The Odyssey, Translation, and Politics

The Odyssey (2026) by Melinda Sue Gordon—Universal Pictures

Christopher Nolan's Odyssey has received backlash for every aspect of production: dialogue and accents, costuming and set design, and especially its casting choices. One of the most significant controversies was Nolan's use of Emily Wilson's translation for inspiration. The issue is largely political since Wilson is a feminist whose beliefs influenced her work and media outlets have celebrated her. partly, because she is female. But is their evidence that Wilson's work might be detrimental to the story?

Yes.

Scholars have noted that Wilson's translation imposes certain interpretations. John Byron Kuhner highlighted how she translated the same word - huperphialos - as "insolent" or "arrogant" for Penelope's boorish suitors but as "high-minded" for a drunken, cannibalistic monster. Deborah H. Roberts and Richard Whitaker mentioned that she placed more blame on Odysseus for the deaths of his crewmen than the original.

The simplifying of Odysseus is a reoccurring problem with Wilson's translation. She says he "has affairs with Calypso and Circe in the course of his wanderings" (40) and calls him "an adulterer" (79) but misses how these experiences qualify as rape. Calypso keeps Odysseus on her island against his will and he's so unhappy that he sits on the shoreline, crying (5. 151 - 158). Circe, according to Odysseus, had to be bedded or she would've killed him and his men (10. 280 - 300). Since both scenarios involve coercion and contravene Odysseus' ability to consent, framing him as just a philanderer erases the text's complexity and the realities of male sexual victimization. Moreover, Wilson dismisses the idea that Odysseus leaves Calypso for the sake of love:

Presumably, Odysseus is inspired by a deep loyalty to his wife, son, father, and the place of his birth, and moved by a deep and constant love for those he left behind. But we must avoid projecting the anachronistic ideas of chivalric romantic love onto Odysseus, who is not a medieval knight performing valiant deeds for the sake of a beautiful lady (60).

She instead suggests that he had egoistic reason: 

If Odysseus had stayed with Calypso, he would have been forever subservient to a being more powerful than himself. He would have lost forever the possibility of being king of Ithaca, owner of the richest and most dominant household on his island—an estate wealthy in pigs, sheep, goats, fruit, grain, wine, and slaves, with an old father, a young son, and a desirable, much-courted, and valuable wife all devoted to him, and all increasing his value in the eyes of his neighbors" (60).

Robert Girvan. however, found that multiple English-language translations had a line about Odysseus missing his wife and home (1. 10 - 15). Notably, Wilson's translation was among the few that did not have these lines. 

There's substantial evidence that Wilson's translation distorts as much of the original text as it clarifies. If Nolan took inspiration from her work, then it adds an additional layer of cultural inaccuracy to an adaptation that's already overwhelmed by them. Thus, the skepticism and backlash appear warranted.

Folktale Art

"The Four Skillful Brothers" (1909) by Arthur Rackham

"The Further Adventures of the Fisherman" (1912) by René Bull

"Rapunzel" (1914) by Florence Susan Harrison

"Beauty and the Beast" (1913) by Warwick Goble

"Snow White and Rose Red" (1911) Jessie Willcox Smith

"The Snow Queen" (2009 ) by Lisa Hunt

Obscure Find

In 2015, Jacqueline Simpson published an article, "They Say England Has No Folktales," where she outlined the misconceptions people have about the country's narrative tradition. One striking reference concerned a variant of tale type 1525A, "Tasks for a Thief":

Henry Mayhew in London Labour and the London Poor (1861) gives a short, vigorous rendering of a version of The Master Thief, here entitled Clever Jack, which was told him by an intelligent looking 16-year-old boy in a London workhouse. The boy said the inmates would sometimes tell stories among themselves – romantic ones, bawdy ones, and ones about ‘some big thief who was very clever at stealing’. He added that they would always call the hero Jack. 

