flaunts an acid wit

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flaunts an acid wit
2005
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Review London Times

• But this shrewd person with a robust line in
  self-deprecating wisecracks is also the heroine
  of a myth, a story full of complication and
  danger and rich enough in ambiguity to provide
  plenty of scope for polemical reinterpretation.
  In this exquisitely poised book, Atwood blends
  intimate humour with a finely tempered outrage at
  the terrible injustice done to the maids,
  phrasing both in language as potent as a curse.

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Entertainment Weekly Review

• Margaret Atwood (The Blind Assassin) revisits
  long-suffering Penelope and meandering Odysseus
  as an alternately tragic and hilarious example of
  marriage in The Penelopiad. She channels Penelope
  by way of Absolutely Fabulous one can imagine
  her chain-smoking and swilling wine between
  cracks about the weakness of men and the misery
  they visit upon women. (Thank goodness for veils,
  ''a practical help for disguising red, puffy
  eyes.'') While the story isn't new, Atwood's
  approach reminds us that there are endlessly
  original ways to tell it.

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Key Ideas

• Major Theme
• Story-telling
• Story-listening
• Analytical Mode
• Intertextuality
• Style Cabaret,
• Greek Theater,
• Epic Traditions

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Atwoods Foreword
Basic Tenet Authors Consciously Choose Vantage
Points

• "Homer's Odyssey is not the only version of the
  story. Mythic material was originally oral, and
  also local a myth would be told one way in one
  place and quite differently in another... I've
  chosen to give the telling of the story to
  Penelope and to the twelve hanged maids. The
  maids form a chanting and singing Chorus, which
  focuses on two questions that must pose
  themselves after any close reading of the
  Odyssey What led to the hanging of the maids,
  and what was Penelope really up to? The story as
  told in the Odyssey doesn't hold water there are
  too many inconsistencies. I've always been
  haunted by the hanged maids and, in The
  Penelopiad, so is Penelope herself."  
• from Margaret Atwood's
• Foreword to The Penelopiad

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Was Penelope the faithful and virtuous wife as
told by Homer?
If Penelope told the story, would another truth
be revealed?
If Penelopes maids told the story, would
Odysseus be guilty of murder instead of acting
within his rights as a slave owner?
What are your initial thoughts?
Atwood brings to question the validity of the
storyteller.
The teller of a story has a personal reason to
include or adjust facts or opinions. The listener
chooses what to believe.
To what extent do you find this true?
Ultimately, its up to the listener to choose a
truth.
How does this seem fittingly post-modern?
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Multiple First-Person Narrators New P.O.V.

• PenelopeIn Hades, unhappy about being
  misunderstood by centuries of readers, has a
  personal story to tell and opinions of her
  husband and his exploits. Tone Acid, Sardonic,
  Scathing, determinedly irreverent
• Penelopes Maids (The Chorus) (er, their
  ghosts)Also in Hades, they too have their story
  of unfair treatment to tell, and they act out
  scenes from the story between narrative
  interludes.
• Bonus Hear from cousin Helen!

Basic Tenet Authors Consciously Choose Vantage
Points
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Review London Times

• Penelopes narrative is punctuated by
  interjections from the hanged maids. A skipping
  rhyme, a bawdy ballad, a burlesque, a mini
  court-room drama, a parody of Aeschyluss
  Eumenides, even a lecture in paleo-anthropology,
  these choric interludes are wittily conceived and
  adroitly executed, their formal ingenuity a
  reminder that Atwood, always the most stylish of
  novelists, was a poet first Atwoods Penelope
  has learnt self-sufficiency the hard way...
  Atwood makes her guarded, careful of her privacy,
  and has her speak in sardonic, no-nonsense prose.
  The tension between her intelligent
  disenchantment and the maids playful, painful,
  lascivious poetry gives this book a thrilling and
  persistent resonance.

cabaret
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Layers of Storytelling

• Atwoods idea of a layered narrative echoes, in
  itself, the original epic poem (Homer relates the
  tale of Odysseus, and Odysseus, in turn, relates
  his tale to the King Alcinous/his court).

