Mazes, Threads, and COVID-19

It was Anna Mik, PhD student at the University of Warsaw, who introduced me to the work of Polish artist Jan Bajtlik, whose magnificent book of mazes presents the myths of ancient Greece as a set of intriguing mazes. Everyone in the myths is in a maze of a different kind–Odysseus, Heracles, Atalanta, Zeus–they’re all there. Maze as story, story as maze, life as maze. Here, Anna discusses the role of the maze, the thread, and life in the time of COVID as a labyrinth that we are all finding our ways through–Elizabeth Hale

A journey through a labyrinth can be a dreadful experience. It might have been a true horror for Theseus walking through Dedalus’s maze with the anticipation of meeting the Minotaur just around the corner. For the Minotaur, on the other side,  the labyrinth was a prison, where he waited for the human offerings and ultimately was killed by the mythical hero. For Ariadne who gave Theseus a thread leading him towards the safe exit after killing her brother, the labyrinth was a mysterious and confusing space, where love and fear were accumulated and made her feel conflicted.

The mythical maze was never only an architectural wonder. It was also a metaphor of danger, coming of age, uncertainty, a struggle between death and life. It survived the centuries in stories, visual depictions and artistic visions. And even though it is so familiar to us, this motif does not cease to surprise us to this day.  Even if we live in an era of postmodernism, often perceived as a maze itself.

There are multiple examples of famous labyrinths in popular culture. Thousands of years after the Minotaur (allegedly) was slain, in the 1986 film Labyrinth, 16-year-old Sarah travels through the labyrinth. Trapped inside the world of her fantasies, she walks thorough paths representing her troubling adolescence. (she meets a lot of weird creatures on her way, paths change their courses, sometimes they are even upside-down) In J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the titled protagonist has to face the horror of a maze in the Triwizard Tournament.

“The towering hedges cast black shadows across the path, and, whether because they were so tall and thick, or because they had been enchanted, they sound of the surrounding crowd was silenced the moment they entered the maze. Harry felt almost as though he was underwater again.” p. 539

In both of these works, mazes are not ‘stable’ and easy to pass through – they constantly change and surprise heroes and heroines with new turns and creatures living in it. They play with characters’ imagination, push their boundries, and distort cognitive perception. Thus, it rises up the question – is there anything good about the labyrinth at all?

Bajtlik’s solution: Greek Myths and Mazes

One Polish artist gives hope that there is something more to the ancient maze than horror and anxiety. Jan Bajtlik’s Greek Myths and Mazes (English translation, Walker Studio, 2019) was published in Poland in 2018 under a slightly different title: Nić Ariadny. Mity i labirynty [Ariadne’s Thread: Myths and Labyrinths]. It is a large format book in which double-page spreads present different stories from Greek myth: each one a different labyrinth leading a reader through various myths, locations, and ancient Greek phenomena. In such a manner, Greek Myths and Mazes is a great example of an interactive book for children, encouraged by the author to get through the maze, which has been marked with an entrance and an exit, and follow stories along the way. The pages are also an artistic showcase, as Bajtlik has conveyed complex and multi-layer stories through equally rich illustrations.

Odysseus’s Labyrinth–Jan Batlik (by permission of the artist)

However, what seems to be the most imperative, is the implication that each element of the ancient world is a labyrinth in itself, with all the unexpected turns, monsters waiting just around the corner, and the big uncertainty – will the hero or the heroine find their way out and fulfil their journey? The story of Odysseus would be a great example of such a labyrinth, through which the hero travels for 10 years, uncertain of his fate and gods’ favours. He does not know what waits ahead of him, he meets dead ends and turns leading him to monsters, he loses his crew on the way.  Nonetheless, he thrives, bearing in his heart and mind the image of the exit – his beloved home, Ithaca.

Jan Bajtlik works with the labyrinth as a cognitive tool that allows the child to read the myth not linearly, as in a ‘classic’ text. The path leads the reader in all different ways, allowing them to immerse in the story. They might get the wrong turn, walk through the danger, or take a dangerous route from which it will no longer be possible to withdraw (as in Hephaestus’ forge). The mythical labyrinth may also surprise the traveller with a beautiful view, a funny picture or, finally, a happy ending (as on Aeaea, Circe’s island)

All things considered, a feature that would seem the most vital is book’s metaphorical aspect. Being lost in a maze, just like being lost in a myth, perfectly reflects the shape of human existence, its impermanence, complexity, horror, and beauty. The book can affect the reader, not only a child, in an unusual way, especially during the  2020 lockdown. Isolation, danger, uncertainty, fear of the unknown – all these elements connect the world of ancient labyrinth and COVID-19 reality. If the ancient mazes have been able to gives any kind of hope, just like Jan Bajtlik, they would certainly give us a way out. Then again, only if Ariadne was there to bestow upon us an invaluable thread.  This may lead us to finding in ourselves Ariadne, ready to help us find a solution to the most dreadful situation. Being an Ariadne would mean being hopeful, despite the hopeless reality.

