forever. Yay!

I recommend this book for Classicists who don’t like retellings of mythology; people interested in religion; anyone who likes good stories.