Tekstų pinklėse: Margaret Atwood „Penelopiada“

Trapped in the Web of Texts: Margaret Atwood's “The Penelopiad” The present paper focuses on the intertextual and postmodern aspects of Margaret Atwood’s novella The Penelopiad. The attention falls heavily on the use and interaction of various intertexts in Margaret Atwood’s process of rewriting Homer’s The Odyssey while employing postmodernist techniques such as parody, irony, pastiche and metatextuality. Following from this, the main aim of the paper is to provide a sufficient intertextual analysis of Margaret Atwood’s text The Penelopiad considering its postmodern context. The purpose of this analysis is to provide answers to such questions as – is Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad really a postmodernist novella? How do the notions of intertextuality and postmodernism relate and interact with each other in the text? What is the function of the intertexts in the narrative? How is the narrative of the novella constructed? What is the function of the character of Penelope in this text? To achieve this goal, the method of close reading of the text was employed. The novella is discussed in the light of theory of intertextuality proposed by Julia Kristeva, Gérard Genette and Graham Allen. The analysis shows the presence of particular intertexts in the novella, discusses Penelope’s, as the female character’s, voice and place in the narrative as well as the influence the maids’ parts have to the meaning of the narrative