Language Stratification: A Critical Reading of Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad According to Mikhail Bakhtin’s Concept of “Heteroglossia”

Abstract

The present paper aims at investigating the effectiveness of Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad in displaying the transcription of language according to the critical views of Mikhail Bakhtin, especially his view about what he calls “heteroglossia.” The main argument, thus, is that heteroglossia is one of the key concepts that the reader should take into consideration in order to reveal the hidden and implied meanings of Atwood’s The Penelopiad . The paper considers language’s stratification as a meaningful and a remarkable context for Atwood’s style. In order to prove the main argument of the paper, the researchers discuss three key Bakhtinian concepts; that is, heteroglossia, and two other related terms; dialogism and form and content, and attempt to apply them on Atwood’s The Penelopiad . The paper shows how Bakhtin celebrates the genre of the novel for its amplitude to include verified and multiple meanings, a celebration that locates its coordinate in Atwood’s novel due to the novel’s heteroglot nature in chapters’ titles and in Penelope’s and the maids’ recognition of modern time. The paper shows how Atwood’s The Penelopiad is a dialogic novel because of its foregrounding of dialogic relations between its heteroglot structure, the narrators’ voices, and the social interaction of the authorial context. Finally, the paper dwells on Bakhtin’s concept of form and content and discusses the chorus line in details to prove the inclusive nature of the novel compared to its prequel version, The Odyssey .