The Witch(ES) of Aiaia: Gender, Immortality and the Chronotope in Madeline Miller's Circe

Abstract

This article explores Madeline Miller's Circe from the perspective of Bakhtin's concept of the chronotope, the inseparability of space and time in fiction. The article focuses on the chronotopes of the road, the idyll and the threshold in the novel, and how these intersect with its themes of gender and immortality. The island of Aiaia acts as a threshold, transforming all who cross it. Circe's life on the island, however, is a repetitive idyll; only at the end of the novel does she become a traveller on the road herself rather than just a stop on the way.