Female Acts in Greek Tragedy

Erscheinungsjahr 2002
ISBN: 978-0-691-09492-2
Verlag: Princeton University Press

Buch, Englisch, 424 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 685 g

Reihe: Martin Classical Lectures

Although Classical Athenian ideology did not permit women to exercise legal, economic, and social autonomy, the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides often represent them as influential social and moral forces in their own right. Scholars have struggled to explain this seeming contradiction. Helene Foley shows how Greek tragedy uses gender relations to explore specific issues in the development of the social, political, and intellectual life in the polis. She investigates three central and problematic areas in which tragic heroines act independently of men: death ritual and lamentation, marriage, and the making of significant ethical choices. Her anthropological approach, together with her literary analysis, allows for an unusually rich context in which to understand gender relations in ancient Greece. This book examines, for example, the tragic response to legislation regulating family life that may have begun as early as the sixth century. It also draws upon contemporary studies of virtue ethics and upon feminist reconsiderations of the Western ethical tradition. Foley maintains that by viewing public issues through the lens of the family, tragedy asks whether public and private morality can operate on the same terms. Moreover, the plays use women to represent significant moral alternatives. Tragedy thus exploits, reinforces, and questions cultural clichés about women and gender in a fashion that resonates with contemporary Athenian social and political issues.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Foley, Helene P.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Klassische Literaturwissenschaft

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments ix

Introductory Note and Abbreviations xi

Introduction 3

I. The Politics of Tragic Lamentation 19

II. The Contradictions of Tragic Marriage 57

III. Women as Moral Agents in Greek Tragedy 107

III.1. Virgins, Wives, and Mothers; Penelope as Paradigm 109

III.2. Sacrificial Virgins: The Ethics of Lamentation in Sophocles' Electra 145

III.3. Sacrificial Virgins: Antigone as Moral Agent 172

III4. Tragic Wives: Clytemnestras 201

III.5. Tragic Wives: Medea's Divided Self 243

III.6. Tragic Mothers: Maternal Persuasion in Euripides 272

IV Anodos Dramas: Euripides' Alcestis and Helen 301

Conclusion 333

Bibliography 339

General Index 369

Index Locurum 387