Madeline Miller | |
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Born | [1] Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. | July 24, 1978
Education | Brown University (BA, MA) University of Chicago Yale University |
Notable works | The Song of Achilles Circe |
Notable awards | Orange Prize for Fiction (2012) |
Website | |
Official website |
Madeline Miller (born July 24, 1978) is an American novelist, author of The Song of Achilles (2011) and Circe (2018). Miller spent ten years writing The Song of Achilles while she worked as a teacher of Latin and Greek. The novel tells the story of the love between the mythological figures Achilles and Patroclus; it won the Orange Prize for Fiction, making Miller the fourth debut novelist to win the prize. She is a 2019 recipient of the Alex Awards.
Miller was born on July 24, 1978, in Boston and grew up in New York City and Philadelphia. [2] [3] Miller attended Brown University, completing both a bachelor's and master's degree in Classics (2000 and 2001, respectively). She started writing her first novel, The Song of Achilles, during the final year of her bachelor's after codirecting a production of Troilus and Cressida . She has said that the scene in the play that shows Patroclus' death sparked her interest in telling his story and pushed her to start writing. [4] Prior to this moment, she already had a deep interest in Greek mythology and classics. Her mother, a librarian, started reading her The Iliad at five years old and she started learning Latin at 11. [4]
As a little girl she had a keen fascination for Greek Mythology. Growing up on the Upper East Side, she spent a lot of her time at the Met fascinating over warriors, heroes and deities. [5] Her mother, a librarian, started reading her The Iliad and Odyssey at five years old during bedtime. One of her favorite warriors at the Met is a marble statue of a wounded Amazon warrior which has blood drops on the side of her breast. [5] She started learning Latin at 11.
After completing her degrees, Miller then went on to teach Latin, Greek, and Shakespeare to high school students. [2] [3] [6] While working as a teacher, Miller continued work on her novel. [4]
She later studied for a year at the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought working towards a PhD and from 2009 to 2010 at the Yale School of Drama for an MFA in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism. [7]
She has discussed how Long COVID has affected her life since a February 2020 COVID-19 infection. In an op-ed in The Washington Post in August 2023, she said that having had the disease for three years, she had regained the ability to write but her fatigue had worsened. [8]
The Song of Achilles, Miller's debut novel, was released in September 2011. [3] [9] The book took her ten years to write. [2] [3] Set during the Greek Heroic Age, the novel tells the story from Patroclus' point of view and the bond that grew between him and Achilles. [6]
Here is a list of awards and honors the novel won.
Circe, Miller's second novel, was released on April 10, 2018. [10] The book is a modern reimagining told from the perspective of Circe, an enchantress in Greek mythology who is featured in Homer's Odyssey.Circe was ranked the second-greatest book of the 2010s by Paste. [11] Tutor House ranked Circe in its top books for Classics students in 2021. An 8-part miniseries adaptation of the book has been green-lit for HBO Max. [12] Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver are set to write and produce the adaptation. [13]
Miller realized early on that the story of Circe was not being told accurately. The in-depth analysis of Circe highlights how Miller briefly mentions Odysseus in the book. [14] In contrast, in The Odyssey, Circe is merely mentioned. Miller in an interview said that Odysseus' story has been told for 3,000 years and it was time for Circe to be heard. [15] Miller in Circe is channeling many feminist themes: rejection of patriarchal norms, empowerment, and self-reliance. Miller said that Circe is about a woman realizing her true potential and power. [16] Circe was always intended to be a feminist re-telling, and therefore, was given the ultimate re-birth story.
Here is a list of awards and honors the novel won. [17]
A short story originally released as an e-book in 2013. [18] It was later released in hardback in March 2022. [19] The novel is a retelling of the Greek myth Pygmalion from the perspective of the sculptor's statue. [18]
A short story contained within The Song of Achilles and published in a Waterstones Special edition of The Song of Achilles [20] on August 7, 2012, Heracles' Bow takes from the perspective of Philoctetes, how he suffered his snake bite, and his abandonment by his companions. Much of the story takes place as a dialogue between Philoctetes and an imaginary Heracles, though other characters from The Song of Achilles also appear in it.
