Sisterhood and Myth in Circe or the Blue Pleasure by Begoña Caamaño

Abstract

This paper seeks to analyze Circe ou o pracer do azul (2009), the first novel by the Galician writer Begoña Caamaño, which involves and redraws the relationships between the Odyssey characters (Penelope, Circe and Ulysses) from the feminist perspective of revisionist mythmaking. Located in the wake of other contemporary recreations of the classic story, Caamaño’s opera prima gives the protagonism to the two women allegedly opposite. Building the novel through polyphony and the integration of epistolary discourse, in this novel Penelope and Circe are authorized to talk: the possibility of a rich and liberating friendship for both of them is presented. Circe ou o pracer do azul proposes an alternative outcome to the canonical narrative, taking from the thread of old post-Homeric traditions, but adding sisterhood as a tool of empowerment.