A Penelopean Poetics: Reweaving the Feminine in Homer's Odyssey

by Barbara Clayton

Overview

A Penelopean Poetics looks at the relationship between gender ideology and the self-referential poetics of the Odyssey through the figure of Penelope. She is a cunning story-teller; her repeated reweavings of Laertes' shroud a figurative replication of the process of oral poetic composition itself. Penelope's web is thus a discourse and it can be construed specifically as feminine. Her gendered poetics celebrates process, multiplicity, and ambiguity and it resists phallocentric discourse by undermining stable and fixed meanings. Penelope's poetics become a discursive thread through which different feminine voices can realize their resistant capacities. Author Barbara Clayton's work contributes to discussions in the classics as well as literary criticism, sex and gender studies, and women's studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780739107232
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	02/10/2004
Series:	Greek Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches
Pages:	156
Product dimensions:	5.78(w) x 8.22(h) x 0.46(d)

About the Author

Barbara Clayton teaches in the Classics Department and Introduction to the Humanities Program at Stanford University.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Not the Iliad: Reconsidering a Gendered Approach to the Odyssey Chapter 2 Unweaving to Reweave: Poetry and Process Chapter 3 Reweaving Identities: Odysseus' Lies and the Tale of the Scar Chapter 4 Weaver and Artist: Surveying a Penelope Tradition Chapter 5 Conclusion

Editorial Reviews

In A Penelopean Poetics, Barbara Clayton defines the true texture of Homer's Odyssey. Carefully attending to the warp and woof of recent scholarship on Greek epic and oral poetry as well as recent psychoanalytic and feminist criticism, Clayton beautifully and simply identifies precisely those threads in the weave of the poem that are most Penelopean in their subtle cunning. In her surprising yet persuasive new reading, Odysseus and Homer emerge as most themselves when they are most like Penelope.

Ralph J. Hexter

In Dr. Clayton's book she establishes a productive alliance between up-to-date theoretical work on women's studies and current thinking about the nature of oral poetry. Her lucid understanding of the ideas of Lacan and Cixous (among others) gives her valuable new insights into the part played by gender in understanding the Odyssey, and she includes an excellent study of the figure of Penelope in later literature. The book extends our appreciation of the Odyssey in exciting new ways, and should become essential reading both for classical scholars and for those interested in literature generally...

Mark W. Edwards

In A Penelopean Poetics, Barbara Clayton defines the true texture of Homer's Odyssey. Carefully attending to the warp and woof of recent scholarship on Greek epic and oral poetry as well as recent psychoanalytic and feminist criticism, Clayton beautifully and simply identifies precisely those threads in the weave of the poem that are most Penelopean in their subtle cunning. In her surprising yet persuasive new reading, Odysseus and Homer emerge as most themselves when they are most like Penelope.--Ralph J. Hexter, Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature and Dean of Arts and Humanities, University of California, Berkeley

In Dr. Clayton's book she establishes a productive alliance between up-to-date theoretical work on women's studies and current thinking about the nature of oral poetry. Her lucid understanding of the ideas of Lacan and Cixous (among others) gives her valuable new insights into the part played by gender in understanding the Odyssey, and she includes an excellent study of the figure of Penelope in later literature. The book extends our appreciation of the Odyssey in exciting new ways, and should become essential reading both for classical scholars and for those interested in literature generally.--Mark W. Edwards, Emeritus Professor of Classics, Stanford University

From the Publisher