By Ainsley Atinon
Like many kids who grew up in the noughties, my first introduction to Greek mythology, or mythology as a whole for that matter, was the Percy Jackson series. Looking back, I find it incredibly interesting that a set of YA books with a plot and characters that are honestly pretty basic gained popularity to the tune of 180 million sales globally. Rick Riordan, the author of Percy Jackson, has since capitalised on this success by writing books based on Roman, Egyptian, Navajo, Hindu and other mythologies. Was it perhaps the fact that Percy Jackson was a mythological retelling that made it so successful?
If you haven’t been keeping up with the latest developments in the world of books, you might be surprised to find out that mythological retellings are still massively popular in 2024. Greek mythology in particular has been blowing up: titles like The Song of Achilles, A Thousand Ships and Daughters of Sparta are notable favourites among modern readers. These retellings have permeated every sector of the book industry, from new adult books to kids’ books to literary fiction.
However, Greek myths aren’t the only ones that are being reinterpreted by modern authors. For example, Tales of the Celestial Kingdom is based on a Chinese myth, and The Famine Witch is an Irish folklore retelling.
Why have mythological retellings endured?
An obvious reason mythological retellings have retained their appeal through the millennia is simply that the stories they’re based on are really, really good. While this is a massive oversimplification, there’s a sense in which the myths that survive to the present day do so through a process of natural selection. The stories that connect with people in a particularly strong way get retold again and again until they reach us in 2024. Much of this is down to story structure: a sizeable portion of both ancient and modern literature follows what’s called the ‘hero’s journey’.
However, there’s more to the mythology retelling trend than simply the stories they’re based on. After all, a modern interpretation of The Iliad isn’t the sort of book you’d expect to blow up on TikTok. Good mythological retellings also add their own twists to old stories, whether that be in terms of point of view, themes or language.
What makes a good mythological retelling?
If you’re an aspiring writer, you might be tempted to think that retelling a myth is easy. After all, how hard can it be to take a classic story like The Iliad or Le Morte d’Arthur and rewrite it in modern English?
Sadly, that’s not all there is to it. If you have a browse through some of the most popular mythological retellings on the market, you’ll notice a few similarities. To be sure, you can find exceptions to all these rules, but here’s what I’ve noticed the best myth rewritings have in common.
1. Respect for the original
The unique selling point of a mythological retelling is that it capitalises on a well-known story. To leverage this USP, a reinterpretation of a classic tale needs to remain loyal enough to its source material for readers to recognise the original story.
There are many ways for a myth retelling to respect the original, including staying true to characters’ personalities and motives, using detailed historical research to create a realistic setting and striving to retain the beauty of the language in which the original story was told if it’s a translated work.
2. Modernising themes
While it’s important to respect the original myths, a retelling is a distinct type of work from a translation. The best mythological retellings manage to stay true to their source text while still exploring themes that are relevant to today’s culture.
For example, Madeleine Miller’s Song of Achilles highlights the romance between Patroclus and Achilles, which wasn’t explicitly fleshed out in The Iliad. More broadly, Miller’s adaptation of the classic myth explores same-sex love as one of its themes, a contemporary twist to a classic myth. While we have examples of homosexual love in ancient texts, modern authors are more willing to directly use it as a theme.
3. Shifting perspectives
All stories are written within a particular cultural context. One way myth retellings differentiate themselves from their source context and material is by telling the story from the perspective of traditionally marginalised or unheard voices.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Circe, another Madeleine Miller book, which retells The Odyssey from the point of view of one of the story’s female characters, Circe. A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes, which tells the story of the Trojan War from the perspective of the women involved, is another example.
Another interesting way modern retellings use point of view is by telling the story from the perspective of the villain. One of the most famous examples of this is John Gardner’s Grendel, which retells Beowulf from the perspective of one of the original story’s primary antagonists.
At the end of the classic fantasy novel The Once and Future King (another mythological retelling), a dying King Arthur makes a young soldier named Tom swear to keep the story of his life going. This is an apt metaphor for the very concept of mythological retelling.
The appeal of repackaging ancient myths in fresh, new ways has been around forever. What we consider to be the original myths are themselves retellings of an even older tradition. Mythological retellings have endured for thousands of years, and I wouldn’t bet against their surviving thousands more.
Ainsley is a second-year Publishing and Communications student who does social media and other marketing-adjacent things for Grattan Street Press. In his previous life, Ainsley has worked in digital marketing for startups. His areas of interest include old books, Instagram hamsters and music from before the invention of coloured TV.
Cover image by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash. Free to use under the Unsplash License.
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