What’s in a title? From Ariadne’s Thread to Greek Myths and Mazes

As I have mentioned earlier, the English version of Bajtlik’s book was published in 2019 under a slightly different title from its Polish original. It made me wonder – does this change make any difference in book’s reception? After all, it seems that “Ariadne’s Thread”puts a certain kind of emphasis on the role of the heroine in Theseus’ success. Without the thread provided by Minos’ daughter, the young hero would probably not get out of the maze. What is more, the thread marks the path through a labyrinth thanks to which a hero does not make a mistake of taking the same wrong turn twice. Within the narrative structure of Bajtlik’s story, the thread plays a vital role as well. Thus, it is a shame that neither Ariadne nor her thread appear in the English title.

Nonetheless, Bajtlik’s Greek and Myths were translated also to Spanish, Catalan, French, German – in all of these editions “Ariadne’s thread” has been maintained in the title on the cover. Let’s read it as a good sign. There is a great hope for the Ariadne’s Thread to get us through these uncertain times.  After all, nowadays, it is accurate to consider reality being just another maze.  

–Anna Mik

Mythical Jigsaws and Alphabetical Odysseys: An Ancient Mappe of Fairyland and More

An Ancient Mappe of Fairyland was created by British illustrator Bernard Sleigh (1872-1954). Sleigh was a printer and mural painter who was drawn, like many a creator before him, to the wonderful world of fairies, fairy tales, and mythology. His Ancient Mappe is vast, nearly six feet in length, and containing figures and realms from fairytales, myths, and children’s fantasy.

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  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/An_anciente_mappe_of_Fairyland_-_newly_discovered_and_set_forth_%2815868801335%29.jpgBernard Sleigh, An Ancient Mappe of Fairyland, source: ; Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the BPL
  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

Peter Pan, Oberon, the Kingdom of Carbonel (which later featured in Sleigh’s daughter Barbara’s series about a kingdom of cats), nymphs, dryads, centaurs, psammeads, sea monsters, ice kings and queens and more feature in this marvellous image, showing just how populated fairyland is.

It’s drawn in an arts-and-crafts style, and suggests a yearning for another world (entirely possible to feel this way at the end of a shattering world war), and what I like about it is both its delicacy of colour, and its sense of the grown-upness of fairyland. It is not necessarily aimed at children.

When I stumbled across it, while doing some research for another project on nineteenth-century children’s literature that I’m planning for 2021, I was so taken I immediately thought I should get a copy.

And then, I discovered that there is a jigsaw version of it, which I promptly bought.

Alas, it only covers about 3 feet of Fairyland, probably a good thing, as my desk and dining table are covered with mythical manuscripts. But in the odd moment, I’ve been enjoying piecing it together, and identifying the classical elements that pop up in it.

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Jigsaws are in at the moment, as part of a non-digital mindful return to old pursuits. It turns out that the gentle act of sorting through pieces, and working out where to put them is restful and absorbing, and good for the brain.

Combing through the puzzle pieces for the back end of a centaur, or figuring out where Cerberus has his lair (up in the mountains!), somehow frees up the mind to think and reflect more naturally. When I started tutoring at Brandeis University, I learned from working with an inspirational artist and teacher, Karen Klein, that giving students something to do with their hands (drawing a picture, playing with plasticine or pipecleaners), freed up their conversation, made them less self-conscious, perhaps less anxious, able to talk, almost idly, about whatever the subject of the day was.

Our Mythical Alphabet

And I’ve been finding, as I sift through the puzzle pieces, that I’ve been thinking about the book I’m writing with Miriam Riverlea, in which we too sift through many pieces, to put together a puzzle. In our case, it’s a guide to the way that classical mythology works in children’s literature, and we’re looking at it from all sorts of angles. How do particular mythical figures feature in children’s books? What happens to them in the pages? Does a child’s version of a myth highlight specific features? Which myths work for children, and which do not? Why are some figures more popular than others? How do the aesthetics of children’s literature shape the reception of classical antiquity more generally?

