EXAMINING

Image: Hamilton, Gavin. Achilles Lamenting the Death of Patroclus. 1760, Scottish National Gallery. https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/5009.

I first read Madeline Miller’s debut novel, A Song of Achilles, some time ago now, where it stood as one of my favorite books. As someone who was newly understanding a queer identity, this queering of Homer’s The Iliad offered one of my first entrances into queer narratives. Not only this, but Miller’s prose itself certainly left an awed enough impression that I returned for the sake of her writing in her second book, Circe, another retelling of classic Greek myth, and I’ve carried a personal fondness for both since. However, due to the widespread success that the first has seen in terms of its large-scale audience, the book has received plenty of public praise and critique from a number of perspectives. The reason I’d like to explore A Song of Achilles is to compile this wide array of criticism and praise. For one, I think it would be interesting to view the work through the lens of an audience who’s invested in the integrity of this classical literature, and how the liberties Miller takes to recontextualize events and relationships for the sake of the retelling may affect the opinions of those readers and critics. I’m interested in examining the criticism that I’ve found, largely from queer spaces, about the narrative as a queer one and the concern with fetishizing gay relationships based on how she approaches the sexual encounters between the protagonist and the story’s namesake. Tangentially, also looking at what it means to be recognized for writing a queer story when an author themselves is not publicly queer (and if that matters when someone is writing queer stories). And of course, I’d like to acknowledge the praise that the book has gotten, during it’s initial release, and especially in its apparent resurgence in popularity in these most recent years, and what has potentially enabled this growing adoration and recognition.