The hero has returned, but he is meeting his wife for the first time still as a stranger seated by her he will hear about her means of survival in the middle of this most awkward situation in Ithaca, where the suitors have been taken possession of the king’s oikos for years. In fact Penelope’s narration takes place during a crucial moment in the plot: the audience is Odysseus himself. I will start with the narration delivered by Penelope herself, who is more explicit about the violent interruption of this strange process, which kept Odysseus’s oikos together during the last four years of his absence. The third and last repetition of the episode is delivered again by one of the suitors upon their arrival to Hades: Amphimedon’s psūkhē shares with the dead heroes in the underworld the story of the fatal web. The second narration is performed by Penelope in person, in Book 19, and her sole audience is Odysseus, who is still a stranger. We first hear of the stratagem in Book 2, in Antinoos’s address to the assembly of the Ithacans, the first one to be convoked since Odysseus’s departure. There are three different loci in the Odyssey (Books 2, 19, 24) where the story about Penelope’s strange weaving is recounted. To make my point I will need to refer briefly to the broader context of weaving as a literary and ritual theme, on which I will expand in future posts. So in this post my focal point will be the theme of violent interruption in relation to Penelope’s web. I did this deep-diving in the past here I can offer only a concise overview of this important theme in Odyssean poetics, thrilled as I am to enter the dialogue that Greg and Andromache started. Understanding Penelope’s weaving necessarily involves deep-diving in Odyssean poetics, because her famous “great web” is deeply connected with the overall thematic structure of the poem.

Purchase, Sylvia and Leonard Marx Gift and funds from various donors, 2002 (2002.230) Silk embroidered with silk thread, 45 x 68 in. “Penelope Unraveling Her Work at Night” (1886)

Shroud garment