Simon’s fiction had an enormous impact on contemporary intelligentsia, although it is still considered to be rather hermetic, quite extreme in its deconstruction of the traditional novel. With other writers from Le Nouveau Roman, Claude Simon (1913-2005), the 1985 Nobel Prize winner, is a typical example of this type of writing and of the aesthetic evolution of a novelist. Directly or indirectly, they reactivate the Orphic myth, and more particularly Orphism as a literary tradition in which language becomes the ultimate, the absolute. A posteriori critical approach nevertheless shows that novels generated by these authors remain deeply rooted in mythology, particularly in mythological ways of thinking. The present study focuses on a particular French literary movement called Le Nouveau Roman (The New Novel). In post-World War II France, major literary trends created new ways of thinking and writing that seemingly precluded all metaphysical concerns. An updated return of the original myth that replaces the treatment of Penelope as a passive weaver of a mortifying shroud, to an active heroine who unveils her self through her textual relationship with Odysseus.Įuropean literature of the late twentieth century usually appears as belonging to an atheistic, agnostic, materialistic worldview. What we also suggest by examining the sexual/textual politics that lie in the poetics of her texts is that Penelope’s writing activity is an example of contemporary literary sexting, a textual weaving tainted with sexual undertones where the protagonist oscillates between autonomy, emancipation and independence from Odysseus and her emotional and physical dependence on his love and affection. Focusing on the poetical collection “Odysseus: somehow” (2013) by Koula Adaloglou, this paper analyses the different voices of Penelope’s different selves through the texts, SMS, notes Penelope writes on her laptop or secret diary as the motif of weaving can be interpreted as a self-making metaphor. This paper explores the return of a classical myth in the light of new technology as a modern Penelope texts her messages to her beloved Odysseus, replacing her loom with a laptop. Supporting my arguments with references to the feminists and academics Adriana Cavarero and Monica Farnetti, I demonstrate how, through the use of the en-gendered symbol Penelope, the classic is permeated with a new meaning and moves towards an effective representation of feminine diversity. Here, I investigate two modern Italian rewrites that finally give voice to Penelope and her wisdom: Bianca Tarozzi’s Variazioni sul tema di Penelope (1989) and Luigi Malerba’s Itaca per sempre (1997). In parallel with new theories on gender and sexual difference, contemporary writers have developed a new image of Penelope, recognizing her as a complex representation of feminine wisdom, and proving the adaptability of Homeric characters and their myths, still a valid archetype to symbolize contemporary society and its issues. This article focuses on the case of Penelope, who traditionally has been considered as a mere example of faithfulness and chastity, but over the past fifty years has gradually become the protagonist of novels, short stories and poems within Western literature. Modernity is probably when the most interesting developments involving the Odyssey, its plot and its symbols, take place. The treatment of Homeric characters by subsequent authors varies across the centuries, following the literary trends of different epochs. It is the birth certificate of Western civilisation: the nucleus of its story – a man wandering over land and sea for many years and his fight to reconquer his kingdom and his wife – is a paradigm for thousands of popular tales and literary works. The Odyssey is certainly the classic par excellence in the history of literature.
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