We’ve pieced together an Alphabetical Odyssey of a book (and last week I presented its overall format to my colleagues in the Our Mythical Childhood project at the Our Mythical History workshop–report to come). We use the non-hierarchical structure of the alphabet, combined with the loose adventurousness of an Odyssey, a journey on which anything might happen, and frequently does. My colleagues, as they always do, asked intelligent questions–about how we devised our topics, how capacious they are, how do we handle overlap, how do we identify useful texts, how will we present images, classical motifs, children’s literature concepts, and more. How do we handle multicultural topics, how do we think about diversity and difference–all important issues, and a reminder, if any were needed, that the topic may seem highly specialised, but in fact contains multiple and important influences and impacts.

As the work on the book intensifies, I’ll keep using this blog as a place to think about some of the issues that come up.

Back to the Mappe

I’m writing this while waiting for the plane that will take me back to the Southern Hemisphere. The week in Warsaw was intense, thinking about Mythical History, and hearing about the wonderful work my colleagues are doing (such as setting up the Our Mythical Education database, and launching the Myth and Autism network). It’s a shame Bernard Sleigh’s not around to invite to one of our Mythical conferences–I feel sure that if he did come, he’d incorporate our project into a map even larger than his one of Fairyland. But I’m looking forward to getting back to my three-feet jigsaw extract. Hopefully when I get home, all this mythical thinking will have helped me work out just where to find the missing bits of centaur, where exactly to place Cerberus’s lair–and of course, pinning down the elements of our Alphabetical Odyssey…

–Elizabeth Hale

Thinking about Nature with Donna Jo Napoli’s Fish Girl…

Like so many of us, I’ve been thinking a lot about Nature lately–I’m sure don’t need to tell you why.  As part of the Our Mythical Childhood project, I’m thinking about how children’s writers and illustrators use myth to make sense of the natural world: what it is, how it works, how we live in it–how we should take care of it–what happens when we don’t.  Children are natural beings, and yet as adults, we’re aware that the human race has not done well by nature–seeing it as something to be plundered and exploited, rather than cherished and nurtured.  How we talk about it in their books has implications, and ramifications.  (It’s great to see children’s illustrators joining together to support children in their concerns about the environment.)

One set of myths that highlight our relation to nature centre on the figure of the mermaid–half woman, half fish–caught between worlds.  Stories like Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, TV series like H2O: Just Add Water, or films like Miyazaki’s Ponyo highlight human exploitation of the seas–through fishing, through pollution–and encourage a more respectful relation between both. Meanwhile Jessica Love’s Julian is a Mermaid, as I’ve discussed, explores diversity and respect for difference.

Fish Girl, a lovely graphic novel by Donna Jo Napoli and David Wiesner, explores these ideas, and more, in a story about isolation, exploitation, and eventual escape and survival.  Fish Girl is the story of a mermaid who was kidnapped as a baby by a fisherman who found her in his catch. Seeing financial opportunity, he set up a seaside attraction in an old house, calling it ‘Ocean Wonders,’ posing as Neptune, the ‘god of seas and storms,’ and charging visitors $2 to ‘see the mysterious fish girl.’ The mermaid is captive in a large tank, which she shares with fish and an octopus, and which is decorated like a girl’s bedroom. The mermaid’s job is to play hide-and-seek with visitors, who try to see her in her tank, and to collect the pennies they have thrown into the tank. She has reached adolescence, and her best friend is a red octopus.

Eventually, the mermaid meets a human girl, and they become friends.  The tank suddenly seems more confining and lonely, and the mermaid finds a way to leave it, to join the outside world. It’s a lovely, but melancholy book, highlighting the melancholy at the heart of mermaid myths, such as the Little Mermaid, and reminiscent in places of novels of kidnapping and isolation, such as Room.  The melancholy story is supported by David Wiesner’s delicate illustrations–the colour palette, of blues and greens and corals, entirely appropriate, but also making glancing allusions to Disney’s Little Mermaid, or Studio Ghibli’s Ponyo.

Children’s books don’t have to be direct to make serious points–and Fish Girl invites us to think about the natural world–its power, and its fragility–our place in it, and our responsibility for it.

I took my enjoyment of this lovely book as an excuse to write to Donna Jo Napoli, to interview her for the Our Mythical Childhood survey.  Donna Jo is a widely published author and academic.  She’s a linguist and a teacher, has a degree in Mathematics, and on top of all that, has a voluminous output of retellings and adaptations of myths, fairytales, and folklore, as well as stories about nature and inspirational people.  It was a delight to interview her.

 

Interview with Donna Jo Napoli

1. What drew you to writing/working with Classical Antiquity and what challenges did you face in selecting, representing, or adapting particular myths or stories? 

