The Songs of the Kings (Magill’s Literary Annual 2004)
At a glance:
- Author: Barry Unsworth
- First Published: 2003
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: 1260-1250
- Setting: Aulis, a port in ancient Greece; Mycenae
- Principal Characters: Calchas, The Singer, Agamemnon, Iphigeneia, Sisipyla (Amandralettes), Chasimenos, Odysseus, Achilles, Nestor, Croton
- Genres: Long fiction, War fiction, Novel
- Subjects: Parents and children, Mythology or myths, Europe or Europeans, War, Fathers, Kings, queens, or royalty, Gods or goddesses, Ships, Oral history, Heroes or heroism, Soldiers, Greek or Roman times, Sacrifice, Greece or Greek people, Turkey or Turkish people, Trojan War, Bronze Age
- Locales: Mycenae, ancient, Aulis
In his many historical novels, Barry Unsworth has consistently focused on the theme of appearance versus reality. In Morality Play (1995), for example, a group of actors unashamedly converts a real incident into a theatrical fiction, while in both Sugar and Rum (1988) and Losing Nelson (1999), writer-historians search for the reality that underlies what they find are the fictions of recorded history. In The Songs of the Kings, Unsworth suggests that both history and art are false. The Greek leaders of Homeric legend are shown influencing the course of history...
[The entire page is 1957 words long]
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