Can the dead speak? appropriation and rewriting of the canon in Angela Carter s Nights at the circus and in Margaret Atwood s The Penelopiad

Abstract

This dissertation aims at studying postmodern women writers and the way they appropriate and rewrite canonical texts in an attempt to bring to the foreground and deconstruct metanarratives, especially those informed by patriarchy, which figure in such texts. In order to do so, a study of the canon formation, the concepts of myth, and the narrative strategies used by these authors in their creative process is made necessary. To achieve such goal, a research on intertextuality, parody and parodic intertextuality is carried out in this dissertation. Two novels figure as object of investigation in this work. British writer Angela Carter s Nights at the Circus is the first to be analysed. In this novel, the strategies of the blurring of the genres, and of parodic intertextuality between classical texts and myths as a means of appropriation and subversion of the canon are carried out. The other novel that figures in this dissertation is The Penelopiad, by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. In this novel, characters that were once marginalized or voiceless figure as main characters and tell their version of events, as it is the case of Penelope and of her twelve maids. This dissertation intends to show how the appropriation of canonical texts plays a fundamental role in the questioning of the artificiality of the discourses that are naturalized and of the values propagated by them