In December 2021, Miller announced via an Instagram post that she was working on her new novel, about the goddess Persephone. [21]
Miller is known for writing mythological realism. [22] Miller's novels re-imagine stories from Greek mythology, while focusing on themes that she considers timeless, like dysfunctional families and homesickness. [23] [24] She has said that she finds relevance to retelling The Odyssey because it related to "universal human experiences." [24] In an interview, Miller said that she sees genre as "permeable and changeable" [25] but said that her books could be characterized as "either literary adaptation or mythological realism. Or just plain old fiction!". [25] Miller has said though that her approach to the original material was quite different for her two novels. In The Song of Achilles, she took an existing story "hidden in the material already", and for Circe, she challenged the classic texts by taking out Odysseus's voice and replacing it with Circe's, [26] a more "subversive retelling". [27]
Homer has always been a guide for Miller. In reading the Iliad she wondered constantly about who the man in the shadows was. She noted in an interview with Women's Prize titled, "Archives: Q&A with Madeline Miller" that she took great inspiration to write The Song of Achilles after finishing directing her production of Troilus and Cressida. [28] Her main concern for The Song of Achilles was Patroclus. The character of Patroclus came from Homer, but she used Homer as a guide to elaborate more on Patroclus and Achilles' characters. [28] Patroclus' character was created by hints given from Homer: his gentleness and kindness.
Song plays a big role in The Song of Achilles. In the interview with Women's Prize, Miller notes how her knowledge of Achilles being a talented singer is what let her to include songs being significant in the novels. [28] In addition to this, she goes on to note how the word Illiad literally means "The Song of Troy," hence giving her the idea for the book's title. Just how she grew up honoring the deities, warriors, and heroes of Ancient Greek mythology, she felt that she needed to honor the name Illiad in her novel. [28]
Miller told a reporter from The Guardian that her inspirations include David Mitchell, Lorrie Moore, Anne Carson, and Virgil. [29] Miller expressed "hate" and "visceral disgust" towards Ayn Rand's book The Fountainhead . As she herself indicated, she hates the "ideas behind it". Instead, she prefers books by James Herriot and Chinua Achebe. [30]
In Greek mythology, Achilles or Achilleus was a hero of the Trojan War who was known as being the greatest of all the Greek warriors. The central character in Homer's Iliad, he was the son of the Nereid Thetis and Peleus, king of Phthia and famous Argonaut. Achilles was raised in Phthia along with his childhood companion Patroclus and received his education by the centaur Chiron. In the Iliad, he is presented as the commander of the mythical tribe of the Myrmidons.
In Greek mythology, Agamemnon was a king of Mycenae who commanded the Achaeans during the Trojan War. He was the son of King Atreus and Queen Aerope, the brother of Menelaus, the husband of Clytemnestra, and the father of Iphigenia, Iphianassa, Electra, Laodike, Orestes and Chrysothemis. Legends make him the king of Mycenae or Argos, thought to be different names for the same area. Agamemnon was killed upon his return from Troy by Clytemnestra, or in an older version of the story, by Clytemnestra's lover Aegisthus.
Karen Louise Erdrich is a Native American author of novels, poetry, and children's books featuring Native American characters and settings. She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians of North Dakota, a federally recognized tribe of Ojibwe people.
In Greek and Roman mythology, Odysseus, also known by the Latin variant Ulysses, is a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in that same epic cycle.
Thetis is a figure from Greek mythology with varying mythological roles. She mainly appears as a sea nymph, a goddess of water, and one of the 50 Nereids, daughters of the ancient sea god Nereus.
Briseis, also known as Hippodameia, is a significant character in the Iliad. Her role as a status symbol is at the heart of the dispute between Achilles and Agamemnon that initiates the plot of Homer's epic. She was married to Mynes, a son of the King of Lyrnessus, until the Achaeans sacked her city and was given to Achilles shortly before the events of the poem. Being forced to give Briseis to Agamemnon, Achilles refused to reenter the battle.
