Gendered Interpretation of the Ancient Atreid Myth in Jennifer Saint’s Novel “Elektra”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17072/2073-6681-2026-1-64-73Keywords:
Jennifer Saint; Elektra; Atreid Myth; antique plots; feminist reception; retellingAbstract
This article examines the interpretation of ancient plots within the literary phenomenon of retelling. In this study, retelling refers to works of mass literature in which classical proto-plots are transformed and adapted to new socio-cultural contexts. One notable example in 21st-century literature is J. Saint’s novel Elektra (2022), which reimagines the ancient narrative of the Atreides’ ancestral curse through the personal perspectives of three female characters – Clytemnestra, Elektra, and Cassandra. Each heroine demonstrates subjective experiences, feelings, and emotions while encountering aspects of life such as social inequality and dependence on male power. The article aims to analyze Elektra in the context of the artistic reception of ancient myth in contemporary women’s literature. The methodological framework of the research is complex, it includes historical, cultural, comparative, and hermeneutic methods. The study demonstrates that the author modernizes ancient figures and provides them with psychological motivation, filling familiar mythological forms with new ideological and ethical meanings. The novel actively employs allusions to original mythological plots, including the works of Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Quintus Smyrnaeus. By returning to classical narratives, Saint highlights the importance of the problem of women's limited opportunities in a patriarchal culture. The results of the analysis make it possible not only to discuss the specifics of mythological retelling in the literature of the 21st century but also to outline the prospects for further research, in particular, the study into poetological aspects of similar retellings in the works of other contemporary authors.References
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