Intimate Commerce : Exchange, Gender, and Subjectivity in Greek Tragedy / Victoria Wohl.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wohl, Victoria.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Greek drama (Tragedy)--History and criticism.

Greek drama (Tragedy).

Women in literature.

Femininity in literature.

Man-woman relationships in literature.

Literature and society.

Mythology, Greek, in literature.

Women and literature--Greece.

Women and literature.

Ceremonial exchange.

Subjectivity in literature.

Sex role in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (333 p.)

Place of Publication:

Austin : University of Texas Press, 1998.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Exchanges of women between men occur regularly in Greek tragedy—and almost always with catastrophic results. Instead of cementing bonds between men, such exchanges rend them. They allow women, who should be silent objects, to become monstrous subjects, while men often end up as lifeless corpses. But why do the tragedies always represent the transferal of women as disastrous? Victoria Wohl offers an illuminating analysis of the exchange of women in Sophocles' Trachiniae, Aeschylus' Agamemnon, and Euripides' Alcestis. She shows how the attempts of women in these plays to become active subjects rather than passive objects of exchange inevitably fail. While these failures seem to validate male hegemony, the women's actions, however futile, blur the distinction between male subject and female object, calling into question the very nature of the tragic self. What the tragedies thus present, Wohl asserts, is not only an affirmation of Athens' reigning ideologies (including its gender hierarchy) but also the possibility of resistance to them and the imagination of alternatives.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION. Exchange, Gender, and Subjectivity

PART ONE. SOVEREIGN FATHER AND FEMALE SUBJECT IN SOPHOCLES' Trachiniae

ONE. "THE NOBLEST LAW"

TWO. THE FORECLOSED FEMALE SUBJECT

THREE. ALTERITY AND INTERSUBJECTIVITY

PART TWO. THE VIOLENCE OF kharis IN AESCHYLUS'S Agamemnon

FOUR. THE COMMODITY FETISH AND THE AGALMATIZATION OF THE VIRGIN DAUGHTER

FIVE. Agalma ploutou

SIX. FEAR AND PITY: CLYTEMNESTRA AND CASSANDRA

PART THREE. MOURNING AND MATRICIDE IN EURIPIDES' Alcestis

SEVEN. THE SHADOW OF THE OBJECT: Loss, MOURNING, AND REPARATION

EIGHT. AGONISTIC IDENTITY AND THE SUPERLATIVE SUBJECT

NINE. THE MIRROR OF xenia AND THE PATERNAL SYMBOLIC

CONCLUSION. Too Intimate Commerce

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GENERAL INDEX

INDEX LOCORUM

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

ISBN:

9780292799974

0292799977

OCLC:

1286807170