From nauplion@charm.net Sun Sep 17 15:34:47 2000 Received: from mxu3.u.washington.edu (mxu3.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.7]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id PAA176692 for ; Sun, 17 Sep 2000 15:34:46 -0700 Received: from fellspt.charm.net (root@fellspt.charm.net [199.0.70.29]) by mxu3.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id PAA05809 for ; Sun, 17 Sep 2000 15:34:45 -0700 Received: from charm.net (coretel-116-205.charm.net [209.143.116.205]) by fellspt.charm.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id SAA06807 for ; Sun, 17 Sep 2000 18:34:38 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <39C5467B.6D84C1F3@charm.net> Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 18:32:33 -0400 From: Diana Wright X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en]C-DIAL (Win95; U) X-Accept-Language: en,el,tr MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Classics Subject: Philoctetes -- the true story Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------E1A476BD92F5F1BA0D27BB12" --------------E1A476BD92F5F1BA0D27BB12 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit My daughter-the-childrens'-book-editor has just given me a lovely novel for young adults, Sirena by Donna Jo Napoli. Sirena is a young siren in training -- the plot is predicated on the fact that a siren has to be loved by a human in order to attain immortality -- but she is horrified by the inevitable deaths & drownings when ships are lured to the rocks by their songs. She encounters Philoctetes dying on the beach at Lemnos, helps cure his wound, & one thing leads delightfully to another. Napoli is apparently a classicist -- does anyone know more about this? -- and has done a splendid job of neatly tying up bits of Hesiod & fragments of myths about Paris & Herakles. Also of showing some myths as they might be seen by immortals in contrast to humans. If you have access to a young adult female person, this would be a fine gift, but it would charm most people who teach mythology. DW --------------E1A476BD92F5F1BA0D27BB12 Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit My daughter-the-childrens'-book-editor has just given me a lovely novel for young adults, Sirena by Donna Jo Napoli.

Sirena is a young siren in training -- the plot is predicated on the fact that a siren has to be loved by a human in order to attain immortality -- but she is horrified by the inevitable deaths & drownings when ships are lured to the rocks by their songs.  She encounters Philoctetes dying on the beach at Lemnos, helps cure his wound, & one thing leads delightfully to another.

Napoli is apparently a classicist -- does anyone know more about this? -- and has done a splendid job of neatly tying up bits of Hesiod & fragments of myths about Paris & Herakles.  Also of showing some myths as they might be seen by immortals in contrast to humans.  

If you have access to a young adult female person, this would be a fine gift, but it would charm most people who teach mythology.

DW --------------E1A476BD92F5F1BA0D27BB12-- .