Den hemliga historien the song of achilles

Hölderlin's frustration with the limits of modernity aestheticized Achilles as the enfant gaté of nature, full of Löwenkraft , a creature of infinity. If in sexuality is determined by and through the terms of male heterosexual power, perhaps one should beware of too complacent a reading of Homer. I met with her to discuss her debut novel, which was awarded the Orange Prize for Fiction.

Given the inability of Hollywood to do what Miller did, we discussed the ways in which her novel is relevant to contemporary politics of gender and sexuality, particularly in view of the recent "legitimate rape" episode, which became one of the highlights of the current U. Rape in its many forms legitimate and otherwise is not unfamiliar in the Iliad but even in the Iliad it is not at all unproblematic. But through its satirical mode the play also affirms a homoerotic model of desire, which Miller discussed in a recent essay for The Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Troilus and Cressida : "Shakespeare drops his bomb in the third act [TAC iii.

Her Achilles is human, at least more so than the Homeric Achilles, who makes murder look so beautiful.

The Song of Achilles: Plot Overview - SparkNotes

This is also evident in much accountant-like scholarly adducing of evidence for and against the physical dimension of this relationship. Miller told me about the excitement of reading mythology as a child, "But when you study these texts you have to deal the dark and terrible side of these stories. Miller's work on the novel began during her BA at Brown, when she co-directed a college production of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida.

Even in antiquity, his erōs is a special case, larger than life and raging beyond death.

back-pain-treatment

Achilles and Patroclus have a home life, where Patroclus tends the wounded, runs the household, takes care of Briseis, while Achilles returns at the end of the day with bloodied hands. She currently teaches Greek, Latin and Shakespeare in high school. The novel creates for the two heroes a kind of conventionalized, near-normative existence as a monogamous couple.

It seems that Homer's Achilles-Patroclus relationship continues to be dominated by a "did they or didn't they" binary question. What would it be like if Achilles and Patroclus were actually lovers in [Shakespeare's] corrupt Greek army? Miller's Thetis, a cruel and distant mother, makes Achilles look more like a victim than a future hero. I also wanted to focus on how Achilles' life dissolves, that is, on Patroclus' death.

The Song of Achilles also develops the therapōn role of the Homeric Patroclus. Ianthe got in touch and kindly arranged this interview. Her focus on the intimacy of the two heroes creates in positive terms what Shakespeare's play suggests. Miller's Patroclus does what he cannot do in Homer. Miller's portrayal of the relationship between Patroclus and Achilles in explicitly erotic terms has been received with great enthusiasm but as she told me has raised some eyebrows too.

As such the model of masculinity and sexuality in The Song of Achilles is also inevitably an engagement with Wolfgang Petersen's Troy Briseis' emotional attachment to Brad Pitt's Achilles was a very conventional form of romanticized, heterosexual female masochism. Achilles is allowed to waver; he wants to be a hero, but not just yet. The Homeric Achilles, in whom passionate love and murder are intimately connected, exerts a powerful fascination precisely because of this duality.

Miller's novel takes up this possibility. But I certainly felt inspired by Shakespeare's passionate approach to the story, and his bold handling of the characters. As Miller explains, "One of the things which I think [Shakespeare] is doing is taking the tradition of homoeroticism between Achilles and Patroclus and removing it from its idealized ancient contexts.

Thus the aesthetic and erotic response to Achilles is extremely loaded. Achilles has a similarly disturbing afterlife in modernity. In Troilus and Cressida we witness social and ethical breakdown that is not redeemed through tragic recognition on the part of the protagonists. Miller's anti-war reading of the Iliad is all too aware of the problematic aspect of heroic self-assertion.

Miller on the other hand keeps outing Achilles and Patroclus throughout her novel. Achilles' libido has a long and rich history of reception. For a moment we glimpse another play entirely: a story of two men in love, one who is the world's best warrior, and one who has little stomach for it. Miller's novel valorizes not only homoerotic passion but also male vulnerability.

In The Song of Achilles , Miller constructs a privileged space within which Patroclus and Achilles grow up together, fall in love and become a couple: "I chose to work through a lyric mode with what I see as essentially lyric subject-matter," she says. Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles interestingly takes this up from the point of view of Patroclus as Achilles' lover.

He dislikes fighting and has no talent for it, deciding to heal the sick instead of going into daily battle. Shakespeare's play pathologizes sexuality and human nature, which licenses a freer and more open exploration of homoeroticism.