It was an exciting discovery. The tradition-bearer was unexpected (young, working-class, male), there was some context for the telling, and the story was published in a non-folklore book. Finding the tale was mildly difficult, since Simpson didn't cite the volume (3rd) or page numbers (389 - 390), but here it is:

Clever Jack

    You see, mates, there was once upon a time, and a very good time it was, a young man, and he runned away, and got along with a gang of thieves, and he went to a gentleman's house, and got in, because one of his mates sweethearted the servant, and got her away, and she left the door open. And the door being left open, the young man got in and robbed the house of a lot of money, 1000ℓ., and he took it to their gang at the cave. Next day there was a reward out to find the robber. Nobody found him.

    So the gentleman put out two men and a horse in a field, and the men were hidden in the field, and the gentleman put out a notice that anybody that could catch the horse should have him for- his cleverness, and a reward as well ; for he thought the man that got the 1000ℓ. was sure to try to catch that there horse, because he was so bold and clever, and then the two men hid would nab him.

    This here Jack (that's the young man) was watching, and he saw the two men, and he went and caught two live hares. Then he hid himself behind a hedge, and let one hare go, and one man said to the other, 'There goes a hare,' and they both run after it, not thinking Jack's there. And while they were running he let go the t'other one, and they said, ' There's another hare,' and they ran different ways, and so Jack went and got the horse, and took it to the man that offered the reward, and got the reward ; it was 100ℓ.; and the gentleman said 'D-n it, Jack's done me this time.'

    The gentleman then wanted to serve out the parson, and he said to Jack, 'I'll give you another 100ℓ. if you'll do something to the parson as bad as you've done to me.'

    Jack said, 'Well, I will;' and Jack went to the church and lighted up the lamps, and rang the bells, and the parson he got up to see what was up. Jack was standing in one of the pews like an angel, when the parson got to the church.

    Jack said, 'Go and put your plate in a bag; I'm an angel come to take yon up to heaven.' And the parson did so, and it was as much as he could drag to church from his house in a bag ; for he was very rich. And when he got to the church Jack put the parson in one bag, and the money stayed in the other ; and he tied them both together, and put them across his horse, and took them up hills and through water to the gentleman's, and then he took the parson out of the bag. and the parson was wringing wet.

    Jack fetched the gentleman, and the gentleman gave the parson a horsewhipping, and the parson cut away, and Jack got all the parson's money and the second 100ℓ., and gave it all to the poor. And the parson brought an action against the gentleman for horsewhipping him, and they both were ruined.

    That's the end of it.

Review: Fairy Tale Mothers

 

Fairy Tale Mothers (1990) examines mothers, stepmothers, and mothers-in-law in Germanic and Scandinavian tales. The book has nine segments: preface, introduction, Grimm tales, the kind and unkind girls, stepmothers with stepsons, tales of spinning, mother-son bonds, birthing episodes, and a conclusion. Its author, Torborg Lundell, was a Professor of Swedish at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Having published articles about folkloristics and motherhood, Lundell revisits those topics, but it's a picayune contribution to fairy tale studies.

There are typos like "femininity" being misspelled as "feminity" (19) and split words like "foun tain" (84). Lundell also makes assertions without evidence: that the editorial changes the Brothers Grimm made to "Hansel and Gretel" were "a mechanism to impose guilt on all normal mothers who, even if they have enough food, sometimes while raising their children may often wish they would get lost for a while" (34 - 35). She also used the term "male fantasy" to describe three stories with implicit or explicit incest themes - "Snow White" (36), "Strong Hans" (45), and "Thousandsfurs" (54) - thus equating male heterosexuality and even fatherhood with perversion and abuse. R. J. Alexander noted the bigotry in a review: "many readers will be offended by the snide, quasi-chauvinistic remarks that mar the text from time to time" (103). 

Inger Lövkrona was more positive in her review; she found Lundell's analyses of tale types to be "convincing" (179) but critiqued her methodology, "I miss in her study a discussion of Jung's theories and their relevance to preindustrial peasant society and a thorough methodological demonstration of how to carry out the analysis. The ahistoric premise in psychological theory is problematic when it is applied to cultural and social phenomena that are historically determined and changeable" (179).

