A Virgilian Descent into Gendered Old Age: London katabasis in Margaret Drabble's The Seven Sisters.

This article analyses the katabasis mytheme in Margaret Drabble's The Seven Sisters (2002), laying special emphasis on her contemporary revisionist reimagining of the Aeneid. A dialogue with Virgil's male-centred epic poem becomes both a starting point and a destination when death is just around the...

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Published in:Atlantis (0210-6124) Vol. 45; no. 2; pp. 245 - 263
Main Author: NISA CÁCERES, DANIEL
Format: Article
Published: Departament de Llengues i Literatures Modernes i d'Estudis Anglesos Dec2023
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        atl: A Virgilian Descent into Gendered Old Age: London katabasis in Margaret Drabble's The Seven Sisters.
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        au: NISA CÁCERES, DANIEL
        affil: Universidad Pablo de Olavide
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        Drabble, Margaret, 1939-
        Old age
        Seven Sisters, The (Book)
        Aeneid
        Cities & towns in art
        Women
        Sisters
        Older women
        Power (Social sciences)
        Grotesque
        London (England)
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        subj:
          London (England)
          Drabble, Margaret, 1939-
          Old age
          Seven Sisters, The (Book)
          Aeneid
          Cities & towns in art
          Women
          Sisters
          Older women
          Power (Social sciences)
          Grotesque
      keyword:
        descenso al inframundo
        descent to the Underworld
        Eneida
        lo grotesco
        Margaret Drabble
        old age
        reescrituras de autoría femenina
        the Aeneid
        the grotesque
        vejez
        women's rewritings
        descenso al inframundo
        Eneida
        lo grotesco
        reescrituras de autoría femenina
        vejez
      ab:
        This article analyses the katabasis mytheme in Margaret Drabble's The Seven Sisters (2002), laying special emphasis on her contemporary revisionist reimagining of the Aeneid. A dialogue with Virgil's male-centred epic poem becomes both a starting point and a destination when death is just around the corner, intimated and sublimated as it is by London, a city that correlates to the Virgilian Underworld as a dark, damp topos, plagued by grotesque lost souls wandering about its liminal spaces. This close reading of the trope will not only provide a critical insight into Drabble's subversive reworking of Aeneas's descent to the Underworld from a female-centred perspective, but will also explore how the mythical resignification of the London urban landscape mediates an ongoing redefinition of women's old age and its tense power relations with the past, the present and the future.
        Este artículo analiza el mitema de la katabasis en The Seven Sisters (2002), de Margaret Drabble, haciendo hincapié en su recreación revisionista contemporánea de la Eneida. Un diálogo con el poema épico androcéntrico de Virgilio es a la vez punto de partida y llegada cuando la muerte acecha, insinuada y sublimada en la representación de Londres, ciudad que guarda correlación con el húmedo y oscuro inframundo virgiliano como topos plagado de grotescas almas en pena vagando por sus espacios liminales. De ahí que una lectura detenida de este motivo no solo permita ahondar críticamente en cómo Drabble lo subvierte al reescribir el descenso al inframundo de Eneas desde una perspectiva ginocéntrica, sino también explorar cómo la resignificación mítica del paisaje urbano londinense es transmisora de la redefinición en curso de la vejez femenina y sus tensas relaciones de poder con el pasado, presente y futuro.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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