In Greek mythology, Patroclus was a Greek hero of the Trojan War and an important character in Homer's Iliad. Born in Opus, Patroclus was the son of the Argonaut Menoetius. When he was a child, he was exiled from his hometown and was adopted by Peleus, king of Phthia. There, he was raised alongside Peleus' son, Achilles, a childhood friend, who became a close wartime companion. When the tide of the war turned against the Achaeans, Patroclus, disguised as Achilles and defying his orders to retreat in time, led the Myrmidons in battle against the Trojans and was eventually killed by the Trojan prince, Hector. Enraged by Patroclus's death, Achilles ended his refusal to fight, resulting in significant Greek victories.
The relationship between Achilles and Patroclus is a key element of the stories associated with the Trojan War. In the Iliad, Homer describes a deep and meaningful relationship between Achilles and Patroclus, where Achilles is tender toward Patroclus, but callous and arrogant toward others. Its exact nature—whether homosexual, a non-sexual deep friendship, or something else entirely—has been a subject of dispute in both the Classical period and modern times. Homer never explicitly casts the two as lovers, but they were depicted as lovers in the archaic and classical periods of Greek literature, particularly in the works of Aeschylus, Aeschines and Plato. Some contemporary critics, especially in the field of queer studies, have asserted that their relationship was homosexual or latently homosexual, while some historians and classicists have disputed this, stating that there is no evidence for such an assertion within the Iliad and criticize it as unfalsifiable.
There are a wide range of ways in which people have represented the Trojan War in literature and the arts.
Jane Harris is a British writer of fiction and screenplays. Her novels have been published in over 20 territories worldwide and translated into many different languages. Her most recent work is the novel Sugar Money which has been shortlisted for several literary prizes.
The Iliad is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the Odyssey, the poem is divided into 24 books and was written in dactylic hexameter. It contains 15,693 lines in its most widely accepted version. Set towards the end of the Trojan War, a ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Mycenaean Greek states, the poem depicts significant events in the siege's final weeks. In particular, it depicts a fierce quarrel between King Agamemnon and a celebrated warrior, Achilles. It is a central part of the Epic Cycle. The Iliad is often regarded as the first substantial piece of European literature.
Oneworld Publications is a British independent publishing firm founded in 1986 by Novin Doostdar and Juliet Mabey originally to publish accessible non-fiction by experts and academics for the general market. Based in London, it later added a literary fiction list and both a children's list and an upmarket crime list, and now publishes across a wide range of subjects, including history, politics, current affairs, popular science, religion, philosophy, and psychology, as well as literary fiction, crime fiction and suspense, and children's titles.
The Song of Achilles is a 2011 novel by American writer Madeline Miller. Set during the Greek Heroic Age, it is a retelling of the Trojan War as told from the perspective of Patroclus. The novel follows Patroclus' relationship with Achilles, from their initial meeting to their exploits during the Trojan War, with focus on their romantic relationship. In 2012, The Song of Achilles was awarded the Orange Prize for Fiction.
Kiran Ann Millwood Hargrave FRSL is a British poet, playwright and novelist. In 2023, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
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Katherine Rundell is an English author and academic. She is the author of Impossible Creatures, named Waterstones Book of the Year for 2023. She is also the author of Rooftoppers, which in 2015 won both the overall Waterstones Children's Book Prize and the Blue Peter Book Award for Best Story, and was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal. She is a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford and has appeared as an expert guest on BBC Radio 4 programmes including Start the Week, Poetry Please, Seriously.... and Private Passions.
The Silence of the Girls is a 2018 novel by English novelist Pat Barker. It recounts the events of the Iliad chiefly from the point of view of Briseis.
Circe is a 2018 novel by American writer Madeline Miller. Set during the Greek Heroic Age, it is an adaptation of various Greek myths, most notably the Odyssey, as told from the perspective of the witch Circe. The novel explores Circe's origin story and narrates Circe's encounters with mythological figures such as Hermes, the Minotaur, Jason, and Medea and ultimately, her romance with Odysseus and his son Telemachus.
Greek mythology retelling is a literary genre where stories from classic Greek mythology are placed in either a contemporary or futuristic setting. Stories from this genre aim to combine mythological themes like birth, death, and love with modern philosophies of feminism and empowerment.
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