In this special episode, we are thrilled to be joined by Laura Jenkinson-Brown (aka Jenks), teacher, writer, lover of Odysseus, and – most famously – the genius behind the website and resources of ‘Greek Myth Comix’ which makes all manner of ancient Greek and Roman ideas and literature engaging and accessible for all learners!
Laura teaches Classical Civilisation and Ancient History in the UK, she writes and illustrates pedagogical resources, and is now also a fellow podcaster, producing the show ‘Ancient Geek’. Seriously, if you are an ancient history teacher and have not checked out her amazing resources, you are certifiably insane. There’s just no other way of looking at it.
Laura’s outstanding contributions to the field have been recognised by The Classical Association and the Working Classicists. We are excited to discuss Laura’s amazing new publication You Are Odysseus which shakes up Homer’s epic poem by placing the reader in the centre of the story and all its complexities. Any 80s kids out there who were fans of the ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ series? This is that… Homeric style. And if you’re not much of a reader, there is also a podcast version of this creative new take on the ancient classic out now.
Things to Look Out For:
- Discussion of how you even begin to create so many different storylines in one book!
- Odysseus – a semi-bad boy and why he’s more appealing than Aeneas
- The Muses
- An unusual childhood friend called ‘Ginger’
- And a bit of kleos – would our episode be complete without it?
You can pick up You Are Odysseus and have yourself a Homeric adventure from the comfort of your living room right now. Why not grab it from your local independent bookseller?
Sound Credits
Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.
Automated Transcript
Dr Rad 0:15
Welcome to the Partial Historians. We explore all the details of ancient Rome, everything from political scandals, the love affairs, the battles waged, and when citizens turn against each other. I’m Dr. Rad,
Dr G 0:33
and I’m Dr. G. We consider Rome as the Romans saw it by reading different authors from the ancient past and comparing their stories.
Dr Rad 0:44
Join us as we trace the journey of Rome from the founding of the city. Welcome to a brand new episode of the Partial Historians. I am one of your hosts, Dr. Rad, and I am Dr. G. And Dr. G, we have a living legend on our podcast today. Someone whose resources I have been using in my classroom for such a very long time. I won’t give a precise number because that ages me, quite frankly. We are thrilled to be joined today by Laura Jenkinson Brown, teacher, writer, and most famously the genius behind the website and resources of Greek myth comics, which makes all manner of ancient Greek and Roman ideas and literature engaging and accessible for all learners, Laura teaches classical civilisation and ancient history in the UK. She writes and illustrates pedagogical resources and is a stick figure artist par excellence. Laura’s outstanding contributions to the field have been recognized by the Classical Association and the Working Classicists. We are excited to discuss Laura’s amazing new publication, “You Are Odysseus”, which shakes up Homer’s epic poem by placing the reader in the center of the story and in all its complexities. Welcome to the show, Laura.
Speaker 1 2:20
Thank you. Thank you. you for having me. Good gosh, Fiona, that was amazing. Thank you so much. I don’t think I’ve ever had quite such a gushing introduction. I don’t know what to say.
Dr Rad 2:32
All well deserved. All well deserved. When I found you were coming on, I was extremely excited because back when I used to be able to teach ancient history, I did use your resources so very much, and
Jenks 2:43
it’s funny because I listened to your podcast to learn what else to teach.
Dr Rad 2:48
There you go. World’s colliding, and we didn’t know it.
Dr G 2:53
This is super exciting indeed because I think there is a lot of interest, generally speaking, that has been increasing over time for ancient Greek and ancient Roman and ancient world information, and to have creators like yourself putting out so many high-quality resources that people can utilize to enhance their understanding is phenomenal. Because there is the danger, I think, particularly in a social media world, of following some pretty questionable accounts with highly questionable information about the ancient world, which does nobody any favors. So, I think you’re doing great work. I think the gods would. Oh well,
Jenks 3:35
that is high praise.
Dr G 3:36
And I think tackling what is one of considered one of the foundational texts is a huge ask as well, and the way that you’ve pulled it together is really fascinating. So we wanted to take this chance to have a chat to you about this book, You Are Odysseus, because it’s doing something really fresh and new, and also allowing people to engage in the mythic landscape in a very different way. So, to get us started, in the foreword to “You Are Odysseus, Liv Albert, another famous podcaster in this space, notes that “Homes Odysseus” is a text that prompts the question, “What if this had gone differently? And I’m wondering if you can take us a little bit through your personal journey with the Odyssey and the questions that it’s prompted for you in your engagement with the poem.
Jenks 4:29
Okay, what an excellent question to start. I suppose I think I was. I remember answering this question previously. Where did I say I first read the Odyssey? Because I’m starting to forget. Everything gets a bit everything’s a bit gray around the edges when you get to my age. It’s actually my birthday tomorrow, so I’m feeling older than usual. Yes, the anniversary of the Titanic sinking. Yay!
