From Homer to Epic Fantasy: Retelling Greek Mythology through a Human Lens

Episode 3 — Janell Rhiannon: From Homer to Epic Fantasy — Retelling the Trojan War Through a Human LensIt started with a footnote. While researching Alexander the Great in graduate school, Janell Rhiannon came across a detail in Plutarch — that Alexander slept with a copy of the Iliad under his pillow. Curious about what could compel someone like Alexander to do that, she picked up Homer. More than twenty years later, she hasn't put him down.In this episode, Janell joins Andrew to talk about the Homeric Chronicles — her six-book epic fantasy saga that rebuilds the entire Trojan War chronologically, weaving together Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, ancient Greek plays, archaeology, and dozens of myths into one sweeping human story. As a historian trained under Victor Davis Hanson, Janell brings a scholar's rigor and a storyteller's heart to characters we thought we already knew — Paris, Achilles, Hector, Helen, Clytemnestra, and the women whose voices have waited three thousand years to be fully heard.They dig into the craft of retelling myth at epic scale, the psychological cost of war that Homer understood better than most modern writers, why these stories refuse to stop being relevant, and what Christopher Nolan is up against bringing the Odyssey to the screen.A rich, wide-ranging conversation about history, storytelling, and what it means to be human — which, it turns out, is exactly what the Greeks were always writing about.Find out more about Janell: https://www.janellrhiannon.comFind out more about Andrew: www.hellorhighwinter.com