Browsed by
Author: Elizabeth Cady

Liz is a sometimes professor, often reading, often writing mom who lives in Wisconsin. Her first book was published under the pen name Anya Getty, and can be found on Amazon!
National Just Write Something Month

National Just Write Something Month

120px-Girl_with_stylus_and_tablets.Fresco_found_in_PompeiI hope you’ll forgive me for stepping off topic this week. We’ll return to Gilgamesh soon, but today, I wanted to talk to you about something different.

Writing. The process, not the product, which is what I usually blog about here at Black Gate. I’m surrounded by true professionals and artists here, so it feels like hubris to presume upon the subject. But as that has rarely stopped me before, I shall forge ahead.

Many of you reading this have heard of NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. For those who haven’t, the idea is that if you write 1,666 words a day for every day of November, you’ll end up with fifty thousand words, or, in some genres, a novel. The idea is that everybody does it in one giant nationwide frenzy, cheering each other on, swapping tips, hosting write-a-thons in which people chug coffee and type like the wind. Winning means getting fifty thousand words. They don’t have to be great. They don’t have to be good. They just have to be on the page.

Read More Read More

Ancient Worlds: Gilgamesh and Enkidu

Ancient Worlds: Gilgamesh and Enkidu

Enkidu and his other best friend, Kitty.
Enkidu and his other best friend, Kitty.

I like a good romance.

(Yes, we’re still talking Gilgamesh, I haven’t hit my head. Just give me a second. Haven’t we developed that kind of blogger/reader trust yet?)

In fact, I love a good romance. Give me a lady in a corset and a handsome young duke/earl/suitably wealthy gentleman/starving but really charming young artist, 300 pages and a stretch of time that my weesters are occupied elsewhere and I am all yours. I think the romance genre of fiction is underrated and, frankly, under-read by writers in many other genres.

But romance, or more precisely eros, has taken over fiction and fandom. Romantic relationships have become the primary relationship we see in our entertainment. Romantic tension is wedged into stories, often awkwardly. It’s often justified by seeking to appeal to a female demographic, as if women were incapable of liking stories without romance or that romance is the only relationship that we value. This is not only condescending, it’s exclusionary on a number of levels. And it is sad, because some of the greatest relationships in history were not romantic or familial, but friendships.

And the first great relationship we have recorded is just that. As we discussed last time, Gilgamesh has been making a royal pain of himself, and when his people pray for help, the gods respond by creating a man who will be his match. That man is Enkidu, and once the gods breathe life into him, they set him down in the wilderness.

Read More Read More

Ancient Worlds: With a King Like This Who Needs Invading Hordes?

Ancient Worlds: With a King Like This Who Needs Invading Hordes?

4133583_origAs far as heroes go, Gilgamesh leaves a lot to be desired, at least by modern standards. Gilgamesh is not a good guy. Or a good man. Or a good king.

That is in fact how the story begins. Gilgamesh is an impressive specimen, it’s true.

“Supreme over other kings, lordly in appearance,
he is the hero, born of Uruk, the goring wild bull.
He walks out in front, the leader,
and walks at the rear, trusted by his companions.
Mighty net, protector of his people,
raging flood-wave who destroys even walls of stone!
Offspring of Lugalbanda, Gilgamesh is strong to perfection,
son of the august cow, Rimat-Ninsun;
… Gilgamesh is awesome to perfection.”

(Translation taken from the Ancient Texts library.)

Gilgamesh is two-thirds divine and one-third human. We’re not entirely certain how that math works out: we know his mother is the goddess Ninsun and if I had to guess I would say that they considered the mother’s contribution to a child’s makeup as more weighty than a father’s. (As opposed to the Greeks, who considered the mother to be merely a biological caretaker of an implanted seed.) He’s a powerful leader, he defends his people, so what’s the problem?

He’s also ancient Uruk’s biggest frat boy.

Read More Read More

Ancient Worlds: Everything You Learned About the Epic of Gilgamesh – and Promptly Forgot

Ancient Worlds: Everything You Learned About the Epic of Gilgamesh – and Promptly Forgot

4133583_orig
King of Uruk. With Kitten.

Vengeful goddesses. Rad bromances. Quests for eternal life. Sex, sex, and more sex…

Sounds like The CW, right? Instead, it’s what is likely the earliest surviving piece of literature we have: the Epic of Gilgamesh.

First written in the 18th century BCE, and composed in its present form probably sometime in the 13th century BCE, Gilgamesh was lost to us until 1853, when its tablets were discovered in Ninevah.

That’s right: tablets. Ancient Mesopotamian texts were inscribed by a wedge-shaped stylus onto wet clay tablets. (Bring that out the next time someone starts up the paper vs digital book argument.) And a good thing, too: had the epic been inscribed on parchment, it would be long gone.

But while the text itself was lost to us for millennia, the story left its traces behind. Once the Epic of Gilgamesh was discovered, we could see its fingerprints all over ancient myth and literature, from the Book of Genesis to the Illiad.

Read More Read More

Ancient Worlds: How it Ends

Ancient Worlds: How it Ends

Jason_and_Medea_-_John_William_WaterhouseToday, we’re concluding our wanderings through the Mediterranean with Jason and the Argonauts as we look at the major tropes explored in Apollonius’s Argonautica.

A beginning, like an ending, is a very delicate time.