I think it started with my high school Latin teacher, Mrs. Reynolds. She brought the old tales to life — all their passion and intrigue and misery. I got involved in the Latin club, and then in the Latin Forum of the State of Florida. I even ran a state forum one year. When I went to college, I didn’t follow up on Latin. But in graduate school, I had to pass a test in reading Latin. I decided not to prepare for it, but just go in and see what happened. I passed — after four years away from Latin. And that’s because Mrs. Reynolds was so terrific. The experience reminded me of how much I loved those stories. After that I went for years not doing anything with Latin. But in Spring 2013, a classics professor at Swarthmore, Rosaria Munson, and I co-taught a course on The Hero’s Journey. We looked at Virgil’s Aeneid, then Dante’s Divina Commedia, then Eugenio Montale’s poetry — all in the original Latin, then Old Italian, then modern Italian — talking about historical change in language as well as variations on the themes in the different works. It was thrilling reading the Aeneid again. And it was thrilling seeing the relevance of the old works to modern life.

In FISH GIRL I didn’t think of any particular myth. Rather, I tried to use the ancient feeling that the seas are full of potential. Mysterious creatures live and rule there. Ordinary understandings of how life works don’t necessarily hold. Though David and I didn’t put in any snakes growing out of heads or talking animals, we allowed the octopus to grow to enormous size and then shrink again, where emotions were the key to the size changes. And we allowed the fish in Fish Girl’s tank to recognize that she was somehow changing and to respond accordingly.

2. Why do you think classical / ancient myths, history, and literature continue to resonate with young audiences? 

We know a great deal of facts about the world now, many more than the ancients did. But we still lack understanding of many things. For example, we don’t even really know how it is that trees manage to pump water up from the ground to their crowns. We’ve rejected osmosis as the answer — but there is no presently agreed upon answer. And that is a rather mundane thing — something happening around us all the time, but we haven’t a clue about what’s going on. We are much more in the dark about the arcane things. And the more we learn about both life on earth and space way out there, the more we recognize how little we truly understand.

The ancients tried to give reasons for everything… for earthquakes and tsunamis and lightning. They sought to see a comprehensive picture. And within that picture, they tried to adjust to the vagaries of human behavior. I think young people today would like a comprehensive picture within which they could make some kind of sense of the natural world and human behavior within it. It is comforting to see characters in the ancient tales struggle with the same human foibles we struggle with. And it is comforting to see that they too were stupified by natural events around them… different natural events from the ones that stupify us today, perhaps… but no less enigmatic.

3. Do you have a background in classical education (Latin or Greek at school or classes at the University?) What sources are you using? Scholarly work? Wikipedia? Are there any books that made an impact on you in this respect?  

Ah, I answered some of that in question 1. For most fiction work I do that is placed in classical times, I use translations into English of Homer, Hesiod, and Apollodorus. I stay away from Wikipedia on this — although I love Wikipedia for many other things (it is a great source of information about languages and linguistics, for example, because the Linguistic Society of America urges its members to add information to Wikipedia and correct anything that’s dubious).

Did you think about how Classical Antiquity would translate for young readers? Absolutely. I did a book for National Geographic called Treasury of Greek Mythology. In there I chose to present the stories that I most love. They were written in Greek, of course, and I don’t read Greek, so I had to look at translations. An interesting thing about translations is that the same story is quite differently translated by scholars in different points of history…. or that’s what I concluded from my very small and limited study. Looking at translations from the 1700s through today, I found myself making choices based on my own sensibilities — which is what I’m sure those translators did. I also read many of the stories in Latin — in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. I suspect that Ovid influenced me most. Certainly with respect to the creation tale. Ovid’s words swirl and transform themselves, wonderfully evocative and still illusive. I aimed for that sense in my rendering of the creation tale.

4. How concerned were you with “accuracy” or “fidelity” to the original? (another way of saying that might be—that I think writers are often more “faithful” to originals in adapting its spirit rather than being tied down at the level of detail—is this something you thought about?) 

Yes, this is a major concern I had, more so in Treasury than in Fish Girl, since Fish Girl was a character that David and I created in a more-nearly modern world. For Treasury I always used the details that were in the originals — I never changed them. But I added a modern psychology, which was a personal choice, but I expect that choice was unavoidable. That is, I cannot help but see the behaviors of characters as reflecting the way I, as a person of today, understand human behavior.

5. Are you planning any further forays into classical material? 

I don’t plan far ahead. Whatever I’m working on at the moment is my world. Presently, I’m deep into the world of the Ancient Hebrews. But I’m nearly finished with this project. Where I will go next is unclear to me. I have a story in my head set in India in the late 1800s, and I’d like to work on that. But interruptions happen — and I am always open to happy serendipities. Will I ever return to the classical world of Greece? I can’t know that — but the stories are eternal fonts of wisdom and pain — so I hope I do.

