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4 Ali Smith's Girl Meets Diplomarbeit Titel der Diplomarbeit “Universal Truth(s)? Politics, Metafiction and the Theme of Storytelling in Rewritings of Classical Myths by Margaret Atwood, Jeanette Winterson and Ali Smith” Verfasserin Daniela K. Fasching angestrebter akademischer Grad Magistra der Philosophie (Mag. Phil.) Wien, im November 2010 Studienkennzahl lt. Studienblatt: A 343 Studienrichtung lt. Studienblatt: Anglistik und Amerikanistik (Diplom) Betreuerin: o.Univ.-Prof. Dr. Margarete Rubik Content 1 Introduction.................................................................................................................... 1 2 Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad............................................................................... 7 2.1 The Odyssey and Its Reception............................................................................... 7 2.2 Against and Beyond the Odyssey .........................................................................10 2.2.1 A Story from the Other Side..........................................................................12 2.2.2 Unravelling the Odyssey............................................................................... 14 2.3 A Female Perspective............................................................................................19 2.3.1 Female Roles in Man-Made Myth................................................................ 20 2.3.2 Penelope’s Dilemma......................................................................................25 2.3.3 Guilt and Excuses..........................................................................................30 2.4 Haunting the Story – The Chorus of Maids.......................................................... 33 2.5 A Story Told against Storytelling? – Metafictional Meanings and the Theme of Storytelling .................................................................................................................37 3 Jeanette Winterson’s Weight......................................................................................... 45 3.1 The Myths of Atlas and Heracles – Canonic Version and Reception...................46 3.2 Rewriting Origins..................................................................................................49 3.2.1 The Goddess Myth........................................................................................ 49 3.2.2 Utopian Aspects of the Primordial World of Weight.....................................51 3.3 Under Olympian Oppression................................................................................ 56 3.3.1 The Beginning of Boundaries....................................................................... 56 3.3.2 Atlas’s Punishment....................................................................................... 59 3.3.4 Heracles.........................................................................................................66 3.4 Shaking the Boundaries – Repetition, Imagination and Storytelling as Subversive Strategies ....................................................................................................................72 4 Ali Smith’s Girl Meets Boy...........................................................................................79 4.1 Ovid’s Metamorphoses ........................................................................................ 79 4.1.1 Ovid as Re-telling and Canonical Source.....................................................79 4.1.2 The Ovidian Myth of Iphis and Ianthe ......................................................... 81 4.2 Critical Aspects of the Re-telling ........................................................................83 4.2.1 Corporate Rule and Dominant Discourse ....................................................84 4.2.2 Pressured Identities – Two Narrators Under The Dominant Narrative.........86 4.3 Lesbian Love as a Challenge to Normative Categories ....................................... 90 4.3.1 Love as Liberation.........................................................................................90 4.3.1 Encountering Difference – Imogen’s Reaction to Her Sister’s Homosexuality ................................................................................................................................94 4.4 Storytelling and Re-writing in Girl Meets Boy..................................................... 97 4.4.1 The Reclaiming of Narrative Power and Information as Activism...............98 4.4.2 Stories that “Need the Telling”......................................................................99 5 Conclusion.................................................................................................................. 107 Bibliography.................................................................................................................. 113 Primary Sources........................................................................................................ 113 Secondary Sources.................................................................................................... 113 Index.............................................................................................................................. 115 Abstract..........................................................................................................................117 Zusammenfassung (Abstract in German)...................................................................... 119 Curriculum Vitae........................................................................................................... 121 Diplomarbeit “Universal Truth(s)?” 1 Introduction In 2005, the Scottish publisher Canongate launched a new book series, with the aim to re-tell ancient myths from a wide array of cultural backgrounds. The ambitious publishing endeavour is still under way, but already a number of well established as well as lesser known writers from different countries have contributed to the project by choosing ancient mythological material and reworking it into short novels. At the beginning of the 21st century, neither the myths nor the idea of re-telling itself are anything new. Nevertheless, the mere existence of Canongate’s project shows, they continue to be popular – both to readers and publishers. Liedeke Plate has suggested that the success of re-tellings and their popularity in the publishing industry is to be understood in terms of marketability, and that re-tellings are attractive to publishers because, on the one hand “the canonical work or author functions as a brand name [so that] publishers of rewritings happily exploit the canonical name’s wide recognition and its function as guarantee of a standard of quality and of certain aesthetic or narrative pleasures” (Plate 398) and on the other hand, re-tellings function as advertising for the originals, which raises readers’ interest in the originals, and again promises to boost sales (Plate 399). Plate makes an interesting point, but ironically marketability is in itself not very marketable as a reason for publishing a series of re-tellings. The question that I want to raise is what “apology” for re-telling is self-reflexively portrayed in the works of the Canongate Myths series themselves, and how the novels themselves in a metafictional way express and demonstrate the particular meanings that re-tellings can carry. As not all novels that have appeared in the Canongate Myth Series are equally self-reflexive, the focus of my paper will therefore lie on three novels which self- consciously thematise their own practice and could be said to incorporate their own ‘poetics of re-telling’: Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad (2005), Jeanette Winterson’s Weight (2005), and Ali Smith’s Girl Meets Boy (2007). In answer to the question, why the re-telling of old, well-known stories is (still) a good idea, the short introductory disclaimer by the publisher placed at the beginning of each novel in the series claims that myths are „timeless and universal stories that reflect and shape our lives”, suggesting that the myths of the past are of persisting influence, 1 Diplomarbeit “Universal Truth(s)?” and therefore worth revisiting. Of course, myths are frequently associated with ancient wisdom, and it is a common idea that they contain universal truths of enduring value about the world and humanity built on the idea of the possibility to discern a continuity in human behaviour as well as core values, morals and ideas across cultural boundaries, but how is Canongate’s evocation of such “universal stories” to be interpreted in a postmodern world where the existence of universal truths as well as its representation in any kind of discourse – be it fictional or non-fictional – have been severely contested, and how is the re-telling of myths legitimised if – as can be assumed – these allegedly universal truths can just as well be read out of the originals? In other words, what justifies re-telling if it is all about universality? Do the re-tellings serve to demonstrate the fact that any new version of an ancient myth will only reiterate and prove its inherent universal meaning? Or do these re-tellings – despite the disclaimer – themselves contest claims of universality in re-telling the old myths with a difference and demonstrating the subversive potential of re-telling, as postmodern literature has frequently done? Or is there, perhaps, a third possibility and could these re-tellings indeed aim to represent – paradoxically – new universal truths? Before a detailed
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