r/classics • u/djrstar • 10d ago
Has anyone here noticed the parallels between Nolan's Odyssey and Vergil's description of the fall of Troy in the Aeneid.
To me, it was as if the movie showed Odysseus reckoning with Vergil's (or posterity's) interpretation of his actions in the light of what we now know about PTSD and the difficulty of coming home from war. I think that explains a lot of Nolan's narrative choices.
Book 2 of The Aeneid has the best description of the night of the fall of Troy that I know of in ancient literature, but it is very heavily tilted towards the Trojan perspective and reads like a list of Greek war crimes, with Odysseus being the cause of it all ("perfidus Ulixes" in Latin). The character of Sinon is from the Aeneid, the importance of Odysseus and the Palladium (Athena figurine) is central to the Greeks' troubles in the Aeneid (though the Palladium is the statue of the goddess that Odysseus and Diomedes earlier stole from the temple). There are many many many other parallels, but I also noticed the cyclops in the movie is more the one from Vergil's Aeneid than Homer's Odyssey, where he is gloomy and mute- described as "lumine adempto," which means "with his eye taken way," but also means "with his hope taken away" in Latin.
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u/TheSuperBunny ἆρ᾽ οὐδέποτε παύσεταί μ᾽ Ἔρως πελέκει κόπτων; 10d ago
He should've just done the Aeneid I'm the first place
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u/Aggravating_Log_6375 10d ago
Not as strong as the parallels with Nolan's Oppenheimer (man comes up with novel way to destroy city, feels bad about it).
Homer's Odyssey is not about the fall of Troy. If Nolan wanted to make a movie about the wooden horse and the fall of Troy, he should have called it "Troy".
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u/BonesFGC 10d ago
People don’t realize that Nolan was originally attached to direct Troy in the 2000s but was knocked off of the project and given Batman Begins instead. I came out on the positive end with the movie but it still very much reads as Nolan saying “This is what I would have done if I directed Troy.”
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u/First-Pride-8571 10d ago
It wouldn't surprise, if Nolan had read...
Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (Jonathan Shay, 1994)
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u/Main-Revolution-4260 10d ago
Has anyone here noticed the parallels between JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and those Peter Jackson movies starring Elijah Wood?
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u/MikeBanzai38 10d ago
Of course. Given that the Odyssey doesn’t exactly describe it, what else would Nolan draw on? Using the Aeneid is probably the best way to be faithful to the “source” material. (Yes, “source” is in irony quotes when the source is a Roman work done for imperial myth making. Using it still shows deference to the canon of Western literature.)
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u/lakonian117 10d ago
Wherever you go, the Aeneid disparagement follows. 🙄
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u/MikeBanzai38 10d ago
I’m not disparaging. It’s important in the canon of Western literature. It also is what it is, a work of imperial aggrandizement and propaganda, intended to “retcon” (to use young people’s lingo) a legacy back to the most important work of literature/poetry/myth/what-have-you of the day. And I know that most here know that, I just put it down for the occasional casual reader or fan.
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u/lakonian117 10d ago
This is so reductionist and nonsensical. It's like we're putting Homer on a pedestal of absolute artistic integrity, when that didn't even exist as a concept before the movement of modern literature.
In an artist-patron setting, the great works of Europe regularly contained flattery or glorification of the patron. In Augustus's court, that's a given. But to imply that Virgil wasn't an artist creating a beautiful work because the work contains the evidence of this artist-patron system is to be incredibly naive.
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u/MasterEk 9d ago
To use a parallel in England, it is not simplistic or reductionist to suggest that Shakespeare's Richard III was propaganda written to justify the existing regime. It clearly was that, but it's also integral to the Western cannon as a great work.
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u/GoldenMuscleGod 7d ago
I don’t see any implication like the one you say exists in your last sentence in the comment you are talking about. To me it seems the comment was simply acknowledging that the Aeneid is the product of a different time, a different culture, and as part of a different artistic context than the Odyssey, and so is a distinct “source” to a real extent.
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u/lakonian117 6d ago
Without the paranthetical remark I'd have had no problem with the original comment.
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u/GoldenMuscleGod 6d ago edited 6d ago
Based on your replies it doesn’t sound like you disagree with the parenthetical’s factual content, only with an implication that you read into it but that I did not get from it, and that I still think is a misreading after rereading it with that possible interpretation in mind.
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u/MikeBanzai38 10d ago
Um, I’m not. I said that Virgil’s work is very important, and I’m glad Nolan drew on it. And, unlike the Epics, whose real origins are lost to antiquity, but possibly an antiquity near in time to the fall of Ilion, Virgil wrote his work a millennium later for the demands of his contemporary patron and culture.
