Corinne O. Pache

This project examines the reception of the heroine Penelope in twentieth and twenty-first century literature and film. Interest in Penelope has seen an extraordinary revival in the past one hundred years or so, as artists—many of them women—have turned their attention to the Odyssey. Some rewritings of the Penelope myth are explicitly inspired by Homer, while others explore the theme of a woman’s homecoming without overtly connecting their plots to the epic original. Whether the influence of Homer’s Penelope is openly recognized or the result of unconscious processes, it is at once profound and pervasive. This will be the first book to explore the ancient heroine’s modern manifestations.