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Atwood is relying on an idea calledintertextualit
y.
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Intertextuality

• Definition the shaping of texts' meanings by
  other texts
• Essence Texts are not individual, isolated,
  closed-off entitiesbut, rather, exists always in
  relation to others. We owe more to other texts
  than to their makers.
• First Proponent Julia Kristeva, 1960s, who
  conceptualized axes of meaning, declaring every
  text is from the outset under the jurisdiction of
  other discourses which impose a 3D universe on
  it

text
author
reader
other texts
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Intertextuality

• DOES MEAN

• DOES NOT MEAN

• Meaning of a text being dependent upon and shaped
  by other texts
• Status of authorship is problematized (author
  is now orchestrator, not originator)
• Looking at a text as a multidimensional space
  Reflected in the blurring of genre lines
• Readers now create authors. (Death of author,
  birth of reader.)

• Mere influence of one writer on another
• Mere allusions or spoofs (though these are a sort
  of self-conscious facet of intertextuality)

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Applying the Concept

• How did your experience with modern rap songs
  potentially color your reading of The Scarlet
  Letter?
• How did your experience with romance movies
  potentially color your reading of Wuthering
  Heights and/or the love sonnets?
• How have your history studies colored your
  readings of the cultural context of The Stranger
  and/or the political context of Macbeth?

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Intertextuality, Continued.

• Every reading is always a rewriting (by
  individuals and/or societies, consciously and/or
  unconsciously).
• How does this make sense when we think of
  cultural context?
• A texts unity lies not in its origin, but in its
  destination (Barthes).
• Texts come before us as the always-already-read
  we apprehend them through the sedimented layers
  of previous interpretations (Jameson)

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Intertextuality

• No one todaycan read a famous novel or poem
  look at a famous painting, drawing or sculpture
  listen to a famous piece of music or watch a
  famous play or film without being conscious of
  the contexts in which the text had been
  reproduced, drawn upon, alluded to, parodied and
  so on. Such contexts constitute a primary frame
  which the reader cannot avoid drawing upon in
  interpreting the text.

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No Text Is An Island

• Intertextuality blurs the boundaries not only
  between texts, but between texts and the world of
  lived experience.
• Where does a text 'begin' and 'end'? What is
  'text' and what is 'context'? The mediums of
  television and the World Wide Web highlight this
  issue both exist in a sort of permeable flow
  rather than as a series of discrete texts. Each
  text exists within a vast 'society of texts' in
  various genres and media no text is an island
  entire of itself.

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Readers construct authors.

• Ponder How might your personal perceptions of
  gender roles and fidelity color your response to
  The Penelopiad?
• Link to Major Theme Story-Telling and
  Story-Listening (multiple vantage points,
  reliability, authorship questions, etc)

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TONE
Articulating your gut instinct

• D - Diction (specific word choice, loaded
  words, connotations)
• I - Images
• D - Details
• L - Language (overall language)
• S - Sentence Structure (sentence length,
  variety)

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Model of Tone Proof Paragraph

• Goal Atwood creates for the maids in The Chorus
  Line A Rope-Jumping Rhyme a ______ tone by
  __________ in order to ________.
• Conclusion/ Claim Coarse, accusing, indignant
• Quote bank you scratched your itch, it was
  not fair, scrubbed the blood / paramours from
  floors, you watched us fall
• The how via DIDLS informal/low language
  overall, irreverent and unsettling imagery,
  syntax creates whimsical poetic rhyme thats
  decidedly ironic juxtaposition to the subject
  (including title of chapter here, as well,
  syntax is accusing with you and we beginning
  phrases, details of blood / raised hand, etc.
• The why Atwood wants to knock Odyssey off his
  epic pedestal, undermine his stature, make us
  uncomfortable and make us feel guilty that weve
  believed in him for so long, feel sympathy for
  the maidens and, ultimately, question the
  validity of storytelling.
• Goal Atwood creates for the maids in The Chorus
  Line A Rope-Jumping Rhyme a coarse, accusing,
  and indignant tone by ironically juxtaposing low
  diction and whimsical, lyrical syntax with
  weighty accusations and unsettling imagery in
  order to make readers question the validity of
  the ancient epic, its hero, and storytelling in
  general.

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Warm-Up Thoughtful Theses

• Consider this acronym to help you create strong
  theses NHWD (Name of author the how the
  why check to see if its debatable). (Think
  NHWH No Homework Would Be Divine!)
• Example
• Topic Authors consciously manipulate their
  narrative strategies.
• Thesis Atwood strategically manipulates
  narrative strategy by creating multiple first
  person narrative voices to emphasize the
  impossibility of absolute, finite truths.
  (yesdebatable)
• Now, you try Create a thesis for each of these
  topics
• (1) The bird motif in The Penelopiad
• (2) Double standards amongst genders/classes in
  The Penelopiad
• (3) Narrative justice (retribution via
  storytelling)