New feminine myths as builders of new transcultural horizons

Abstract

In contemporary women's writing, mythical models of self-empowerment and personal growth permeate a number of novels from various cultural backgrounds and geographic areas. I will focus on the transformation of a major legend, that of Orpheus, which had influenced all Western literature since Greek and Roman times. Orpheus, the poet, who mourns the untimely death of his wife symbolizes the divide between the male and the female in the West, with Eurydice relinquished to the underworld. In contemporary women's literature, we witness a radical shift from this paradigm, with a new Eurydice emerging from the unseen, in order to expound her vision of the world she wants to live in. This new figure is linked to various other feminine mythical figures of empowerment, including a new Ariadne and even new forms of Mahadevi. From a transnational perspective, women writers contribute to a reinvented transcultural dialogue that better represents the new conditions of our lives, as do Ananda Devi (Mauritius, France and Switzerland), together with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (a North-American author of Indian descent), both important builders of connections between East and West, especially in their rewriting of the figure of Draupadi and other major mythical paradigms.