The Shroud and the Trope: Representations of Discourse and of the Feminine in Homer’s Odyssey

Abstract

Understanding that Homer’s Odyssey (1998) has a feminine perspective, this paper intends to explore the Greek epic placing queen Penelope as the protagonist, observing, mainly, the narratological shifts in the story grammar, duration and character elaboration. This study also uses Paul Ricoeur’s The Rule of Metaphor (2008) to analyze the episode of the shroud in Homer’s Odyssey. Ricoeur sees metaphor in three distinct levels: the level of lexis where he bases himself in the works of Aristotle; the level of phrase in which he recurs to the structuralist linguistician Emile Benveniste; and the metaphor in the level of discourse, when Ricoeur himself devises an elaborate study of the figure of speech. Penelope’s weaving can be understood as a representation of discourse and of the feminine. Such analogy transcends the stereotype she is often given and defines a new role for the character in the epic.