6. Anything else you think we should know? 

Ha! what a funny question. But I will answer it. People often assume that I know more than I know. It’s as though working with the classics gives you an aura of respectability and of nearly encyclopedic knowledge. The truth is, I bumble through things. I’m not afraid to deal with what I don’t understand, because I understand so little that if I let that fear stop me, I wouldn’t write anything. And, you know, if I fully understood things, I would have no motivation to write. For me, writing is a way of tackling problems, a way of trying to get a sense a peace. But rarely do I ever feel I “know” something or truly “understand” it.

 

Thank you!

—Elizabeth Hale

Championing Odysseus, part two: an interview with David Hair

The second of a pair of in-depth interviews with Cath Mayo and David Hair, the New Zealand authors who have teamed up to write a trilogy about the lead up to the Trojan War.  It is called the Olympus Trilogy and published by Canelo Press.  Their first volume, Athena’s Champion, has recently been released, and so I have interviewed them about their process and decisions when writing fantasy literature that draws on classical mythology.  

Athena’s Champion is not aimed at youth audiences, but will likely cross over, and it seems timely to interview them both about their work bringing classical antiquity to modern youth audiences.  I interviewed Cath last time; now we bring you my interview with David.  

David Hair is a New Zealand novelist, known for writing fantasy set in interesting places.  His first trilogy, the Aotearoa series for young adults, draws on Maori mythology; the Return of Ravana quartet, also for young adults, is set in India, and features Indian mythology.  He likes to ground his work in mythology and history, to unusual effect.  Athena’s Champion is his first collaborative work, with Cath Mayo, who has also written young adult mythological fantasy.  I sent the authors a number of questions, and they divided them between them.  The answers from both are thoughtful and in-depth, and offer great insights into how writers think about myth.  Enjoy!  

Could you talk a little about your joint project–how it came about, how you work together …?

I met Cath Mayo when we were both presenting at a Storylines event. She’d already written two YA books about a young Odysseus – which struck me as a great concept: Odysseus arrives in the Iliad as a fully formed hero, craftiest of the Greek leaders – I felt there had to be a cool backstory to be told, and Greek mythology was something I’d grown up with – in fact, mythology has informed pretty much everything I’ve written.

To expand on that: I’ve had eleven YA novels published, of which ten deal directly with mythology. Six of those are the Aotearoa series which draws heavily on the mythology, history and culture of New Zealand in an urban fantasy context. The other four are the Return of Ravana series, which I wrote while living in India, and re-tells the India epic, the Ramayana, also as an urban fantasy, using past lives to revisit incidents from Indian history.

English: Battle at Lanka, Ramayana, by Sahib Din. Battle between the armies of Rama and the King of Lanka. Udaipur, 1649-1653. “Sahib Din’s illustration shows in grisly detail a fierce landmark battle. It takes place between Rama’s army of monkeys and the King of Lanka’s army of demons, as Rama (together with the only other human, his brother Lakshmana) fights to free Rama’s kidnapped wife Princess Sita. Following a gruesome series of hand-to-hand combats, the fortitude of Rama’s monkey army wins through. The illustration is not a ‘single frame’, but shows several stages of the battle alongside each other. For example, in this scene of battle between the demons and Rama’s monkey army, the three-headed figure of the demon general Trisiras occurs in several places – perhaps most dramatically at the bottom left, where he is shown beheaded by Hanuman. The ultimately victorious Rama is shown at the top left, splendidly coloured in blue, calmly contemplating the carnage.” PD-1923

My take on “Young Odysseus” would be quite different to Cath’s, though – I’m a fantasy writer, and her Odysseus books are historical fiction. I was also time-poor, having a lot of projects on the go, and didn’t have the time to research the idea thoroughly. It occurred to me that with Cath on the team, I wouldn’t need to, as she’s already a subject expert. I even naively thought that having two heads onboard would halve my workload (nope).

Anyway, I mulled it over for several months – during which time Cath and our respective partners all became good friends – and then approached her to see if she’d like to work together on a “Young Odysseus Fantasy Story”.

But being me – I’m irresistibly drawn to big concepts – I had a larger plan in mind: I saw it not just as one man’s story, but as a prequel to the Trojan War, with a new take on the Greek Gods – what they were, how they interacted with each other and with humanity. I summarised my ideas into a concept document, and sent it to Cath – it was 12 densely-packed pages long… and bit my nails in trepidation.