Dr G 4:57
No, surely
Jenks 4:59
not. I came to the Odyssey before I came to it teaching, but I really came to it teaching because I was an originally an English literature teacher that then taught classical civilization part time within my teaching allocation, and then over the last 20 years this year, it has become my my main classical civilization, rather than the Odyssey. It would be lovely if it was just Odyssey all day, but sadly that is not the case. I find teaching texts is incredibly illuminating. Someone who really loves to learn and try and new try and learn new things all the time, teaching a text from the so you’re you’re looking at it from the other direction and trying to inform others of why it’s so amazing and special allows you to really see those things. And I know some people tend to kill books by over-explaining them, and sometimes people come out of English literature lessons going, “Wow, really wish I didn’t know all that about this great book that I would love to have enjoyed otherwise, but I think with the Odyssey and and other epic texts, because they have so many amazing features that make them work so well, it is kind of a privilege to get to know them and understand them and see why they work so well. Because then, because they are ancient, they are so then informative into the lives of people who were listening to them, and the people who were composing them, and the lives of the people that they are meant to be about, and how realistic those lives might have been, and also a massive insight into what they believed their lives were about and for, and were represented by when it comes to things like the gods and the supernatural, so I think I came to the Odyssey most of all when for the classical civilization GCSE, which is and now I’m going to show a complete, complete lack of knowledge of your education system down the despite I used to know this. So GCSE is ages 15 to 16. I suppose it’s sort of middle way through secondary school, high school, and it’s the second last qualification you do at school. The A level being the last one. So I teach classical civilization GCSE, and then ancient history A level, which is where your podcast comes in, because I get to teach the Roman side of it, which is great fun, and which was was something I came to quite late. But the Odyssey was very much half the entire course on the original GCSE, and then it became slightly less. But you would still read about five books of it, and then they changed that which books every so often. So you you would get a little bit of a refresh. Although Book Nine is always in there, and that is where I sudden I started to understand it. I think and understand how amazing this character was. I think, in fact, I told the Iliad first and thought, well, I can I can see why Achilles is so incredibly demanding of our attention because he’s so real and just trying to work things out, and then you get to Odysseus, and he’s just trying to work out how to con you, and get the best out of every single situation, which is just so fun and also very real, but in a very very different way. So I think that’s why I became slightly obsessed with him. I suppose everyone loves a bad boy, really. He’s not a bad bad boy, but he’s certainly more interesting than, say, than the other side of my teaching. Aeneas, who’s just so
Dr Rad 8:30
nice and good and does all the good things. And as one
Jenks 8:33
class during when Game of Thrones was really big, one class derided Aeneas as being, “Miss. He’s just like Jon Snow. He’s just a bit dull.” So yeah, Odysseus is rather a happy medium between those three heroes of famous epic. I suppose that all interlink within the stories of the epic cycle. Achilles is too angry. Aeneas is too nice, and then you’ve got Odysseus in the middle, rangy, complicated, exciting. Not quite sure what he’s going to do next. Not quite sure if he’s telling you the truth at any point.
Dr G 9:09
Ah, yes, Odysseus. Famously untrustworthy on many levels. I think there’s something really strong in what you’ve said about the way that teaching really changes the way that you know a text as well. Certainly, I find myself in a similar position. I also teach English literature as my main teaching focus at secondary, and I often try to bring in translations of ancient texts just to kind of supplement what might be going on underneath the surface? Because modern literature is often referring back to ancient texts, and I was like, if we can build a foundation for a little bit of ancient knowledge, they’ll start to recognize the symbolism, the motifs a little bit more. And a character like Odysseus is just a touch more exciting for. An audience, I would say, of new readers to epic texts, than say somebody like Aeneas, who yes has some flaws, but otherwise is just on the straight and narrow. You’re like, I’d really agree
Jenks 10:16
with you there because I’m certain at some point I had a children’s book of the Odyssey, but I definitely didn’t have a children’s book of the Iliad or the Aeneid at all.
Dr Rad 10:26
Yes, we’re not we’re not precious about Aeneas on here, in spite of our connections to ancient Rome. So one of the things we love about this book is that it really offers readers a different way into Greek mythology beyond Homer. And whilst this book is a choose-your-own-adventure, the paths of the adventure are definitely underpinned by your extensive research into the variants for Odysseus’s story in the ancient evidence that go beyond Homer. So, what were some of the challenges that you faced in bringing different sources for Odysseus to life?
Jenks 11:01
Well, I I suppose I should start. The book took about six years to write, but not like straight through. There was lockdown. I had a baby. I also have a job, obviously, and so I was at one point I was just writing it in maybe an afternoon a week. So one of the challenges was just finding the time to actually do the research and then actually write it because the research took so long, and then writing something that is changeable per section and keeping track of it is obviously quite hard. Although I found a program that helped me with that because I’m not great with numbers and I knew from the start I wasn’t going to be able to be able to keep all these bits in my head, especially as it grew and grew and grew. But what was really interesting is I started writing the alternatives first because I felt I was really familiar with the main story. I’d write that bit, put his choice in from the text. Odysseus thought in his great heart this way and that, and then put those choices in, and then think right. Okay, so what will happen if he does actually choose this? It can’t be, and you die because that’s boring. And in fact, the original version, you you got home in three, and everyone’s like, “Oh, that was great, and handed it back to me. Well, that that’s very dull. That all that proves is he really could have got home had he just said, “No, man, you are not going to sit around after fighting the coconas. We’re leaving. Ta da! The end. That would have been great. Woulda, shoulda, coulda. And whose fault is it anyway? God, that’s an amazing essay title that always comes up, and you you start asking yourself through all the way through. But yeah, finding that and then going off on an amazing tangent and a rabbit hole of research to work out, could this have happened? So is he likely to have become a hermit and stolen himself away? What stories are there? What aspects of his character could could link with that? And one summer I thought, oh, but what if he actually goes off with Menelaus, and Menelaus is his Nestor stories in books three and four? Right. Okay. Great. We don’t have any details of this because they’re lost from the epic cycle. So I’m just going to go with what he’s said he did, and then try and work out how he spends seven years doing it exactly, and which parts of the year he was like to be able to sail, where he was probably able to sail to the Stanford Orbis website, where you’re able to plot your way around the age. Well, was incredibly useful for that. Who would he be staying with that he might not have mentioned? And then in in Egypt, what is the comparative mythology with these Greek names, with the actual Egyptian names? And do I need to go so far as to actually find them and put them in? And at times I thought I did, and then I didn’t. And though actually I do, and then I found this amazing crossover myth where Heracles is raw, I think, and to be honest, the challenge was just stopping myself because it was so fascinating. And then I wanted to have a moment where you’re stuck in Egypt, so what do you see? And I don’t know anything about Egypt, and I’ve never had the chance to really study it because I came to teaching classics as a secondary thing, and I have a very tiny bit of a classical civilization degree. Mostly, it’s English literature, and because I’ve never taught it, it’s never come up. So that was quite fun. It was rather indulgent, actually. I did grow up in London and went to the British Museum pretty much every other weekend because it was free and we didn’t have any money, and I would hang out in the Egyptian galleries because there was a mummy there called Ginger, and I have Ginger hair and I felt very alone. And Ginger was my friend as a very small child.