The book's strengths are its representative sampling of European texts and occasional insights. In the former case, Lundell "read close to 2,000 tales" (1) and translated texts from German (53) and Swedish (57 - 59). In the latter case, she highlighted details like stepmothers inadvertently helping their stepdaughters (44), spinning tales not showing women sharing stories as they would've historically (117), and lazy daughters receiving worse treatment than lazy sons (167). But none of that earns it a recommendation.

Link Roundup

England - The Land Without Folklore?

Folklore and Mythology Catalogue: Its Lay-Out and Potential for Research

Balkan and Carpathian Links of the Mythology of the Peoples of the Caucasus

Humor, Unlaughter, and Boundary Maintenance

Folk Research: A Query and a Critique

The Relationship between Oral and Literary Tradition as a Challenge in Fairy-Tale Research: The Case of Finnish Folktales

Female Warrior Ballads

 

Source: Historie der Engelsche zee-roovers (1725)

The Warrior Women Project is a database for English-language ballads depicting female combatants. Most of these texts are known to us because of Dianne Dugaw's extensive archival work for Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650-1850 (1989). As her book shows, this trope is flexible, appearing in all types of modes. A sampling of ballads proves this:

Mary Ambree is one of the oldest of these ballads. Three thousand enemy soldiers surround a troop. Amidst battle, the sergeant dies. His lover swears revenge, donning a helmet, grabbing a sword, and leading her men into the fray. She's betrayed by a member of her unit, but prevails.

The Valiant Virgin has an unusually strong homoerotic element between the disguised heroine and her lover. An heiress loves a farmer but her father wants her to marry a wealthy man. Dad has the farmer conscripted. The lovers become a soldier and a surgeon mate, respectively, aboard a vessel. After returning home, they learn her father is dead, and marry.

Susan's Adventures on a British Man of War skips the courtship period to jump into the action. A man is called to sea; his lover follows. They endure menial labor, harsh weather, and deadly battles until they return home.

William and Harriet is a largely romantic narrative with a tragic ending. A daughter and father argue over her romance with a farmer. The man decides to have the lad drafted. The lovers join the navy together, with the girl disguised as a boy. A shipwreck strands them on an uninhabited, uninhabitable island where they die.

The Female Cabin Boy, Or the Row Among the Sailors parodies the idea of a woman pretending to be a man. An adventurous maiden enters a year-long position on a boat. The captain learns the truth and gets frisky with her. She gets pregnant. Everyone celebrates.

Jack Munro gives roughly equal attention to wooing and warring. A girl in love with a sailor joins him in a war against Germany. She does well. She reveals her identity to her lover and they are married. When they return to England, she reunites with her parents and even the queen is amused by their situation.

The Transmogrified Witch

Tales about witches are popular in European folk narrative traditions. "Hansel and Gretel" tells of two abandoned children beset by a cannibalistic woman in a gingerbread house. Baba Yaga in "Vasilisa the Beautiful" is also a flesh-eating enchantress living alone within a dark forest. But there is an arguably more widespread story: that of the sorceress who morphs into an animal to make mischief.

Werewolf of Apchon (1590 - 1611)

The Severed Hand: I (1851)

The Severed Hand: II (1852)

Beer Cats (1863)

Auvergne Witch (1865)

The Witch Girl (1873)

Witches of Thurso (1877)

Hunted Hare (1879)

The Miller and the Cat (1883)

Witches of the Inn (1887)

Island Insect (1890)

Georgian Mill Witch (1894)

The Cat Which Lost a Claw (1896)

The Brothers who married Witches (1899)

The Doe Witch (1909)

The Weaver's Wife and the Witch (1911)

Various versions (1913)

Cat on the Lap (1914)

The Woman-Cat: I (1917)

Woman-Cat: II (1921)

Woman-Cat: III (1922)

Woman-Cat: IV (1923)

Sop, Doll, Sop (1925)

Cat Witches (1926)

Southern Witch (1926)

Witch of Laggan (1926)

The Witch and the Overseers (1928)

Vernon Castle Witches (1929)

Cats and the Occult (1933)

A Witch in the Form of a Black Cat (1934)

Swarm of Cats (1938)

The Witch-Cat Woman (1942)