Knowing absolutely nothing about Latin, I’ve decided to butcher the language a little bit and use the word rursus (again) to cobble together a phrase: “Character Rursus.” This is when a famous character from literary history (or perhaps even just, history) is brought back in a contemporary work to be rexamined and reinvented. Rursus means “(in) return, again, on the contrary, or turned back.”
I started discussing the idea of it because I’m reading Madeline Miller’s “Circe,” which I talked about in a previous post. Miller does a deep dive into a peripheral (yet always compelling) character in Greek mythology. And while doing so, she tweaks and spins countless other famous Greek figures from Helios to Athena and Odysseus.
When discussing with my wife, we realize this strategy has become extremely trendy in books and even more so television. Once Upon A Time is a entire show built on the mechanics of Character Rursus. Older shows like Supernatural (and most long running episodic genre shows) tend to pull famous people and characters in for one episode cameos, giving their show’s spin on it. Lucifer is an obvious example too. Riverdale, to some degree. There are several others. I guess the distinction for me is that it’s not just a famous person, but a widely recognizable character that’s achieved literary status - that everyone knows the inherent traits of and such.
To me, the older the character being invoked the more interesting it is — the more you can learn. Because it tells us that there’s something resonant about that character, and so the way they change informs how we’ve changed (or would like to change) as the creator/audience.
It makes sense, why artists do this - especially for film/TV/books. There’s a draw to revisiting a character you’re already familiar with, to see how they’ve changed. And, as an audience member, it gives you a certain power-of-the-critic. You already know this character as well as anyone else, so you can be a confident arbiter of whether their re-portrayal is warranted. On top of that, when a character is successfully reinvented it’s thrilling in a different sort of way than meeting a new character altogether, who you have to work to get to know. I find this to be the case with Circe at least. Every detail I associated with her previously is kept, on some superficial level, but the deeper understanding undermines those stereotypes and allows me to root for a character I had never even considered before - but always known.