End The Blair Witch Project in just the right place and it’s a short film about three kids who filmed their uneventful camping trip. Cut Old Yeller early and it’s a charming story about a boy and his dog.

Take out the majority of the story of Jason and Medea and it’s a rip-roaring adventure with a strong side of romance.

You have to feel bad for Apollonius. As much as I joke that the work ought to be called “Medea and the guys she got a ride from”, it really is the Argonautica. It is supposed to be the story of the Argonauts, led by Jason. Unfortunately the whole of the story doesn’t cooperate. Once Medea arrives in the myth, she takes over and pushes all the other actors to the sides of the stage.

The author had a similar problem with Heracles, but myth provided a way out. And while Greek audiences would tolerate a lot more play with mythological canon than any modern audience would (wait, who am I kidding, they just made another Hercules movie), there wasn’t a way to remove as critical a character as Medea.

Once Euripides has done a play on your life, you’re kind of a big deal.

Read More Read More

Ancient Worlds: Argonauts vs The Giant Robot

Ancient Worlds: Argonauts vs The Giant Robot

talos3ng4If you saw the 1963 version of Jason and the Argonauts, you probably remember this scene. It’s classic Harryhausen: stop-animation work that was looks cartoonish now, but was state-of-the-art at the time.

Like some of the other episodes in this movie (Skeleton battle!) you may have thought that this was all Hollywood. But Talos, the gigantic bronze guardian of Crete, was described in the Argonautica as well. Apollonius tells his readers that Talos was the last of the race of Bronze (mythical predecessors of modern humans), and that Zeus had set him to guarding Crete as a favor to his lover Europa. Since he was made entirely of metal, he was completely invulnerable, except for one spot on his heel where a thin membrane of skin covered his vein.

Read More Read More

Ancient Worlds: If Your Family Tree Doesn’t Branch…

Ancient Worlds: If Your Family Tree Doesn’t Branch…

circe-animals
This woman leads a good life.

It has been a frustrating few weeks around here.

What I want to do is spend the time not tied up in other obligations writing or working in the garden. What I’ve gotten over the last month is a seemingly endless series of storms (not common in Wisconsin in June; we go more for blizzards than twisters up here), obligations, shenanigans and chaos, and just when I think I’ve got twenty minutes to myself, a minor family crisis pops up.

Which makes this week’s topic – Medea’s visit to Circe – feel particularly apt.

Bear with me, that’s not as brutal a segue as it initially seems.

When we left off our discussion of the Argonautica, Medea had made the startling decision to murder her brother. Well, technically, Jason murdered him, but Jason isn’t the brains of anyone’s operation.

Jason couldn’t find the brains of the operation.

Jason is dumber than a box of hair.

Read More Read More

Ancient Worlds: About Face, Forward March

Ancient Worlds: About Face, Forward March

The long flowing gown is a critical component to any young witch's wardrobe. Color is important too. Rose? Still good. But just wait a few more scenes...
The long flowing gown is a critical component to any young witch’s wardrobe. Color is important too. Rose? Still good. But just wait a few more scenes…

My apologies, folks. This week is going to be more brief than usual. You may have heard that we had some excessively exciting weather last night here in Wisconsin. That means little sleep for anyone in my house and a shortage of brain power today.

Having decided for Jason and his men over her father, Medea provides him with a potion that will allow him to harness the fire-breathing bulls and sow the dragon’s teeth. These teeth spring up into an army, but Medea gives him the clue to toss a rock into their midst and they cut each other to pieces.

Jason is successful, but the fleece still isn’t in his hands. After a sleepless and frightened night, Medea realizes that A) there is no way her father is going to give it up and B) he probably knows that she is responsible for Jason’s feats. So she flees the palace, returns to the Argonauts, and promises to lull the serpent that guards the fleece. They can then make off with it, provided that they promise to take her with them.

Once their absence is noticed, the Colchians give chase. Medea’s brother Aspyrtus catches them in the Adriatic. Talks ensue and a bargain is reached: the Argonauts can keep the fleece, as they won it fair and square. The real point of contention is Medea. Since no deal can be reached, they both agree that she should be deposited in a temple of Artemis until a third party can judge whether she should be returned to her father or given to the Argonauts.

And here it gets trope-tastic, as Medea executes what is, in this work, a pretty inexplicable face-heel turn.

Read More Read More

Ancient Worlds: Talking to Yourself Again?

Ancient Worlds: Talking to Yourself Again?

The lady has her own chariot. Pulled by dragons. BY DRAGONS, people. Why this isn't called "Medea and the guys she got a ride from" instead of the Argonautica...When the Argonauts land in Colchis, Jason makes a novel suggestion.

“Hey guys! Let’s, like, NOT storm the castle and steal what we want. Let’s go up, ring the doorbell, and ask politely! What’s the worst that could happen?”

To which King Aeetes responds, “Golden Fleece? Sure you can have it! All you have to do is plow a field with a plow pulled by fire breathing oxen, plant a few acres with dragon’s teeth, wait til those dragon’s teeth turn into fully grown armed men, and then kill them all before they get you. Do it myself all the time.”

It’s a folklore classic: the impossible task. Our hero gets the prize of his dreams (princess, kingdom, unimaginable wealth, golden fleece) as soon as he does something that no human being can possibly do. And then s/he does it.

Read More Read More