Thankfully, Cath was excited by the idea – even though my concept was a departure from her own vision – being in essence a fantasy story, not historical fiction. She’d been wanting to continue the adventures of Odysseus, but like me was time-poor. Perhaps she thought that two people meant half the workload…

So we set about planning what was now called Olympus – a process complicated by the fact that my wife Kerry and I moved to live in Bangkok soon after (Kerry was with the NZ government at the time). Cath and I gelled well as a team, despite (or because of) bringing quite different skills and style to the task.

In terms of how we work together, so far our method has been dictated by circumstance, in that Cath runs a business and writes when she can, while I’m a fulltime writer. We compile and agree a chapter plan, then I do the first draft – I write fast, at times shooting off on tangents. Cath then does the second draft, making it more cohesive, restraining my worst impulses and pulling it back to the agreed storyboard! We bat it back and forth a bit, then it goes to beta readers. Once they’ve given feedback, we both edit/revise it at least twice each, before we’re ready to submit it.

David Hair

David Hair and Cath Mayo

Do you have a background in classical education (Latin or Greek at school or classes at the University?) What sources are you using? Scholarly work? Wikipedia? Are there any books that made an impact on you in this respect? 

Yes, I have a BA (History and Classical Studies) from Victoria University in Wellington. But my primary source in this project was the “Encyclopedia Cath” – I only had to name-drop some event, person or divinity and she’d be able to tell me all the salient points! She’s very much the research geek of the team, and deeply immersed in that world.

My personal research was of a more cursory, online nature: old-fashioned “surfing the net” following names and events, cataloguing what I found, trying to work out if/how it fitted into our overall tale. Often our more left-field and unorthodox ideas came from that.

What drew you to writing/working with Classical Antiquity and what challenges did you face in selecting, representing, or adapting particular myths or stories?

Some of the earliest books I read as a child were collections of myths retold for children, including Greek myth – the stories of Narcissus, Pygmalion, Midas and many others. And my degree included papers on Greek history and one on Greek mythology.

I therefore had a hankering for some time to write in this mythos. The main issue was what topic, and how to fit it into my schedule: I’ve had a pretty full calendar over the past few years, having had 11 YA novels and 6 epic fantasy novels published since 2009.

So meeting Cath and “young Odysseus” resolved the question of “what project?”. Having decided that, the selection of the tales we wanted to work with was determined by how they related to Odysseus, and the origins of the Trojan War. That meant working backwards from the War to events like the Abduction/Elopement of Helen by Paris; The Wedding of Helen to Menelaus, and earlier incidents like the Judgement of Paris. We also delved back into the personal lives of our protagonists – like how Odysseus met Penelope, and gained the bow of Atreus; and other lesser known tales like the first Abduction of Helen when she was still young. All of these needed to be accounted for.

So we set about constructing a timetable of Greek mythology – it was like solving a badly cut and incomplete jigsaw. It was in that process that working with Cath was an especial joy – her knowledge of the mythos is so deep, that I only had to mention a name and she knew their history and place in the mythology. And she’s been to many of the sites that we use in the story, which was invaluable for making the landscape authentic, giving the more fantastical elements a solid grounding in reality.

Why do you think classical / ancient myths, history, and literature continue to resonate with audiences?

In my degree, one paper was “Uses of Greek Mythology”, which was about mythology itself; what it is, what it’s really trying to impart, etcetera. In summary, it came down to four different things: (1) mythology can be (distorted) oral history; (2) mythology can explain the unknown; (3) mythology can teach through example; and (4) mythology can explore human psychology through symbolism. And sometimes it’s more than one of these things, or even all of them.

For example, Persephone and her abduction by Hades might be a just-so story explaining the seasons; but it can also be read as an exploration of the link between life and death, using divine embodiments of those concepts. Oedipus Rex might be remembered history, but it also might be a morality lesson. You’ve got to look at them from all sides, and make some decisions.

So when the source mythology can be interpreted so many ways – and Greek myth is so colorful, bloodthirsty and morally ambiguous to start with – I think it’s natural that we are constantly drawn back to it. Then you add in all the stuff about “western civilization” having its roots in Ancient and Classical Greek culture, and the continued pervasiveness of aspects of Greek myth in modern culture is thoroughly understandable.

Athena’s Champion

How concerned were you with ‘accuracy’ or ‘fidelity’ to the original?  (another way of saying that might be—that I think writers are often more ‘faithful’ to originals in adapting its spirit rather than being tied down at the level of detail—is this something you thought about?)

Our goal for this series was to write a prequel to the Trojan War that’s (1) consistent with the major events of the Iliad and all related mythology in a logical sequential way; (2) consistent with the fragments of known history for the period; (3) consistent with our vision on the nature of the gods and magic.

