Reclaiming Klytemnestra : revenge or reconciliation / Kathleen L. Komar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Komar, Kathleen L.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Clytemnestra, Queen of Mycenae--In literature.

Clytemnestra.

Literature, Modern--20th century--History and criticism.

Literature, Modern.

Literature--Women authors--History and criticism.

Literature.

Women murderers in literature.

Adultery in literature.

Revenge in literature.

Literature--Women authors.

Physical Description:

xii, 224 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2003]

Summary:

Reclaiming Klytemnestra explores the surprisingly numerous revisions by late twentieth-century women writers of the famous axe-wielding Greek queen who killed her husband in his bath when he returned from the Trojan War. By slaying her husband, Klytemnestra exposed the competing ethics of motherhood and matrimony at the beginnings of the Western tradition. In this interdisciplinary study, Kathleen L. Komar first examines the classical archetype of Klytemnestra established by writers such as Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Turning to the twentieth century, she investigates the work of women who, since the 1960s, have reconceptualized Klytemnestra's actions and motivations in the contemporary contexts of dance, fiction, drama, poetry, and the Internet. These revisions include a Martha Graham ballet; a performance piece by multiple authors; a play by Dacia Maraini; novels by Christa Reinig, Nancy Bogen, Marie Cardinal, and Christa Wolf; a short story by Christine Bruckner; a poem by Laura Kennelly; a mixed-genre piece by Severine Auffret; and two Internet presentations. Eloquent, provocative, and richly detailed, Reclaiming Klytemnestra asks us to reassess the roles women were assigned at the beginnings of Western culture and to reenvision how those roles might be changed in the new millennium.

Contents:

Introduction: Foundations of western culture, re-collecting Klytemnestra

The classical Klytemnestra

Klytemnestra takes center stage : Klytemnestra in the pre- and early 1980s

Klytemnestra in the mid- to late 1980s

The fate of Klytemnestra in the 1990s : upstaged by her daughters

Conclusion: The issues for women revisionists; trauma, violence, and a new gender dialogic for Klytemnestra at the end of the millennium

Appendix: genealogies of the house of Atreus and Klytemnestra.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [195]-211) and index.

ISBN:

0252028112

OCLC:

50243454