Jenks 14:32
I feel a bit differently now about keeping people in museums, but as a child, this was just what the adults did, so obviously it felt completely accessible, and I learned a lot about what he looked like, but not really the details of it. So it was really fun to go and research that and think, right, what would it actually look like if you were looking out in the time of year and when the Nile floods? I think that was both the biggest challenge and also my. Favorite bit because it’s unwritten. I got to kind of do what I wanted with it, whilst then trying to keep a little bit within the style of homer’s text, but then also just within an adventure and and actually visualizing it for the reader.
Dr Rad 15:17
Yeah, no. Look, when I was exploring it, I was marveling at how you were able to keep track of all these different storylines, I was like, “Oh my god, how long did this have taken to do? I can’t even imagine trying to plot all of this out.
Jenks 15:31
I have to admit, I did have help with that because I’ve never been able to. I did find an amazing little bit of software. I’d sort of abandoned on the internet, and I I I paid for the full version and put it into practice-a piece of software for making essentially your own little choose-your own adventure, which I can’t say because they are a bit litigious books. What was difficult was I-I like to mess with the reader a bit in that there might be some choices where the you don’t know straight away what has been affected? So the next passage will sound almost identical to the passage that he does choose, but there’ll be something that has changed, and you’ll read it and hopefully get a sense of déjà vu. If you’re if you’re continuing on and trying different ways and think, have I read that before? Was there something similar that happened, or or have I gone down the same? And then you realize later that you have gone down a completely different path. So I hope that it was a bit mystifying in places. That’s intentional.
Dr G 16:30
Look, it it certainly presents lots of interesting pathways, and I think the power of placing the reader in the position of Odysseus makes this really unique because you start to feel the conundrums building up for you, and you’re like, “What kind of Odysseus am I going to be in this moment? And it’s a real opportunity to explore some of the ancient Greek values and also to test out your own modern values and see how that might sort of lead to like different pathways or different outcomes, and one of those ways that your book is doing this is through the concept of kleos, and first of all, this is a key concept associated with Greek heroes, and I’m not going to pretend I’m pronouncing anything in ancient Greek correctly because that hardly ever happens for me, but what is kleos and how does Odysseus embody it?
Jenks 17:26
Well, this is really embarrassing, but kleos is something I didn’t know about until about 10 years ago, having taught the Odyssey for about six years by that point, because I’d only been taught aidos and kudos as being almost two two sides of one coin. I like to teach them as two jars of pennies. You can have aidos pennies. They’re black and twisted, and they’re bad, and you can’t pay for anything with them. And then you can have kudos pennies, and they’re they’re good and shiny, and they all add up. And I didn’t realize that actually, yes, that that’s what it’s adding up to is kleos, that overall glory. So I like to think of aidos as your bad reputation, and kudos as your good reputation. The things you do that people will talk about, because that’s what we do. We talk about them, and that is the hopefully for most of them the the chaos, the the glory of their name lasting forever. And I do often notice in class as well that right now you are acting in a way that is earning you idos. But if you earn in a different way, then perhaps you’ll have more kudos, and I will forget about the idos for the rest of the lesson. You won’t get to detention. So it’s really a great way of talking about you can’t just be a bad person and a good person. You are both of those things, but you might do things that are regrettable at times, and so Odysseus is building up lots of kudos and some aidos. But in the end, his his kudos is must be greater because his kleos is is supreme. He is probably the most talked about hero. He’s not the one who does the most amazing things in Greek mythology, which is fascinating, he really doesn’t do half the most amazing things that even like Bellerophon does. Bellerophon, the greatest hero that no one’s ever heard of, unless they’re a real proper nerdy fan of Greek mythology. But I think because Odysseus has balanced those out almost to that point, where he’s you know is he going to gain more of one or the other? His his kleos has sort of become supreme.
Dr G 19:32
He has these moments where you think to yourself, how is he going to dig himself out of that hole? And then he pulls it around, and you’re like, okay, all right. So I do appreciate the way that Odysseus both gets himself into trouble and then finds ways to get himself out of trouble, and by doing so builds up this continuous store of chaos over time, which can be very impressive. Whilst also leaving the questions about the the choices he’s made, they’re maybe not not so good.
Jenks 20:05
He is.
Dr Rad 20:07
I think I’m definitely going to try that teaching strategy as well.
Dr Rad 20:09
Definitely works with the year nines
Dr G 20:12
Jars of coins for every student.
Jenks 20:16
One thing that’s that’s really interesting in Odysseus’ story because when I was plotting this, I I literally sat down with my copies of Gantz’s early myth and wrote down every single time Odysseus is in a myth or mentioned in a myth, and what he’s character tells you then is he has this arc from not wanting to go to war and not even really being that interested in in getting with Helen in the first place, but just being able to sort out these situations to being a guy who, on the way home, takes every single opportunity to earn yet more kudos, is he has this this arc that war has changed him. He’s he hated it to begin with, and by the end he hates it. But he can see what it can give him, and he wants to come home with something to really throw that off. He must have so much from the war that he can take home booty and goods and slaves who were never mentioned. But he just keeps going for more. There’s no reason to go to the Cyclops Island. They’re on Goat Island. They have food. They’re really happy. And he’s like, “Oh, but there might be some people over there, and we can get more. I’m just going to go and look, and and he loses six men, and it’s it’s not the only time. I mean, the rest of the time he is still he’s going to look for things. They could just take on at every island water and food and leave everything else alone. But oh, a curl of smoke! I love that Homer constantly uses the idea. There’s a wisp of smoke in the distance, and by the third time, the men the men’s reaction to hearing there’s a wisp of smoke is to burst into tears because they just don’t want to deal with it. But he just keeps going. Although at least two times he sends someone else to go and check the wisp of smoke, so he doesn’t die immediately. And this time, I mean, it works in terms of us still talking about him.
Dr Rad 21:58
Imagine their disappointment when they find out that it’s just the election of a new pope, disappointing. As you highlighted, it is possible when you are exploring this book to follow the path that Odysseus follows in Homer. So you can take the traditional journey, and there’s about 151 sections to take that path, but when you were recreating things, did you think, oh, you know what? There are these moments when even if you’re following a different version of events to what Odysseus would have done in Homer, it’s still something that is very consistent with Greek values.
