Are you as excited as I am to see the new Christopher Nolan film, The Odyssey? (Trailer here.) And it’s not just because I’ve recently jumped on the Nolan bandwagon, watching with my teenage son all of the acclaimed director’s movies over the last year. We have just a couple left, each time reordering our ranks of “best film,” with very high expectations for this summer’s blockbuster. (For the record, my current favourite is Dunkirk, followed by The Prestige and Oppenheimer.)
I’m also psycheD (see what I did there?) due to the fact that so many people this summer are going to be voluntarily exposed to Greek mythology, ancient history, and a little geography too.
As I research my next book, I’ve delved deep into the history and culture of Sicily and recently made an unexpected discovery as I learned about one of Sicily’s old dialects: a scholarly work called On the Trapanese Origin of the Odyssey by Samuel Butler, originally published in 1897 and which also seems to be called The Authoress of The Odyssey (I am unable to verify whether these are two different books or the same one, but it does seem to be the latter).
Why authoress? Butler posits that the composer of the epic tale was not Homer but rather a local woman named Nausicaa (his theory later inspired a novel by I, Claudius writer Robert Graves called Homer’s Daughter). Overall, by using the Trapani area of Sicily as his guide, Butler makes the case that The Odyssey actually takes place in and around Italy’s biggest island, at the crossroads of the Mediterranean.
Interestingly, Butler claims that the Sirens were located around the Aeolian (or Lipari) Islands (northeast of Palermo). However, the people of Amalfi might dispute this claim, given they have their own Siren islands (called Li Galli) off of Positano and visible from The Path of the Gods (if you ever have a chance to do this gastrohike, don’t hesitate – one of the most beautiful and most delicious days of my life!). There is a reason it’s called The Path of the Gods: according to Amalfi legend, the Greek gods descended to rescue Odysseus when they heard his tormented cries, stamping out the magnificent cliffs of Amalfi in their haste.
It’s only in the past few years have a I realized how much the history of southern Italy was shaped and influenced by the ancient Greeks, who conquered a lot of Italic territory long before the Romans came into their height. Naples (Napoli!) was founded in the 8th century BC, by the Greeks, who also settled in eastern Sicily around the same time (interestingly they never fully conquered Trapani).
I wonder how deeply Nolan dove into the history, how Italian his telling of this Greek story might be. I’m also curious where on my and my son’s ranking lists The Odyssey will end up.
Let me know what you think of the film by commenting below!
Gina Buonaguro 