“Missing Between the Margins: Bisexuality and Sexual Power Dynamics in Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles”, Aimee Hinds Scott undertakes an intersectional reading to examine the ways that depictions of gender, class, and sexuality in Trojan war adaptions combine to erase bisexuality as a sexual identity. Hinds Scott argues that the turn towards feminist adaptations of ancient Greek myths focusing on the perspectives of women and other people at society’s margins has begun urgent work in emphasising both the significance of and the conditions for queer identities as they appear in both ancient literature and modern society. She asserts that popular feminist literary receptions of the Trojan war, particularly by women writers, increasingly highlight the precarious places of women caught up in the war, and in popular media more widely, in the middle of potentially queer relationships such as that of the hero Achilles, his companion Patroclus, and the enslaved Briseis. Hinds Scott argues that Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles is one such text which has, by performing a re-reading of ancient literature and emphasising the homosexual relationship between Patroclus and Achilles, brought to the fore an exploration of gay masculinities, undercutting the romantic notion of distressed femininity which underpinned the depiction of the girls and women in receptions of the Trojan cycle during the twentieth century. However, Hinds Scott notes that the effort to address unheard voices and hidden histories has simultaneously obscured or erased some of the spaces between the margins, and these works remain, for the most part, stubbornly binary and heteronormative. Thus, she argues, rewriting Achilles as an exclusively gay man or Briseis as actively resisting enslavement potentially shifts the narrative to even further silence other potential voices, as well as ignoring the difficult slippage between sexuality and power within the narrative. In suppressing bisexuality, Hinds Scott argues, Miller’s text is able to emphasise the precarious and vulnerable positions of girls and women who are, in ancient versions of the myth, sexually associated with Achilles, while simultaneously highlighting the marginality of gay masculinity in contemporary discourse. Hinds Scott asserts that, despite drawing attention to these areas, the stifling of bisexuality as identity and desire in favour of homosexual monogamy is paradoxically underpinned by heteronormativity, and further elides problematic elements such as the reality of rape and sexual assault for all genders during war.

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Missing Between the Margins: Bisexuality and Sexual Power Dynamics in Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles

  • Aimee Hinds Scott

摘要

“Missing Between the Margins: Bisexuality and Sexual Power Dynamics in Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles”, Aimee Hinds Scott undertakes an intersectional reading to examine the ways that depictions of gender, class, and sexuality in Trojan war adaptions combine to erase bisexuality as a sexual identity. Hinds Scott argues that the turn towards feminist adaptations of ancient Greek myths focusing on the perspectives of women and other people at society’s margins has begun urgent work in emphasising both the significance of and the conditions for queer identities as they appear in both ancient literature and modern society. She asserts that popular feminist literary receptions of the Trojan war, particularly by women writers, increasingly highlight the precarious places of women caught up in the war, and in popular media more widely, in the middle of potentially queer relationships such as that of the hero Achilles, his companion Patroclus, and the enslaved Briseis. Hinds Scott argues that Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles is one such text which has, by performing a re-reading of ancient literature and emphasising the homosexual relationship between Patroclus and Achilles, brought to the fore an exploration of gay masculinities, undercutting the romantic notion of distressed femininity which underpinned the depiction of the girls and women in receptions of the Trojan cycle during the twentieth century. However, Hinds Scott notes that the effort to address unheard voices and hidden histories has simultaneously obscured or erased some of the spaces between the margins, and these works remain, for the most part, stubbornly binary and heteronormative. Thus, she argues, rewriting Achilles as an exclusively gay man or Briseis as actively resisting enslavement potentially shifts the narrative to even further silence other potential voices, as well as ignoring the difficult slippage between sexuality and power within the narrative. In suppressing bisexuality, Hinds Scott argues, Miller’s text is able to emphasise the precarious and vulnerable positions of girls and women who are, in ancient versions of the myth, sexually associated with Achilles, while simultaneously highlighting the marginality of gay masculinity in contemporary discourse. Hinds Scott asserts that, despite drawing attention to these areas, the stifling of bisexuality as identity and desire in favour of homosexual monogamy is paradoxically underpinned by heteronormativity, and further elides problematic elements such as the reality of rape and sexual assault for all genders during war.