Speaker 2 22:38
Absolutely, I suppose Xenia hospitality running through the entire text has to be respected no matter what. So all the different versions of the stories are: if you if you don’t give zenia, you will suffer. The people who don’t give zenya do suffer. That’s one of the the major themes, especially when you’re teaching it at a GCSE level and you need to teach them something that they can really focus on. All the bad guys don’t do xenia. All the good guys do. So that is consistent throughout. And one of the reasons why I started writing it in the first place was really for my extremely interested class a way of getting to understand Odysseus’s character better, and not to justify why he makes choices, but to teach them why in the moment, and with those values, he is making that choice, and then also deciding whether you still think that is the right choice or the wrong choice overall. Well, in fact, you can get to the end by following a slightly different path. You can still get to Ithaca, and you can still have this roughly the same outcome, but you will not be as talked about afterwards. Perhaps because you will not have done certain things. There is a point at which, when you finally get to the and you meet the Phaeacians, and then you get to tell your story. Obviously, you’ve already done that in the text, so you choose what what what story are you telling? Have you done amazing things? And then that’s directly linked to what booty and goods the Phaeacians will give you to go home with. And then you start you start going oh oh that’s why his story is so amazing. He is butt naked in a place with nothing. He doesn’t has has no way of getting home. These are very proud people. He has to impress them, and you realize why he’s such an unreliable narrator. I don’t really tackle the unreliable narrator thing here because it’s a second-person text. You’re either experiencing it or you aren’t. But I’m hoping that that will dawn on some readers certainly. But I do think most people are playing it with modern values because literally every single person who has told me that they’ve read it has said they got home straight away. Their their duty of care was to their people, the men and the the slaves on board the ships, and they just got home, and they really like that ending. Like, oh, I better read it again though, so that. That’s really interesting. It it does try and impress upon you think like Odysseus if you really want to, but but we don’t, which is really nice. And it also sounds like my readers are really lovely people.
Dr Rad 25:14
I like that idea.
Dr G 25:16
My first reading was a very quick reading, and I was like, huh, and we’re home. Ah, delightful, and nobody’s been strung up, and nothing bad has happened.
Jenks 25:26
I filled that full of little Easter eggs, so at least be satisfying. I hope I hope people recognize those as they then go, oh, flick to the end, start again.
Dr Rad 25:37
It’s making me think I’m a bad person because my way of reading it was, what’s the most chaotic way I can read? That’s the second thing that people say they’re going to
Jenks 25:45
do right now. I’m going to do everything wrong, but I included Troy Skate at the start, not to definitively make you bad or good, because again, we can’t really do that. But I found the story of him and Diomedes going into Troy and getting the Palladium, I thought was a really good moment because the story has to start chronologically, which it doesn’t in the original text. So we’re leaving Troy. Does he go with Menelaus? Does he go with Nestor? Does he stay with Agamemnon? And you’ve got to decide whether or not you’re going to do one of these things, and it’s not clear in the Odyssey which one of those he does anyway. So this is kind of a good trap because even if you know the Odyssey really well, you might not actually know which one of those to choose. And so I put in the sort of I called it the Diomedes Gate. Did you try and kill Diomedes? Oh no, I wouldn’t def definitely wouldn’t try and kill Diomedes. Just to try and get you thinking about: Are you ruthless, Odysseus, complicated Odysseus, trying to get all the kudos he can Odysseus, or are you a bit more of duty of care, Nostos-loving Odysseus? So still within the the key concepts, but it’s still it’s not completely binary, good or bad. It’s still slightly complicated, and there are two depending on which you decide to do. So it gets very complicated very quickly.
Dr G 27:07
Oh no! So I think there is a sense in which you are Odysseus really opens up what could be the narrow focus of an epic text, where you open it up and you’re like, here we go. It’s Homer, front cover to back cover. Let’s see what happens. And instead, what your text is doing is offering a really practical and engaging way to explore not just Homer but also the variants on that story as well. And I think you’ve touched on this a little already, but I’m interested in how you found using this text as a teaching resource.
Jenks 27:46
I would love to, except we don’t teach Homer anymore, and we’re going to die. I know. I know. Dare they? Oh
Dr Rad 27:53
my god! How galling!
Dr G 27:56
Petition for change.
Jenks 27:58
I keep saying no. Sorry, that’s very boring. I did use it initially when when it was in the early writing stages, and I did use it with a with a club at school and a few other clubs at school and some my older students as well. They were like my test readers. They were really keen on it, and I have a gaming group, or I had a gaming group anyway. They’ve left now. They’re all big boys and girls, and so we do RPG gaming, and this was kind of right up their street, and that was great fun. And they, some of them knew the story, some of them had been taught by me, and some of them didn’t know the story. And they did great fun things, like they’re going to tally how many people they killed by accident, which was great. And also, like right, they would have little discussions what might happen if we did this? And that that was exactly what I wanted. They were really thinking about the character, and then I also used it with the class that I was teaching, and they were like, “Oh, we know the right answers, and they still died, which was great. So it it it definitely got them thinking. Although sadly, we’ve we’ve switched modules now, and now I don’t get to teach any Homer, and I’m really sad, but we might switch back to a crime.
