It's the start of a new miniseries at The Req Room! Madeline Miller jumped onto the scene with the breakout of her first novel The Song of Achilles (2011), which gained a massive following through fandom communities on Tumblr. Mandy and Mio take a trip down memory lane to revisit their college classrooms, and make sense of what Miller's retelling of Homer's Iliad set out to do—all while mispronouncing just about every Greek name they find. [Knock knock knock!] Hey, sounds like someone's at the door...

cw: spoilers for both The Iliad and The Song of Achilles

tws: mention of rape - 1:06:04; mention of assault - 1:15:37; ensuing discussion of post-trauma - 1:16:16-1:17:06

Show notes:

Twitter thread on interpretations of Achilles and Patroclus' relationship by @agameganon

Special thanks to Leon Peckson for a special segment on the Homeric epics.

Our theme music: 64 Sundays by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Artist: http://www.twinmusicom.org/