Abstract
This article analyses how Margaret Atwood re-views The Odyssey in The Penelopiad (2000). In order to do so, we use Bakhtin (1993) to map the ways in which Penelope’s version of The Odyssey subverts the main traces of the epic. By dethroning Odysseus and giving voice to Penelope and the servants killed upon Ulysses’s return to Ithaca, Atwood breaks with the sacred language of the epic, demythologizes the legend and updates the absolute past of the epic world, offering an account concerning the personal private lives of women. We also analyze the context of production and some of the implications of a Canadian contemporary woman writer’s rewriting of the Homeric myth. We argue that, by killing Homer as author, Atwood both inscribes her work in the canon and makes room for other stories.
Keywords
Re-vision; Canon; Woman writer