Dr G 29:07
Fingers crossed. I well,
Jenks 29:09
I started teaching classes. I used to have days when I’d start off with the Iliad, and then I’d go onto the the Odyssey, and then I’d finish with the Iliad, and it was amazing. And those were just wonderful halcyon days, and I remember them as full of sunlight under the magnolia tree outside, where I’d be plucking a magnolia petal to to fully explain. There’s that lovely simile in the Aeneid, where Pallas’ skin is pierced and it is like a thumbnail on a flat. And I used to demonstrate that, and that’s that’s and blood stains randomly on my copy of the Iliad West. I’ll put on dies, and I still don’t know how that happened. And now it’s admin and Roman cities, which I love. I’m a big fan of Pompeii, but it’s not Homer. But Pompeii
Dr G 29:56
does have a lot to offer. I’m not going to lie, but it does seem like. A timeline of unfortunate events to have such a great test. So I hope there is a moment of change where you get to bring it in because I would love to see how it goes. Well,
Jenks 30:13
obviously I couldn’t leave it alone, so I turned it into an audiobook podcast because I couldn’t think of anything else to do with it, and I wanted to use it as a teaching aid, so I thought this way might be great because it’s a really big book. It is heavy. It’s like three and a half pounds. It’s like half the size my daughter was when she was born, and that’s actually quite difficult. And I’ve got carpal tunnel. I can’t hold it up sometimes. And so there is an ebook version where you you click and it takes you to the right page, which is kind of fun. But I thought what would be really fun is to just take the main storyline, the bit that that people mostly might be interested in listening to, and presenting that to them in a different way, where it’s the second person narrative. But I’ve I’ve played with the sound effects, so now everything is soundscaped, so it’s more immersive. And if you close your eyes, you can really hear the Laestragonians eating your men, and the ships all sinking. It’s quite harrowing, actually. I had to tone that down a little bit, but then you also you get asked those choices, and there’s a little sound that says, “Oh, you have to make a choice now, and you have to think about which one would be better. And then the story picks up again, and it tells you which one he’s chosen, and you can go. What? No! Don’t shout at these high globs again. So that’s that’s just started, and that’s been really fun. And I’m still in the process of making that. I’ve made the first season where he’s still getting home, and then season two will be Ithaca there and back again, as it were. So yeah. So I, in a way, I still will be teaching people, but lots of people have said that they are planning on using it in class, or they’re giving it to their students, or that they’ve read it themselves to add to their knowledge of the Odyssey and look at it in a different way. And that-that is what I wanted, really, just to hopefully make people love it as much as I do and just think about it in a in a different direction.
Dr Rad 32:01
Oh, I have no doubt that the one reassuring thing about your situation is that you know that your resources constantly be and do, even if not by you, which seems crazy.
Jenks 32:14
I do love hearing that people when when my students go off to university, if they if they’re still doing a classical subject, they’ll like email me, go. I saw your comics and less and less, and I am quite proud that I’ve lost track now. At one point, it was at least 200 schools were using my classics GCSE resources, and that was that was about five or six years ago. So I don’t know how many it is now, but that that does make me really really proud because it it is a subject, especially in the UK, that’s really has been really stigmatized as being only for the rich or only in private schools, and we have had a spate of really quite awful politicians who have used the classical world to hold up their views. That has not stopped. I teach Fall of the Republic now, and I was like, well, this was unprecedented. But if we look at American now, yeah, that’s fun. Always great to have more examples. Proscription. Hey, that’s a word I didn’t think I’d be hearing in the news. So let’s talk about that. As usual, I’ve now lost the thread of this thought process. I’m so sorry, it’s very late.
Dr Rad 33:18
No, no, totally. No, look, it, it, you know, I’m bewailing the, you know, your ability to use these resources yourself. But in the possibilities in our syllabus, I, I don’t think I ever really go into the Odyssey in as much detail as I would say the Iliad. The way that, the way that we teach it as like an ancient history subject, it’s more about Troy, and therefore the Iliad and the Odyssey are kind of just some of the sources that you may use, and you don’t really go into them so much as as classical texts. I think you’d probably come across it more as you say, perhaps as like a language type source if you if you did Greek, which again, as you say, for us would be something that you probably only do if you go to a private school.
Jenks 34:06
Oh, that’s what I was talking about. Sorry. Well, this is the thing. I didn’t do it at a private school. I was really lucky at my state school that they got a Latin teacher in to teach those who were interested in Latin up to the GCSE, and so I did it as a twilight subject before school, after school, and then we did the GC at the qualification in that in year 10 before I made rest of my exams in year 11, and I think that basically changed the trajectory of my life. Aside from hanging out in museums all the time and having parents who were really really keen for us to do that, which was great. I’d never really thought of the concept of language as separate. We’d done French, we’d done Spanish. They were really interesting, but now we were studying the language, not just learning what to say. And I didn’t know anything about English grammar either, which because they just didn’t teach that in the 80s. For I am older than I look, and so I was. What what is a verb? I think my friends will laugh because I I I knew nothing and they never saw me turning into an actual teacher of Latin. And so I when I teach Latin now, it is pretty much only to 11 and 12 year olds that I teach it. My my colleagues teach more of the Latin than I do, but I still link it directly to English grammar and the etymology of of English words to really give them something to grab hold on to, and so, like you were saying, then with the Odyssey and the Iliad as being texts to support things like like Troy and the Trojan War, that’s actually what it is on the GCSE. We we look at the Mycenaean world, and Troy is one of the cities that we look at you know pocket-sized versions of, and then we use the Odyssey to support that, which is really interesting because does it? It’s a little, maybe a little bit anachronistic, but it’s really interesting to consider that as being in the the Bronze Age and and the Mycenaean period. But yeah, so this this idea that it has been stigmatized, but it’s it’s perfectly possible for anyone to access it if they have the resources, and that’s what I was always really keen to provide. And realized pretty quickly that things I was making for my classes, if I just stuck them on the internet, other people might find them, and they did. So there was a need for them. So then I handed out my resources for teaching as well as just the the fun extra stuff, and that kept going too. And then I just made fun paper kits for the for the lols at the end of class, and those those do those go around those do well at the end of the year as well. People are always looking forward to making something fun that sort of props up what they’ve been teaching. So I’m really proud to have done that, and I really hope this book will can continue doing that. Hopefully,
Dr Rad 36:44
oh no doubt it will. Now, apart from discovering that Aeneas is actually rather dull, were there any other mythic characters that, when you were developing this book, suddenly stood out to you in a different way?
Jenks 37:00
Oh, Menelaus is adorable, actually, and I’d never paid him any attention because we don’t study books three and four, and I’d I was really rusty on them, and I was reading again, going, “Oh, he’s he just wants to be his friend. He really misses it. Oh, this is adorable. So it kind of if you if you go to Egypt, becomes a little bit of a buddy romance comedy, but Menelaus is also back with his wife. So you’re you’re third wheeling, and it gets a bit embarrassing, and you keep having to find things to do, and then they dump you while they go off for like a year, and you’re stuck looking after the entire fleet, and you’re bored. And I just thought that was hilarious. So yeah, absolutely. Menelaus is is is my buddy. I was trying to create a fantasy cast because I thought this would be this would be really fun way of making a film of the Odyssey. This was before Christopher Nolan announced his film of the Odyssey. That was beautiful timing for me because I literally just announced that I’d be publishing it in a year or so, so yes. Thank you, Christopher Nolan, for essentially doing my marketing for me. And I, I think I had. Oh, who did I have? I’m going to have to look it up now, and you’ll have to edit this bit out. But oh, one of the Gleesons, you know, Brendan Gleeson, but then his son, just really happy, like a big Labrador, essentially a big ginger Labrador. Yeah, and Helen was really spiky, and I couldn’t quite decide who would play Helen, and I I settled on um, oh what’s her name, Dimitriu in um, in what we do in the shadows. That might not be the best choice of casting, but I thought she’d prickly like that and just be like, yes, I’m brilliant, and you can deal with it.
