Female Acts in Greek Tragedy (Martin Classical Lectures)

423 Pages·2001·2.28 MB·English

by  Helene P. Foley

FEMALE ACTS IN GREEK TRAGEDY
MARTIN CLASSICAL LECTURES
The Martin Classical Lectures are delivered annually at
Oberlin College on a foundation established by his many
friends in honor of Charles Beebe Martin, for forty-five
years a teacher of classical literature and classical
art in Oberlin.
John Peradotto, Man in the Middle Voice: Name and
Narration in the Odyssey
Martha C. Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and
Practice in Hellenistic Ethics
Josiah Ober, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens:
Intellectual Crisis of Popular Rule
Anne Carson, Economy of the Unlost (Reading Simonides of
Keos with Paul Celan)
Helene P. Foley, Female Acts in Greek Tragedy
Helene P. Foley
FEMALE ACTS
IN GREEKTRAGEDY
princeton university press
princeton and oxford
Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 3 Market Place,
Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1SY
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Foley, Helene P., 1942–
Female acts in Greek tragedy / Helene P. Foley.
p. cm.—(Martin classical lectures)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-691-05030-9 (alk. paper)
1. Greek drama (Tragedy)—History and criticism. 2. Women and
literature—Greece. 3. Women in literature. I. Title. II. Martin
classical lectures (Unnumbered). New series.
PA3136 .F65 2001
8829.0109352042—dc21 00-060624
This book has been composed in Goudy Old Style
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements
of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper)
www.pup.princeton.edu
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Duncan, Christian, and Froma
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Contents
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
III.4. Tragic Wives: Clytemnestras 201
III.5. Tragic Wives: Medea’s Divided Self 243
III.6. Tragic Mothers: Maternal Persuasion in Euripides 272
IV. AnodosDramas: Euripides’ Alcestisand Helen 301
Conclusion 333
Bibliography 339
General Index 369
Index Locurum 387
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Acknowledgments
This book has been a long time in the making. So many individual scholars,
students, and institutions have in one way or another helped me to formulate
and improve my ideas that I have decided to note contributions to individual
chapters locally. Nevertheless, some special thanks belong here. The following
have at one stage or another read more than one chapter of the book, and I am
profoundly grateful to all of them: Duncan Foley, Richard Seaford, and Chris-
tian Wolff; the referees for Princeton Press, Mark Griffith and Donald Mas-
tronarde; and the anonymous referee for the Martin Lectures Committee. The
intellectual friendship and personal support of Susan Cole, Carolyn Dewald,
Simon Goldhill, Frederick Griffiths, Edith Hall, Natalie Kampen, Marilyn
Arthur Katz, Rachel Kitzinger, Dirk Obbink, Robin and Catherine Osborne,
Sarah Pomeroy, Cynthia Patterson, Daniel Selden, Alan Shapiro, Laura
Slatkin, Susan Stephens, Oliver Taplin, Froma Zeitlin, and the late Jack Win-
kler have also been critical. Brian MacDonald served as an invaluable copy-
editor.
I wish to thank the John Solomon Guggenheim Foundation, the National
Endowment for the Humanities, and Barnard College, Columbia University,
for supporting the writing of this book.
Finally, I am grateful to Oberlin College for inviting me to present the Mar-
tin Classical Lectures, for offering me such wonderful hospitality and criticism
while I was there, and for permitting me to embed those lectures in a larger
study. The lectures themselves dealt exclusively with the issues discussed in
part III of the book, but have been changed considerably to fit a new format.
I also wish to thank the following presses and journals for permission to pub-
lish revised versions of the following articles or book chapters: to Classical An-
tiquity and the Regents of the University of California for “Medea’s Divided
Self,” Classical Antiquity8.1 (1989), 61–85, now revised as III.5; to Routledge
(Taylor and Francis) for “AnodosDramas: Euripides’ Alcestisand Helen,” in R.
Hexter and D. Selden, eds., Innovations of Antiquity(New York, 1992), 133–
60, now revised as IV; to Levante Editori and the editors of Tragedy, Comedy
and the Polisfor “The Politics of Tragic Lamentation,” in A. H. Sommerstein,
S. Halliwell, J. Henderson, and B. Zimmermann, eds., Tragedy, Comedy and the
Polis(Bari, 1993), 101–43, now revised as I; and to Oxford University Press for
“Penelope as Moral Agent,” in Beth Cohen, ed., The Distaff Side: Representing
the Female in Homer’s Odyssey(Oxford, 1995), 93–115, now revised as part of
III.1, and “Antigone as Moral Agent,” in M. S. Silk, ed., Tragedy and the Tragic:
Greek Theatre and Beyond(Oxford, 1996), 49–73, now revised as III.3.
I dedicate this book to three people whose inspiration has been critical to