Digital Storytelling and Mind-weaving Women
The words 'textus' and 'contextus' in Latin were associated with weaving, plaiting, interlacing, wrought together, interwoven ... Weaving was a complex process that was often the work of women as part of their domestic duties. The most famous weaver in Western classical culture was Odysseus's wife Penelope. To fend off unwanted suitors during her husband's absence, she tells them that she will marry only when she has finished weaving a funeral shroud for her husband's father Laertes. But each night she undoes part of her completed work in order to delay being forced to accept one of the suitors. Her 'cunning' ( metis ) is a form of knowledge, a kind of artifice, and therefore demonstrates the relationship between the craft of the storyteller and the weaving of the narrative cloth. She is similar to and different from the character role of Helen, who also weaves; but in this case the heroic deeds depicted are a representation of her story. T...