Penélope Bloom: the corseted monologue and the book as a poetic three-dimensional object

Abstract

I display the triggering ideas of two transcreative approaches to the characters Penelope, from Homer's "Odyssey" (8th BC, approx.) and Marion/Molly Bloom, from James Joyce's "Ulysses" (1920). They culminated in an illustrated book, and in the elaboration of a three-dimensional poetic object. Both subvert the book as a narrative space-time, working its form through metalanguage and through its transformation into a meaningful body. In Retorno de Ulisses (Rocco, 2007), I recreated Penelope as a visual artist and fictional author of the illustrations that intertwine with the text of my own. In Penélope Bloom (2020), the well-known monologue by Leopold Bloom's wife is hand-transcribed from the English original, on 2600 meters of sheets of paper sewn together. This volume is compressed by the cover of an edition of Joyce's work, as if it was a corset. The mainly objective was to question the place of women in both narratives consecrated as part of the literary canon and the book as a cultural symbol of a patriarchal civilization.