Penelopeia: a urdidura dos silêncios da rainha de Ítaca

Abstract

The research has as object of study <A Odisseia de Penélope= (The Penelopiad, 2005), by the Canadian author Margaret Atwood and seeks to identify the omissions involved in the Atwoodian worldbuilding, using the theories of Alan Corbin, George Steiner and Maurice Blanchot about silence as bases throughout the development of the thesis. The specific goals are to promote the understanding of silence as a form of language full of significance, something that is not exclusive to the spoken or written word, and the framework of Penelopiad as a parody of the Odyssey, by Homero, following directions from the writer Linda Hutcheon. In order to reach the proposed goals, bibliographic and document research was done. This dissertation is structured as such: 1. Introduction; 2. The verse, reverse and the 8anti-verse9: the word and the silence, chapter in which silence and word reveal themselves as fundamentals for humanity and the relation between both; 3. Silence, sound and the absence of sound, 3.1 Alain Corbin: space of silence, 3.2 George Steiner: eunuch of silence, 3.3 Maurice Blanchot: power of silence, through these three authors, occurrences of the silence in the construction of meaning in the arts and in reality will be presented; 4. Penelopiad: warp of silences, weft of meanings and 4.1. Penelopiad, a parody, respectively, chapter that brings the identification and the analysis of silence and the classification of Penelopiad as a parody, as seen in Linda Hutcheon9s theory; 5. Final silences, section with all the final considerations about the research, the results found, the future possibilities and the difficulties of the process. Plus hopefully attest, through the analysis of Penelopiad, the silence, sided with the word, as responsible for the construction of meaning in the literary text.