For weeks 2-3, I've decided to go with the R. K. Narayan version of the Ramayan. I initially decided to look further into it because of its modern, novelistic approach, which lines up nicely with my tastes. When I read reviews for it on Amazon, though, it was this snippet from reviewer Joshua Grasso that sold me: "His little asides where he explains, 'And here the poet described the scene so touchingly...' are at once reverent and amusing, as Narayan wisely omits anything too excessive or poetic that might derail his narrative." Not only does that remind me of the frame-story narration of William Goldman's The Princess Bride, one of my favorites, it tells me this is the adaptation for me, since I'm not one for flowery language or excessive description. The reading guide should be a nice resource if I need a refresher on anything when I go back to write my stories, too.
For week 4, I'd love to read the graphic novel adaptations. I love the graphic novel format anyways, but the covers of these books caught my eye, and they look much more my speed than the comic books do. Also, as someone who wants to publish both novels and comics some day, I think it would be really interesting to look at the same basic story adapted into those two different formats, and to look at what works better in which format, if that makes any sense.
At this point, I’m especially looking forward to the graphic novels, because I love the idea of such old stories being adapted to such a relatively new medium. (Also, yeah, because I’m shallow and the covers are amazing.) Based on the browsing I did, though, I’m also really interested in all the complicated-looking family dynamics of the Mahabharata: stories involving family relationships in some way are almost always my favorites, and it looks like these have plenty of extra drama and conflict thrown in. The “traditional legends” section of the heroes/heroines tab of stories on the ACK blog really caught my eye when I was going through and reading the descriptions for everything, too.
I’ve never taken a class on epic literature before, but I have read a little of it. I’ve never tried Game of Thrones, either—to be honest, I prefer urban fantasy to epic fantasy. But that kind of makes this even better for me, since I’ll be getting to read the epics and then spinning them off into more urban/ modern takes, if I want. The Iliad and The Odyssey are probably the first things that spring to mind when I think of mythology and epics, because I went through a huge Greek mythology phase in middle school, and the roots of that prompted me to take the Mythology & Folklore class (and then this class) in the first place. I'm still really interested in mythology these days, so I hope to explore more about Indian mythology, too. I know next to nothing about Indian history or culture, but I’m pretty confident this course will help with that.
Because of that lack of knowledge, I didn’t recognize anyone in any of the images on the site, either. I actually ended up choosing one of the graphic novel covers as my image. It first caught my attention because of how raw and dynamic the coloring and pose were, and when I gave it a closer look and saw that it was called Ravana: Roar of the Demon King, I was even more interested. I love it when stories swivel to show the antagonist’s side of the story—what’s that quote? Every villain is the hero in own mind?—and that seems especially important in such a large-scale story like this.
Image Credit: "Ravana" by Sachin Nagar. Source: Indian Epics: Reading Guides.
No comments:
Post a Comment