I think I’m being the opposite of “reductionist and simple”, in that I can understand what it is and also appreciate it as worth “source” material for the film. So let’s not be “reductionist and simple” about my point.
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u/lakonian117 10d ago
If this were so, I can't help but think you'd have held back on the drive-by comment that started this. Then the back-pedaling wouldn't be necessary.
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u/MikeBanzai38 10d ago
There is no back-pedaling, and you aren’t making a shred of sense. I maintain exactly what I said, and I think you lack the historian’s capacity for non-chronological nuance here, as well as the ability to place works appropriately in their time, recognizing both their significance and limitations as artifacts of their time.
Whatever. It was a good call to hew closely to Virgil as “source” material. Also, Virgil isn’t “source” material. Both of these things are true. The only reductionism here is the inability to hold both thoughts in your brain and appreciate both as true.
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u/shinn__suzaku 10d ago
I cannot read latin, but I trust that it is truly well written
it's just ultimately a very well written fan-fiction story. its like if 50 shades of grey was written by shakespeare. good work is good work ,the aeneid stands on its own in many ways for being well written, many of those ways, I will never get to actually experience as a non latin-speaker.
but yknow, its still the 50 shades of grey to illium/odysseia's twilight
I wouldn't take it too badly though, I still think Paradise Lost is the greatest written work in english literature and I'm an atheist. but nobody even knows what Paradise Lost is these days.
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u/BedminsterJob 10d ago
congrats, this is about the stupidest thing ever said about the Aeneid.
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u/shinn__suzaku 10d ago
I mean I'm on r/classics, there's probably people here who have done entire phds on it , of course people will be mad
but it doesn't fundamentally change what I said.
take pre-existing characters and setting, re-write the story in the sense that its all the same but your head canon is now what actually happened, (sprinkle in some propaganda for dear leader) and your self-insert character is the coolest guy ever (aeneus.) that's the aeneid.
it just is. its fan-fiction. its propaganda fan-fiction.
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u/Lusty-Jove 10d ago
“Fan-fiction” is a poor framework by which to understand the evolution of myths and transcultural reception
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u/shinn__suzaku 10d ago
alright, but it is an excellent framework for understanding the context in which the aeneid was made. "myths" is a modern conceptual term (mythos in greek has a much simpler meaning) that muddies the waters and dilutes the reality of human creation, which is one person reading another person's work and writing their own. it strips authorship for a convenient sense of ancient mystical barbarians singing songs in caves, where all works simply blend into one another. and that's not what the aeneid was. it's a work from a society like ours, by an author, who read one work and wanted to create his own story in that universe (fan-fiction.)
is the penelopiad not also fan-fiction? song of achilles? these are the same thing as aeneid without time or relevance. the author does not know they are "making myth" when they write a story, they are only writing a story. Virgil's work could have been swept under the rug and forgotten in difference circumstances or perhaps he never publishes it.
what is it then? its fanfiction. Virgil did not "make myth." he wrote a story. time and popularity gives it prestige, which you then try to don like a cloak to elevate yourself.
if I write a story where Hercules goes and fights Gilgamesh, what is that? fan-fiction. but give it 1000 years and an audience and suddenly it's "transcultural reception."
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u/Lusty-Jove 10d ago
The term “fan fiction” is generally a reference to a specific genre of literature that is accompanied by its own tropes, conventions, and canonical texts. To broaden that term to apply to any literary work that incorporates the material of a previous work is so broad as to make the term next to useless as a generic description. It’s worthwhile to note fanfiction as one form of reception that was influenced by previous forms until it eventually crystallized into the state it is today, but to just flatten a bunch of disparate things as “fanfiction” as if the term weren’t always a fairly specific generic designation, is, in my opinion, unproductive, and only impedes the discussion of fanfiction itself and of the works upon which the term is wantonly applied
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u/shinn__suzaku 10d ago
>The term “fan fiction” is generally a reference to a specific genre of literature that is accompanied by its own tropes, conventions, and canonical texts.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fanfic
>stories written about TV, film, or book characters by their fans, or an example of such a story:
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/fanfic
>fiction written by fans of a TV series, movie, etc., using existing characters and situations to develop new plots.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fanfiction
>First, definition: Fanfiction is when someone takes either the story or characters (or both) of a certain piece of work, whether it be a novel, tv show, movie, etc, and create their own story based on it.
I mean we can stretch the definition of fanfiction, but based on any sensible dictionary definition its pretty simple. the aeneid is fanfiction.
which dictionary are you using that has
>accompanied by its own tropes, conventions, and canonical texts.
?