We’re nothing if not ambitious.

When we sat down to see if that was even possible, the first thing that’s clear is that even canonical stories can have wild variations, and some of them are impossibly contradictory. For example, the tale of Penelope and her suitors (the men wooing her when they think Odysseus is dead) in the Odyssey: the canonical version is that she is strictly faithful to her missing husband – but in some versions she’s seduced by Hermes; or she even sleeps with all of the suitors and gives birth to the god Pan! So we had to make up our own minds from what was on offer. Sometimes that led to some huge leaps of imagination that really propelled our story forward.

So in answer to whether we fudged things, I think I can say that pretty much everything in our story is in the mythology somewhere, even if only implied: though sometimes we’ve gone with a non-canonical variant. For example, in the Iliad, Odysseus is occasionally slandered by being called the “son of Sisyphus”. He denies it, it’s never proven, but what an irresistible plot hook! And Odysseus’s role in the whole thing is enlarged, of course – we’ve thrown him into various tales in which traditionally he plays no part – but he did get that reputation for cunning somehow…

All that geeky research work is behind the scenes – the final story that our readers get is a cohesive, internally logical tale, fast-paced and dramatic. What that depth of research and adherence to source does give us – we hope – is a story that will please not just fantasy adventure fans, but students of the mythology and the history.

Justice and Utu

Magic and Makutu

The Bone Tiki

You have written young adult fiction before this project.  What would you say are the differences or similarities in writing for young adults vs writing for adults?

In the past, I’ve thought of YA as being simpler, pacier and a little less intense. But increasingly, I would say there are less and less differences between YA and adult writing. My own YA books tend to be more complex than is usual in YA stories, and they have plenty of adult readers.

I think the reasons for this blurring of the lines is that attention spans – and windows of opportunity to read – are becoming shorter for most people, so books have to adapt: you can’t get away with so much scene-setting now; readers want (and therefore publishers demand) that books jump straight into the action, with simpler plotlines and linear, fast-moving action – not just in YA but in adult books as well.

It’s a sobering thought that under such criteria, The Lord of The Rings wouldn’t have been published today. After all, its opening chapters deal with a very gentle birthday party in a rustic place where nothing happens, followed by a history lesson from a garrulous wizard. There’s no real drama until about Chapter Five, as I recall.

It’s also notable that in recent years we’ve seen many YA books become hits in the adult market (Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Twilight), which suggests that the distinction between the two is becoming very indistinct.

Cath and I did talk about whether we wanted to write the Olympus series as YA or adult; but we settled on adult for two main reasons – (1) we wanted Odysseus to be entering full manhood, and becoming a fully-fledged hero and leader, not still be on a journey into adulthood; and (2) we wanted to let loose the full power and horror of the Greek mythos, which is replete with horrific acts of murder and vengeance, twisted sexual politics and some genuinely scary monsters. We didn’t want to water it down or pull our punches – and we didn’t.

–David Hair, interviewed by Elizabeth Hale

Illustrating the monomyth–Jerome’s Gift

Trent Denham’s Jerome’s Gift is an award-winning picture book that shows a child overcoming challenges through ingenuity, recycling, and making do.  It takes elements of the hero’s journey as inspiration, and is part of a planned trilogy, incorporating novel, graphic novel, and picture book, that Trent is working on.

I met Trent when he visited Armidale in 2014 as part of the UNE Writers and Illustrators in Residence program I was running with the help of the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.  While he was with us, Trent completed some illustrations for the book, and shared his expertise in art, design, and digital elements.   He’s the brains behind the digital reconstruction of the destruction of Pompeii, which I will interview him about on a separate occasion.

For now, though, we’re talking about Jerome’s Gift, the inspiration behind it, and what led a Melbourne illustrator to spend so much time in the Middle Ages.

–Elizabeth Hale

 

Jerome’s Gift, cover copyright Trent Denham

 

What drew you to writing/working with particular myths, and what challenges did you face?

History has always been my strongest interest, even beyond my writing and artistic practice, and though I sway a little more toward the middle ages for my inspiration, I think it is safe to say that the foundations of that period and its culture are most certainly classical. European culture continually looked back to Antiquity as a high point in society,  rather than forward into the future. Looking at medieval works was what drew me deeper into the classics. I would go so far as to say that my thirst for history is what drives me in my art making and storytelling. I remember the moment I picked my first illustrated history book off the shelf in kindergarten and I was immediately enthralled.