Dr Rad 38:42
When I used to teach Troy, and the big assessment tasks that my class would do would be designing a new movie of the Iliad or the Odyssey, and they had to come up with things like their casting and what kind of genre was it going to be, and a lot of them did actually pick to do like a, you know, like a buddy, you know, like road trip kind of story. So yeah, this all makes perfect sense to me. I suppose
Jenks 39:09
every every bit of classical reception or every retelling is kind of got to be a reflection of the time period it’s made in and reflect the things that people find interesting or they don’t want to. Which is why I’m fascinated to know what this film is going to look like when it comes out in June, July.
Dr Rad 39:25
Oh, I know, right? I know.
Dr G 39:27
I’m like, what is this? Yeah, certainly from the visuals, I’m a little bit confused, but I, I am interested to obviously I’ll go and watch it because I need to know. But yeah, I’m just not sure how to feel about it right now.
Jenks 39:42
I’ve decided I’m not. I’m not going to feel it until I see it because I’m still convinced all the gray and brown stuff we’ll see will be like revealed to be a front, and it will like open up like a Technicolor Oz as soon as we go in the supernatural world. Hopefully,
Dr Rad 39:56
that would be a marketing ploy that would really work for me.
Dr G 40:00
Certainly, the trailer is just sort of like dark looks and like people looking over their shoulder, being like, “And I’m like, what’s going on? It’s hardly any dialog. It’s
Jenks 40:10
just men walking around, and I suppose it kind of makes you realize, yeah, actually, a lot of the Odyssey is men walking around.
Dr G 40:18
It is.
Jenks 40:19
So I suppose that’s not really wrong.
Dr G 40:23
Men walking around and women standing still, being like,
Jenks 40:25
“Yeah. I mean, I I like that Homer doesn’t focus on those bits. So I, when I going back to the book, I suppose we probably should talk about putting in more so that you can experience it was quite an arduous task. In a that’s the wrong thing to say. It wasn’t arduous task. It was an honorable task, and I was honored to do it. But it was it was difficult because I didn’t want to stray outside the boundaries of Homer. But I also wanted that to make people feel like they were there to add bits, and I didn’t want to just retell Homer because Homer’s already done that, and it’s brilliant. So I want to add something to it. So I did add more walking around, but still more more description of what you would see while you were there. But that is something fascinating as well, where Homer really does gloss over stuff and just then focus on the really interesting bits, like the sirens. Always amazes me that it’s only like a paragraph. That’s it. This incredibly memorable moment is I don’t know, like 20-five lines or something, and the only bit that’s focused on is what they say and what they do. And him stuck to the mast. All the other details that would have been there, the men rowing and so forth, is is kind of ignored until Odysseus is asking them to to tie him up more and that kind of thing, and then there’s there’s even moments where Homer just leaves stuff out. So I think it’s in book 13 or books 14, and Odysseus and Telemachus have revealed themselves to each other, and then Eumaeus comes back, and then Eumaeus goes out for the day, and Odysseus and Telemachus just have that afternoon together, but that’s not talked about. Homer goes off and follows Eumaeus, so that was that was fun. I got to write what they would be talking about, but I didn’t want to write a word for word thing. He says this, he says that, because that’s not entirely in the spirit of the text. So it’s it’s still summative and fleeting, but it hopefully still fills a gap that was there in in the story because you’re only getting the bits of the story that Odysseus can see. You don’t see Eumaeus go off and talk to Penelope because you’re in his hut, and that’s happening elsewhere. So that what I’m hoping there is that people who’ve read the audience be going, oh, that’s the bit when that happens in that scene, but we’re not going to see that until later. Or if they read it, they ought to see later, having read this first. They’re like, “Oh no, I know those moments of real satisfaction where you can show that you know something, and it makes it hopefully richer and more alive for you. Either way you read
Dr G 42:56
it, look, there’s so much potential here, and to turn from these sort of like these physical characters of this world to the more metaphysical characters, so you open with the Greek muse Calliope, but sometimes the story ends with a different muse, and I’m going to try to pronounce her name, and I’ll probably get it wrong, Melpomene. So we have a switch from one muse to another muse, and often epics will open with a sort of a question or a desire for the muse to compel in some way in in terms of the story. And so to have this switch is really interesting. And so, I’m interested in what realms of knowledge do these two muses cover, and why might readers want to be on the lookout for which muse is part of which story?
Jenks 43:52
I’m really glad you asked that because I love this bit. I tried to put at the end each time you finish your story. I won’t say die because you don’t die in every single one. But each time you finish your story, I give you another epithet to be that version of Odysseus that you ended up being. But then yes, Melpomene turns up because you have effed up royally, and wow. Whereas is the muse of epic poetry, whom you’re meant to have started off with, and whom, in the the traditional text, the poet speaks directly to in an invocation at the start. Oh, hear me muse and help me tell this story, which I always think is brilliant. It’s like everyone’s oh, curtains up, right? It’s starting. Everyone be quiet because the muse is being invoked, and it also stops the rapsode rhapsode. Sorry, I’m saying wrong. From being a bit hubristic by saying I can tell all this myself. No, I need the god’s help, and it is inspiration, and that also makes it more worthy to listen to, and that’s that’s the muse you want. To tell an epic poem, you don’t want the muse of tragedy to take over, and that’s what’s happened. So I did. I I did have a really fun time writing a a tragedy in verse for when you have completely royally effed up, because I love tragedy. That was one of my favorite things on my A level. We sat around reading tons of of Sophocles and and and Aristophanes, and and it was not Aristophanes; he’s a comedian. What we also did sit around reading comedians and just giggling, which was great. But Aeschylus, so I really wanted to put in a Euripidean tragedy because he does like to. I I do like his the best, and that was really really fun. But also, it actually made me cry, which was I think hopefully a sign that I’ve done it well in homage. But the idea that you are now the cause, having returned of everyone’s death, hurrah! So yeah, I’m pleased to have introduced another muse, but only because I’m a chaos goblin who loves making things go wrong.
