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May 08, 2006
"Penelopiad" by Margaret Atwood
Internationally acclaimed writer Margaret Atwood spins an entertaining retelling of the myth of Odysseus and his wife Penelope from the narrative perspective of women: the now dead Penelope and twelve of her maids who were hanged by Odysseus and his son Telemachus. Atwood’s Penelope counters patriarchal versions of the “wily Odysseus” and the male gaze of her beautiful, adulterous cousin, Helen of Troy, through an internal monologue that illuminates her own compassionate, faithful character. In the tradition of Aristophanes, the maids are given voice as a classical chorus, burlesquing heroic action and questioning cultural conventions. Atwood weighs the validity of Odysseus as classical Greek hero against contemporary moral conventions in this spare, yet dramatically disturbing narrative, a tension certain to keep the pages turning.
ISBN: 1841957178
Renoir G., reference
Posted by jnardine at May 8, 2006 10:46 AM