Myth and Intersections of Myth and Gender in Canadian Culture: Margaret Atwood’s Revision of the Odyssey in The Penelopiad
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The first part of the article deals with the national myths of Canada. It demonstrates that the long-time supposed lack of myths in Canada may itself be regarded as a myth. After presenting useful meanings of the term myth, the intersections of myth/mythology and gender are considered, both in Canadian culture and in Greek mythology. Linking Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey—the canonized beginnings of Western literature and their foundation on ancient myth—with Canadian culture, Margaret Atwood’s works and their treatment of ancient and social myths are then focussed on, particularly her revisionist rewriting of Homer’s Odyssey in her novel The Penelopiad (2005). This women-centered rewriting of the originally male-dominated story starts from two issues: what led to the hanging of the 12 maids, and what was Penelope really up to? Among the results are an intriguing re-conception of the original main characters, an upgrading of female domestic life, and a debunking not only of Odysseus and his supposedly heroic deeds but also of the authority of ancient myths where precarious not least concerning their conception of gender and gender relations.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.031 | 0.033 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".