As I grew up, I began to study and attempt to reproduce in drawing some of the great artworks of history – all of which depicted ancient myths and legends (though most were made in the high middle ages, renaissance, or neo-classical periods!). My older brother also had a beautifully illustrated kids book of stories about Achilles and Medusa and Odysseus, Cyclops, the Golden Fleece, to Thor and Siegfried. It carried me away (forever I think), to places where those stories were real, and had meaning and purpose for me to decipher. I have never really come back from that place.

I’m not sure if I ever consciously chose to adapt a particular myth with my book. What I ended up with was a variation on the ‘mono-myth’; as Joseph Campbell would put it- the hero’s journey is a universal story or experience across many if not all cultures, and it was natural for my story to develop in that way. I only latterly came to  understand that about half way through the project, as part of my continued studies.

Many of the adaptations per se, or inspirations for my story have come through traditional folk tales, fables, which are a kind of myth themselves in a long tradition of oral storytelling, but also through an allegorical visual medium. Artists like Brueghel, and even more modern fantasy literature and art  (which again draws heavily from mythology) have been a big influence.

 

Jerome and mother, copyright Trent Denham

Jerome and the Kraken, copyright Trent Denham

Jerome on the way, copyright Trent Denham

Jerome’s boat, copyright Trent Denham

Jerome’s Gift, cover copyright Trent Denham

Kraken, copyright Trent Denham

Why do you think classical / ancient myths, history, and literature continue to resonate with young audiences?

My understanding of myth is that it exists to help us through our own times and experience. It is for that reason that myth is so adaptable, and often at variance with other versions of itself. You can tell any myth from various perspectives in order to describe a particular situation. This is helpful in that it is relatable to the listener – how many ways can a Shakespeare be told and adapted for a contemporary audience for instance? It is endless!

What was truly revelatory for me was the discovery that the artists I always looked up to- the ones depicting scenes from Antiquity and mythology- have adapted those scenes for their own times! In doing this, they can make a deeper commentary on their own historical period! For example, Brueghel’s biblical “massacre of the innocents” is depicted in his own native Flanders. Why? To draw a parallel with the wartime atrocities committed by the Spanish in his own lifetime.  Or his “Fall of Icarus” that features a 16th century galleon and not a Greek ship. The contemporary context places the lesson of the myth for his own audience. In turn, others can then reference Brughel’s work to give it new meaning (but you will have to look close!).

And that is how the tradition of art and storytelling continues- it changes and evolves to keep relevance in our own time. So the artists and authors I look to, in turn looked back on others yet more distant in history, and so on until the depths of time when our primitive ancestors first looked to the stars and told stories to make sense of their world.
These types of story will always be relevant to us because we have carried them with us forever, and we did so because they help us understand ourselves and the world we live in.

Do you have a background in classical education (Latin or Greek at school or classes at the University?) What sources are you using? Scholarly work? Wikipedia? Are there any books that made an impact on you?  

Yes I did study some classics, and a lot of other history both old and new, as part of my Creative Arts degree. But the truth is that I have always undertaken studies on my own, outside of educational institutions, and was always reading stuff at home that would never have been presented to me in schools. My library is full of strange and wonderful things.

Though most of my reading is in more academic texts these days, some of my favourite and most influential books were from when I was a kid.

 

Asterix and the Laurel Wreath, by Goscinny and Uderzo

Timeless Myths, by Brenda Ralph Lewis

Timeless Myths, by Brenda R Lewis and illustrated by Rob McCaig, Brimax Books, 1980. That was my older brother’s book mentioned earlier (I now have a copy of my own)
And of course…

The Adventures of Asterix and Obelix, by Goscinny and Uderzo, full of fascinating detail and glimpses into history, if a little tongue in cheek =)

Other great and influential artists are John Howe and Alan Lee,  both of whom have illustrated many myths and legends, but are probably better know for their work on Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

When you were developing Jerome’s Gift, did you think about how myth and antiquity would translate for young readers, esp. in Australia? 

Yes and no. I understand that regional references and situations are easier for more people to connect with, but I don’t really make stories for ‘everyone’, I make stories for strange young kids like I was, who might pick up an old history book in kindergarten and think “yes, this is for me”

Are you planning any further forays?

Definitely! In fact the history of Jerome’s Gift goes back a few stories, and the further back it goes, the deeper into myth and its own antiquity it gets. For me though, I like to use History and Mythology as a theoretical framework and not the basis of the story itself. For example, for my next book I am using chapter titles that borrow names of the siblings of Titans (like Zelos, which means ‘rivalry’, or Nike which means ‘victory’). In this way I can both reference familiar mythology, and use it as a structure to build my own narrative that relates to an understood theme. It gives me direction and inspiration to create a new world.

–Trent Denham

Stay tuned for an interview with Trent about his work on A Day in Pompeii….