How Sweet Are Tears: The Uses of Lamentation in The Trojan Women and Queens of Syria.
By Sarah J. Thompson
Casey Dué argues that in tragedy, generally speaking, “lament is the only medium through which women have a sanctioned public voice, the one weapon they have with which to defend themselves in desperate circumstances” (16). In The Trojan Women, however, lamentation cannot protect the women. While it may have other functions in other tragedies, Dué claims that “there is nothing to be gained by the use of lament in this play other than the pity of the hearers” (139). Who are the hearers: the male characters, the other women, the audience?
The Sword, the Box, and the Bow: Trauma, (Dis)placement, and “New Canadians”
By Lana Radloff
The sword, the box, and the bow are key visual emblems of impending action and symbols of revelation in Sophocles’ Ajax, Women of Trachis, and Philoctetes. Each one brings about or has the potential to cause the destruction of not only the plays’ main protagonists but also those around them. Ajax’s concubine-wife, Tecmessa, articulates the uncertain fate she and her son, Eurysaces, will face because of Ajax’s suicide, a reality she knows all too well as Ajax’s hard-won prize from the Trojan War.
Aeschylus’ Erinyes as Suppliant Immigrants: Enchantment and Subjugation
By Allannah Karas
The ending of Aeschylus’ Oresteia in the trial of Orestes and the pacification of the Erinyes, is often lauded as an immense achievement for democratic Athens against the system of blood vengeance embodied by the Erinyes (Tzanetou 2012, Roth 1993, Buxton 1982). Yet, when examined from the point of view of the Erinyes as suppliant immigrants, the last scenes of the Eumenides take on new significance. The Erinyes enter the play on the offensive, hunting down Orestes for killing his mother Clytemnestra.
Now We See You, Now We Don’t: Displacement, Citizenship, and Gender in Greek Tragedy
By Hallie Marshall
Some Greek tragedies have female choruses that we immediately recognize as being geographically displaced or on the verge of displacement, such as the chorus of Aeschylus’ Suppliant Women, Euripides’ Phoenician Women, Trojan Women and Hecuba, and are pointed to as examples of how tragedy speaks to the realities of war and displacement. These plays represent a range of female experiences and are important for our understanding of how women suffer in war, both in antiquity and in the present.