Female Acts in Greek Tragedy

by Foley, Helene P.

• ISBN13: 9780691094922
• ISBN10: 0691094926
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-11-18
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

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 clicheacute;s about women and gender in a fashion that resonates with contemporary Athenian social and political issues.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introductory Note and Abbreviations	p. xi
Introduction	p. 3
The Politics of Tragic Lamentation	p. 19
The Contradictions of Tragic Marriage	p. 57
Women as Moral Agents in Greek Tragedy	p. 107
Virgins, Wives, and Mothers; Penelope as Paradigm	p. 109
Sacrificial Virgins: The Ethics of Lamentation in Sophocles' Electra	p. 145
Sacrificial Virgins: Antigone as Moral Agent	p. 172
Tragic Wives: Clytemnestras	p. 201
Tragic Wives: Medea's Divided Self	p. 243
Tragic Mothers: Maternal Persuasion in Euripides	p. 272
Anodos Dramas: Euripides' Alcestis and Helen	p. 301
Conclusion	p. 333
Bibliography	p. 339
General Index	p. 369
Index Locurum	p. 387
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