The Stories We Tell

[ceitfianna]

I've lately been reading and watching a couple of wonderful things and I want to write about them. As I was having lunch with Rick after seeing Thor, I realized that lately I've been encountering a number of retellings of tales that are much older. This is something I love, as a storyteller, I know there's such power is finding a new way to look at a story. The tales that we as different cultures keep telling our selves hold such amazing secrets as they show what we hold dear and what we're scared of.

Thor is the story of two brothers trying to please their father and learn how to be men. Deathless is the tale of Marya who is learning what she wants for herself. War for the Oaks is about Eddi deciding what is important to her and where her power is. Within each of these works are older stories that sometimes have not been changed terribly much in terms of what happens when, but how and why things happen and what's going on does shift.

I've lately been thinking about my failed masters thesis on the Greek poet Pindar who wrote odes for athletic victors and used myths as a way to honor them and their families without causing hubris. One of my favorite lines in Pindar is where he says that Homer told a particular myth in this way but Pindar is choosing to tell it this way. I'm going to post a link to my Milliways' paper soon and I'm wondering if anyone would also be curious to see the start of my thesis.

Creators who can see and understand the bones of these old tales and then take them apart in such a way that we see them new again amaze me. I hope that in some small way I might be able to do that some day. In the meantime, I recommend seeing Thor and reading Deathless, the first is the perfect superhero movie to start the summer and the second is a complex reworking of Russian fairy tales.

Tomorrow I begin my summer class and I'm taking today as a wonderful omen, the weather was fantastic, I saw a fun movie and talked for a long time with a good friend.

Comments

[ashen_key]

One of my favorite lines in Pindar is where he says that Homer told a particular myth in this way but Pindar is choosing to tell it this way.

Oh, that's really cool. But you know me and being a sucker for things retold :)

And I'm sick, otherwise I'd have more thoughts re: that.

[ceitfianna]

I wish I could find the quote but its within a particular ode. I'm pretty sure there's an entire article I read for my thesis just about that issue.

Let me go digging and I'll pass it on to you, because I find it so neat. Its one of the reasons I loved studying Pindar, he's quite meta.

*hugs* Feel better.

[dodger-sister.livejournal.com]

One of my favorite lines in Pindar is where he says that Homer told a particular myth in this way but Pindar is choosing to tell it this way.

It's why the old bards are so fascinating to me - because someone tells a story and they hear it and take it and put their own spin on it and it goes on for a bit until someone else takes it and spins it, changes the POV, etc. And everyone inevitably spins it with who they emphasize with or with how they view it - like how the story would be told completely different if it were told from the POV of "the bad guy" in a tale.

[ceitfianna]

This is why I loved studying literature, seeing all these connections and how they work.

Have you read any Pindar? He's one of those poets who sadly doesn't seem to be known too well outside of classics since he writes a context specific type of poetry. I did the research for a masters' thesis on him so he's one of my favorites.

[dodger-sister.livejournal.com]

No, I've never read any Pindar. You'd probably be shocked by how little of that kind of literature I've read.

My interest in how stories are told is from my freshman year of high school when I was going through a Greek mythology phase and I noticed that every version I read was just a little bit different than the last.

[ceitfianna]

Not everyone has and there's a lot of stuff out there. I love that about the Greek myths and that's something Pindar plays with in really interesting ways.

His poetry was written to celebrate victories at the sacred games and he used the myths to talk about where the athletes came from and thus avoid hubris. That's what I did my masters' thesis research on, four odes of his and how they used stories to find that balance of hubris and honor.

I can ramble about him and Greek poetry rather a lot and I RP Demeter in milliways_bar, which is a fascinating way to poke at her story.