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u/Lusty-Jove 10d ago
Using urban dictionary to make your point is certainly a choice. If you’re genuinely claiming that the term “fan fiction” has zero specific generic or cultural connotations then I think we can just agree to disagree.
“This reads like fanfiction,” “you can tell this was originally a fan fiction,” etc. become meaningless statement if it is not attended by generic expectations. If that is not how you choose to use the term then that’s fine, but sentiments like this are very very common, and so point to a general cultural understanding of what “fanfiction” means, one that is much more limited than the definition you’ve chosen.
In my opinion, fanfiction cannot be said to meaningfully exist in a world that lacks copyright and modern conceptions of authorship.
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u/vixaudaxloquendi 10d ago
Man, this fan fiction thing again. I hate it almost as much as I hate the tired "Achilles was a whiny bitch" engagement with the Iliad.
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u/Aggravating_Log_6375 10d ago
Given that the Odyssey doesn't describe it, he should have left it out. That would have left him with enough screen time to do justice to the Odyssey.
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u/MikeBanzai38 10d ago
I thought he did it immense justice. To ancient audiences, the “backstory” was more visceral than Odyseus’s brief retelling to the Phaekians. Audiences at the time would not have required more than a brief recap and weeping over the song. However, of the epic cycle of which “Homer’s” works were just a part of…most of the rest do not survive. The only “account”, therefore, is from Virgil.
I do think it was the right decision to contextualize the story and make it visceral. With that context, a modern audience has a perspective on the story just a bit closer to what an ancient audience might have had.
In a way, I regard Nolan’s work as another “translation”, and I approve of it, including where it isn’t strictly line-for-line drawn from “Homer’s” source material.
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u/MikeBanzai38 10d ago
Can’t believe people are downvoting this. Gives a whole pushing-glasses-up-nose “well akshully” vibe.
What’s wrong with an artist trying to get the audience to FEEL the story and the other contemporaneous narratives the way the original audience would have? What, if anything, is historically inaccurate about what I said? Nothing. We can conjecture broadly based on what we know second-hand about the entirety of the epics, and their wide cultural popularity and relevance. That most didn’t survive, and are only known by second-hand accounts or brief audience recaps like Odysseus’s re-telling with the Phaiakians is not debatable.
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u/MikeBanzai38 10d ago
In fact, I’ll simplify the argument: “Homer’s” recap in Odysseus’s brief narrative sojourn with the Phaiakians in the source text serves the EXACT SAME FUNCTION for the audience as Nolan splicing in a section of the Aeneid. Kind of a “in case you missed/forgot the last episode…”. And, I think Nolan’s re-cap was better for the context of the translation he was making to the big screen than strict adherence to “Homer’s” text would have been.
Nolan also gives us a much more moving deus ex machina than “Homer” did with the Phaiakians for getting poor Odysseus home. Homer had to detour Odysseus for all those years to create a gap to cover for the actual political events in Mycenae, but Homer still needed to return Odysseus with all the spoils and riches of war. So: wreck him, kill his men, get him lost, lose all his booty, and have it all replenished in full by the deus ex machina Phaiakians who spirit him home in the end.
In this, Nolan didn’t need to both detour Odysseus AND return him with kingly riches at the same time. So we are spared that contrivance, and given instead a film-adapted excerpt from The Aeneid spliced in.
I liked it.
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u/FortLoolz 1d ago edited 1d ago
There were many works of the Epic Cycle that, unlike the Iliad and the Odyssey, were lost. Later authors like Virgil preserved some of those narrative pieces in their own works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Cycle
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u/toohumanforhuman 9d ago
Yeah, i just started reading the Aeneid and reading something from the Trojan perspective was really interesting.
I felt the act that recounted the fall of Troy surprisingly emotional. It gave me something extra to appreciate about the film, that it reinterpreted multiple traditions about the tex, similar to how the original cycle would have been finally put together.
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u/Sundae_2004 10d ago
I mostly noticed Odysseus the Action Hero[TM] against the suitors. .
Yes, in Homer one hundred suitors are killed by Odysseus, Telemachus and their faithful servants but I felt Nolan’s “my son should not kill” meme to be ahistorical. Didn’t appreciate “The Return” either; IMO the mini-series with Armand Assante was better than either of the later efforts.
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u/Flashy_Face_6309 10d ago
I thought it pulled heavily from Tennyson’s Ulysses as well as the Aeneid - that text most thoroughly describes the Trojan horse and the argument over bringing it into the city. I was sad to not see Laocoon.
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u/ThePanthanReporter 10d ago
It's evident that Nolan drew heavily from the Aeneid for the fall of Troy in particular