Margaret Atwood

Key Term: Discourse

● The ways speech and writing work in conjunction with specific structures and institutions to shape social reality.

● Power = Knowledge

● Consider how The Penelopiad demonstrates the ways in which discourse about women, sexuality, and marriage has (or has not) changed over time.

Key Term:“Mythology”

● The “stories” a society tells in order to structure and make sense of the world.

● Myths shape and reinforce ideology.

Margaret Atwood

● Born in 1939 in Ottawa, Canada.

● The author of more than 35 volumes of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

● Her novels include The Edible Woman (1970), The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), The Robber Bride (1993), Alias Grace (1996), The Blind Assassin (2000), Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009), and her most recent, MaddAddam (September 2013).

Margaret Atwood – Where does she “fit”?

● Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature A 1972 “survey” of Canadian literature that situated her within the ”canon” of Canadian literature.

● She is also known for being a writer of science fiction, as well as being a “feminist” writer

● These are labels for which she has (at times) expressed distaste.

The Penelopiad

●Published in 2005 in The Myths Series by Canongate Publishers

●Series aimed to have contemporary authors retell ancient myths from a variety of cultures in a contemporary context

The Penelopiad

Setting: Hades ● the underworld of the dead in Greek mythology● Penelope is dead, looking back on her life

Narrative perspective: Penelope / female● re-tells the Odyssey from the female point-of-

view● questions the role of the storyteller in relation

to history

The Penelopiad and “Myth”

Atwood address two levels of myth in The Penelopiad:

● the Homeric myth of “faithful Penelope”

● historic and contemporary cultural myths about women as either “submissive and domestic,” or as “duplicitous schemers” and femmes fatales (what we popularly call the “virgin/whore dichotomy.”)

Literary Elements of The Penelopiad

Style ● The way an author chooses words, arranges

them in lines, sentences, paragraphs, or stanzas, and conveys meaning through the use of imagery, rhythm, rhyme, figurative language, irony, and other devices.

Tone● The attitude of the author toward the subject

of the work.

As you read, consider how tone and style function in The Penelopiad

Literary Elements of The Penelopiad

Symbolism and Symbols

● Something that is itself and also represents something else

● Evokes a concrete reality and prompts that reality to suggest another level of meaning.

● Objects and images in stories may have symbolic meaning, as well as events, actions, and characters.

Literary Symbols can be:

1. Universal: Symbols that embody universal suggestions of meaning (e.g., flowing water suggesting time and eternity, or a voyage suggesting life)

2. Particular/Contextual: ● Symbols that acquire suggestiveness not from inherent qualities but rather

from the way they are used within a particular text● The symbol takes on its meaning because of its literary environment (e.g., a

red letter “A” takes on the particular symbolic meaning of sin, adultery, and shame in The Scarlet Letter)

As you read, consider how Atwood uses symbolism in The Penelopiad

Character

●Protagonist: the main character

●Antagonist: character(s) in conflict with the main character

●Secondary Characters: ●Exist in the story only as extensions

of the main character’s experience●Necessary for leverage, context, or

agents for the main character’s world to take shape

Character

●Dynamic Characters: change in some significant way during the course of the story

●Static Characters: does not change in any significant way over the course of the story

●Round Character: shows many different facets, often presented in depth and with great detail

●Flat Character: “two-dimensional” or “uncomplicated character

Female Characters in The Penelopiad

●Penelope

●Penelope’s mother

●Various maids

●Helen

●Anticleia (Odysseus’s mother)

●Eurycleia (Odysseus’s former nurse)

Characterization

● How writers “reveal” characters to the reader.

●Characterization includes:●Description (physical traits)●Dialogue●Thoughts/opinions

Characterization

● Direct Characterization● Text reveals who characters are through

narrative that explicitly describes them, their characteristics, their attitudes, etc.

● We come to understand who the characters are because of what the narrator tells us about them.

●Ex: “My father was King Icarius of Sparta. My mother was a Naiad.”

Characterization

● Indirect Characterization● Text reveals who characters are by simply

allowing them to act as themselves as the scenes of the story progress.

● We come to understand who the characters are by observing how they behave, how they interact with other characters, how they develop as the story develops, etc.

Ex. “I was not a man-eater, I was not a Siren, I was not like cousin Helen who loved to make conquests just to show she could.”

Consider how character is revealed throughout the novel.