Dr G 46:06
I think it’s totally appropriate. Things have changed. Things have gone badly. It’s like passing the baton. A new muse enters stage left, being like, “I’ll take it from here. This is no longer an epic.
Dr Rad 46:18
So your book is not just about the substance. You also obviously wanted to emulate a certain feeling and style to the way that the ancient Greeks told these stories. How did you try to emulate the poetics of Homer’s Odyssey in this book? This
Jenks 46:34
is one of my favorite bits to teach. As a former English teacher, teaching epic simile and formula and epithet, these are great, and they’re they’re from a teaching point of view, they are really great handles on the text. And often they’re the bits that will get you’ll get a gobbet of a of the text in the exam, and you’ll be asked what makes this so great. Well, in my opinion, no no opinion here. Please tell me what is the technique and what is the effect of the technique? And the whole point of these techniques is to make the listener actually be able to visualize it. And so I tried to make sure that all the similes are left intact, added to ever so slightly. But honestly, you don’t need to because they’re so vivid and special and deep. I have a huge fondness for epic similes. I I did a bit of a deep dive into one using the research of a fabulous woman in the 1920s His name I completely forgot, Eliza something. I’m going to check that in a second. Who had categorized every single simile across Homer, and you learn so much just reading what the similes are about, even from like how they baked bread or what the methods were for for separating the chaff and the corn-it’s amazing. And the roles of women, and the roles of men, and the roles of children, and absolutely fascinating stuff. So I included all of those. I did therefore have to write more or similar ones, but with slightly different backgrounds to them, in that they would imply what was happening, because often you get that sense of ominous foreboding from some similes, and and so that and epithets as well get included. So I think that’s one of the things that gives you the most sort of Homeric feel without tripping over the text too much. It it they don’t stick out as much as perhaps making every single line sound like a translation of Homer. One thing I also did was I read seven different versions, seven different translations of the text. I think I’ve got eight now. Actually, I lost track. I’ve got also a really nice graphic novel as well, which I do love dipping into, but I didn’t use it for this and a pop-up version, but I also didn’t use that one either. But I liked being able to look at the way that certain parts of the text, all the similes, had been translated from. I think my earliest one is 1800 or it’s later than the first translations, and then the most recent one I think I had was the Emily Wilson one, and she’s fascinating. She obviously talks hugely about the the history of translation in in her work and how she came to her decisions, and comparing to previous translations as well. But often, if I would be thinking, right, well, how exactly is this? This translation says this. Let me compare this over here. What exactly is happening, and and what image are we meant to get? And that was very clarifying, which is something I hadn’t really realized before. You can be really colored in your in your expectations by which translation you read, and that had never really been hammered home to be before. And we read often whichever one is free and out of copyright because it makes it a lot cheaper for the people running the exam, and those are not the best versions at all. I believe the phrase “the moist house of Hades” appeared in one. I was like, “That is, that is not a sentence I want to read out
Speaker 3 49:59
loud. Yes, gross.
Dr G 50:00
What a visual! Yeah, yeah.
Jenks 50:04
So that that was something I I think helped me a lot with that, and knowing which bits to include and which bits to emulate and how to emulate them more.
Dr G 50:13
I think this gives us a sense of just the power of translation over time as well, because different translations suit different audiences, and Odysseus himself, with his own epithets in translation and the way he’s described it, it changes over time. So we get things like many-minded Odysseus or complicated Odysseus, and all of these ways of describing him position him as somebody who’s not necessarily nice. And when I think about what happens in the epic poem itself, I certainly would not want to be traveling home with this guy. I think about what are the chances that you will come through that journey, there are many ways to get lost along the way. But having said that, why do you think we continue to find his story compelling and enduring?
Jenks 51:12
I think it is exactly that he isn’t nice, and I think some of the best characters have always just not been nice, and they’re unpredictable, and there is still something about them that compels you to enjoy their presence, or at least want to know what they will do next. And I’m sure if you look through literature, those are the characters that that stand out, and those are the texts that that constantly get read and revisited. Again, like I said earlier, some Greek character, some some ancient Greek mythical heroes, just fall by the wayside because they no longer lack the kind of interest that the modern audience wants. They want people as characters. They want really detailed characterizations. They want to know everything about. They want a close up in a way, really. That’s what we’re used to now: full face on screen details, being able to read every single facial expression. And Odysseus even has facial expressions. He motions with his eyebrows, which I love. Like everyone can can visualize that. And I think also what’s really important is that he spends the most exciting and important bit of the text narrating, so we get his first person narrative, whereas we don’t get that in the Iliad. It’s all third person, and we do get to hear from. Oh my God, I forgot his name from Achilles. We do get to hear from Achilles directly, and he gives that amazing speech, which often I like to read aloud in class, and then people will come and check what’s wrong and why am I shouting, because it’s so good. But you can really feel his passion rising, but you don’t get it from his point of view from him telling everyone what’s happening, and I think that would be a really fun way to obviously that’s sort of been done a little bit in the Song of Achilles, although from Patroclus’ viewpoint, that is something that you you get with Odysseus. But even then, you don’t know whether to believe him, and that’s fascinating. So you can read you can read the Odyssey time and time again, as I have done, and notice things you absolutely did not notice before, or things that he suggests, or the way in which he says it, or the way in which the image every time he lands, there’s a wisp of smoke, or there’s a young girl fetching water on her own. Red flag. Is it the daughter of the Laestrygonians? Is it Athenian disguise? Is it just a girl? And I like those visual signposts, and I try to include those because they they really stick out all of a sudden. I try to include those in the in the text and in the the audio book podcasty thing, so that you you hopefully you hear that and go, oh wait, I’ve heard that before. Like hopefully in the text, you would have been originally the the audience listening to the poet and go oh oh no I’ve heard that before this can only go badly those those signposts just like the similes as well are just so important and we get those in modern literature too and again they give that idea that idea of satisfaction that we’ve noticed something and we’re involved in it and you would do that these days in a media and film you’d have certain colors or maybe something in the background. Like everyone’s like, “Oh, the guy’s just talking. There’s a space in the background. What’s going to happen in the space in the background? It’s that kind of visual narrative and and storytelling. I think that does really translate. So it’s still really recognizable, even though it’s in a completely different format to something that we would normally consume.
