Since the twenty-first century, feminist retellings of myths have become increasingly popular. As an epic, Homer’s The Odyssey brims with female characters. However, mythology is often considered...Show moreSince the twenty-first century, feminist retellings of myths have become increasingly popular. As an epic, Homer’s The Odyssey brims with female characters. However, mythology is often considered to consist of archetypal and universally applicable stories about the nature of the universe and human life, which often leads to the notion that myth is stagnant and unchangeable. As a rising genre, feminist revisionist mythmaking aims to focus on the role of women in myth. By using Hélène Cixous’ essay The Laugh of Medusa and Alicia Ostriker’s definition of feminist revisionist mythmaking, this thesis aims to illustrate how Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad (2005) and Madeline Miller’s Circe (2018) revise and adapt previously marginalised female characters. This thesis will give an analysis of the women in Atwood’s The Penelopiad, focussing on Penelope’s voice and reputation, female rivalry, and the unjust hanging of the maids, followed by an analysis of Miller’s Circe that focusses on Circe’s voice and personal growth, sisterhood, and female sexuality. Both The Penelopiad and Circe confront issues such as gender and justice that are present in The Odyssey as well as present-day society. By focussing on women’s presence in a literary canon that historically seen has been dominated by the male gaze, Atwood and Miller emphasize that these women have survived despite the male-focused dominance and that it is never too late for them to speak up.Show less
Research master thesis | Literary Studies (research) (MA)
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This research aims to explore the reciprocal relationship between the arch-texts of Sophocles’ Antigone and Euripides’ Medea and late 20th century adaptations of them by four Irish poets and...Show moreThis research aims to explore the reciprocal relationship between the arch-texts of Sophocles’ Antigone and Euripides’ Medea and late 20th century adaptations of them by four Irish poets and playwrights. Based on a textual analysis of the original texts and adapted versions, I intend to disclose how the Irish adaptors borrow and rework the characters of Antigone and Medea and their well-known tragic stories in order to provide a critique upon tangible Irish socio-political issues. However, by adopting Antigone and Medea, the Irish authors do not merely use the two heroines as instruments for the satisfaction of their authorial aspirations, but they also provide answers to questions regarding the status and understanding of the two rebellious women that remain obscure in the originals. The research will be situated within Classical Reception Studies, a rather new field of research, which – unlike conventional Classics – focuses on the bidirectional process of adaptation arguing that by revisiting a canonical text, the pre-text is a changing object too. It will do so by using theories of reception of the Classics by Charles Martindale, Tim Whitmarsh, and Astrid Van Weyenberg. By doing so, I propose a contemporary understanding of the figures of Antigone and Medea, which liberates them from the moral ambiguity of their transgressive deeds, and instead, considers them as two heroines of Justice.Show less
