Ecofeminist Approaches to Madeline Miller’s ‘Circe’

This paper explores the dichotomy of freedom and incarceration on Aiaia in the Odyssey and Madeline Miller’s Circe (2018). Engaging with reception theory, ecofeminism, and phenomenology, I examine the island of Aiaia as a feminine space in which the experiences of imprisonment and freedom are gendered, and as an setting in which Circe’s individual consciousness …

Remembering Someone Else’s Past: The Social Psychology of Odysseus’ Fake Autobiographies (Od. 14 and 19)

Odysseus’ false tales in the second half of the Odyssey have been widely discussed, but seldom from the point of view of memory. If considered as artful constructions of fake autobiographical memories, they offer interesting insight on Homeric realism. That is, one can observe how Odysseus moves in his world using (fake) memories in a …

The Iconography of War and Violence in Persia and the Near East

Warfare and violence appear often in the ancient texts; the Bible is no different. In a world of images and visuality, perceptions and imagination were formed by these concepts before translation into writing. The iconographic approach pioneered by Othmar Keel demonstrates the advantages of the iconographic approach in historicising the Bible and enabling further critical …