Dr Rad 54:38
So to sum up all of this fascinating stuff we’ve been talking about. What do you hope that your readers of You Are Odysseus are going to take away from this interactive experience that you have created?
Jenks 54:54
Well, I hope they’re going to to not hate Odysseus off the bat because of so many people. And they’ll just say, “Oh, war crimes done, canceled. Yes, obviously war crimes. Everyone else is doing war crimes too. We’re not justifying war crimes, but we are looking at a specific set of values and a specific situation. What would you do if you were in that situation? You’d apparently get home. Well done, you. And who will know your name in the future? So I really would like people to not feel awful about themselves, but feel really good about themselves, and then also poke a little deeper and see if they can read the right version, as it were. There is, in fact, a set of author notes on my website, and if you have the book, there’s a little code to type in, and it takes you to a page where it has all the correct order of sections. If you want to check your answers, and I I made it into a spreadsheet as well, so you can print it off and tick it off. Which I’m really glad I did because I was like, which sections I had to color code them, and then I had to print it off for myself making the podcast because I couldn’t remember which was which. And there is actually one mistake which I do have to re-edit in terms of which one goes where. So that’s quite a fun test, but it just the idea that hopefully we’ll learn something else as well, and maybe look further to another myth, or seek out some comparative mythology, or go and watch this film later and go, oh, they’ve missed out this bit and this bit, or or another piece of media, or watch Ulysses 31 and go, that’s not Odysseus, that’s Aeneas. He’s too nice, or something like that, because that’s what I do in my lessons. Hopefully, when you’re reading Shakespeare, you’ll notice a myth. You go, oh, we learned about that over here, and like you were saying, linking these stories together because they’re always referred back to in some way, there’s always a question on a game show as well, and University Challenge, and it comes up time and time and time again. And what I really, really, really want is just to have made this text, which some people just will assume is too hard to read because it’s old, not inaccessible. Just it’s something you can listen to. It’s something you can read and take control of. It’s something you can compare to the real thing, and notice different things because of it. That’s what I’d like.
Dr Rad 57:12
I think you can rest assured that that is probably what your readers will take away. This truly is the most amazing project, and I think a real a real monument to to what you’ve been working towards in your guys. You’re super kind. Oh no, it’s it’s amazing. When I simply did it, I was like, oh my god, I can’t believe no one’s ever thought to do this before. This is a genius idea. It’s one of those things that once it exists, I’m like, ah, of course. But I would never have really thought about it until you’d already done it. Well, this
Jenks 57:44
is the thing: people have made choose your own, choose your own versions of the Odyssey before, but they’re really short and they’re very much you die, and maybe not everyone would have thought let’s do this, but then with a million different endings and huge amount of detail and make the book too heavy to actually carry, and yeah, I couldn’t. I couldn’t cut it. That’s part of its
Dr G 58:05
charm at this point. I think it gives it that weightiness actually lends to the idea that this is not just about Homer’s version of the Odyssey. It is about Odysseus emerging out of a mythic landscape where so many stories are told, and these stories can be connected in a variety of different ways, depending on who the rhapsod is, where they are, what their audience is like, and when the opportunity comes and it’s written down, we have this new version of what Odysseus could be and how he might present in the world, and I think part of the richness of the text that you’ve created is that you’re bringing some of that complexity of the tapestry of myth to life for people in a way that is incredibly readable, and the passages are generally not. It’s not like an endurance reading moment. Like the book itself is heavy, but the sections themselves are relatively short in the sense that you you don’t ever feel like oh I I can’t pick this up just before I go to bed because a chapter is like 30 pages long. It’s not like that. You can get to a choice and be like you know what gonna you know put my bookmark in there, and we’re going to think about that choice, and I’m not going to make it just yet. I will come back tomorrow. Yeah, no,
Jenks 59:26
I hadn’t thought of that, but actually, that makes me really happy.
Dr Rad 59:29
And you know what? I also think that, given the nature of what this is all about, it’s it’s good to have a physical workout happening whilst you are reading it. It just seems to make sense. It’s too easy otherwise.
Dr G 59:42
Yeah. Do you want to be a Greek guru? You’re going to have to lift that bro. Yeah.
Dr Rad 59:46
Work on those muscles.
Jenks 59:47
Yes. Lift the book. One in each hand.
Dr G 59:50
Epic adventures. They’re not light. No, no. You
Dr Rad 59:53
got to be physically and mentally prepared. Yeah.
Dr G 59:56
Well, thank you so much for spending the time to chat. With us about this amazing book that you have written, we’re so thrilled to go into more detail about it, and we encourage anybody who is in any way interested in epic myth to seek this text out and try it for yourself, and enjoy being immersed in this world in a new and fun way.
Dr Rad 1:00:30
Thank you for listening to this special episode of the Partial Historians. You can find our sources, sound credits, and an automated transcript in our show notes. Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman. The Partial Historians is part of the Memory Collective, creators and educators dedicated to sharing knowledge that is accessible, contextualized, socially conscious, and inclusive. To find more from the Memory Collective, head to collectivemem.com. You too can support our show and help us to produce more engaging content about the ancient world by becoming a Patreon. In return, you receive exclusive early access to our special episodes and ad-free content. If monthly patronage is not your style, we have merch, we have a book, or you can just buy us a coffee on Ko-fi. And we’d like to say a big thank you to all our Patreon supporters for making special episodes like this one possible. However, if your imperial coffers do not overflow us, one of the easiest and most important ways to help us is to tell someone about the show or give us a five-star review wherever you listen. Until next time, we are yours in ancient Rome.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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