Zoe Korte, University of Missouri-Columbia
In an incisive explication of reception theory, this research proposes three selected texts as representatives of classical commentary, translation, and adaptation in relation to Sophocles’ Electra. Beginning with Hanna Roisman’s commentary, the researcher examines the subjectivity of even the most unmediated form in which modern readers inherit classical texts. Transitioning with poet and translator Anne Carson’s remarks on specific semantic instances in the original text, the paper shifts its gaze to Carson’s translation known as Elektra and its accompanying controversies. After addressing the artistic liberties intrinsic to translation, but perhaps excessively in Elektra, the essay arrives at Chicano playwright Luis Alfaro’s Electricidad, a twenty-first century adaptation of the Electra myth that employs Helen Tiffin’s concept of canonical counter-discourse to sublimate postcolonial trauma in the United States. The researcher dissects Alfaro’s deliberate deviations from the original text and their significance for the transmission of ancient themes for a contemporary audience, concluding that while any of these samples of classical reception may be condemned or revered, they certainly demonstrate the essential interplay between personal and political, art and audience, past and present.