Penelope's renown : meaning and indeterminacy in the Odyssey / Marylin A. Katz.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 197-207) and indexes.

Print version record.

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Preface -- Glossary of Greek Terms -- CHAPTER ONE. Indeterminancy and Interpretation -- CHAPTER TWO. The Construction of Absence (Books 1--4, 11) -- CHAPTER THREE. Coming Home/Going Home (Books 13, 15, 16) -- CHAPTER FOUR. What Does Penelope Want? (Books 18, 19) -- CHAPTER FIVE. The Construction of Presence (Books 17-21) -- CHAPTER SIX. Duplicity, Indeterminacy, and the Ideology of Exclusivity (Book 23) -- CONCLUSION: Indeterminacy in the Odyssey -- Bibliography -- Index Locorum -- General Index.

Noted for her contradictory words and actions, Penelope has been a problematic character for critics of the Odyssey, many of whom turn to psychological explanations to account for her behavior. In a fresh approach to the problem, Marylin Katz links Penelope closely with the strategies that govern the overall design of the narrative. By examining its apparent inconsistencies and its deferral of truth and closure, she shows how Penelope represents the indeterminacy that is characteristic of the narrative as a whole. Katz argues that the controlling narrative device of the poem is the paradigm of Agamemnon's fateful return from the Trojan War, narrated in the opening lines of the Odyssey. This story operates not only as a point of reference for Odysseus' homecoming but also as an alternative plot, and the danger that Penelope will betray Odysseus as Clytemnestra did Agamemnon is kept alive throughout the first half of the poem. Once Odysseus reaches Ithaca, however, the paradigm of Helen's faithlessness substitutes for that of Clytemnestra. The narrative structure of the Odyssey is thus based upon an intratextual revision of its own paradigm, through which the surface meaning of Penelope's words and actions is undermined though never openly discredited. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

In English.

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