This article identifies a double allusion to the tragic characters of Phaedra and Eriphyle in Amm. Marc. 14.1.3 and considers its possible meanings. In combination, these allusions evoke the double ...nature of the story of Eriphyle, therefore functioning as a reference to the double nature of Caesar Gallus’ depiction in Ammianus. The double allusion consequently forms part of Ammianus’ tragic style throughout Book 14. Having identified the presence of this double allusion, the article illuminates its possible meaning by connecting Ammianus’ passage to the Virgilian rewriting of the description of Eriphyle in Homer.
Despite the modern association of ancient Amazons and Diana's huntresses with lesbianism, scholarly accounts of these groups as they appear in ancient Greek and Roman literature have rarely adverted ...to any hints of homoeroticism. This article re-examines several narratives concerning Amazons and huntresses in Latin literature (including Camilla in Vergil's Aeneid and Phaedra in Seneca's eponymous tragedy) from the perspective of queer kinship and female homosociality, demonstrating the ways in which these characters subvert traditional norms of kinship and femininity, replacing patriarchal control with female sodality, often imaged as a "sister" relationship. It suggests that, even if we do not interpret these intense homosocial bonds as erotic, we can nonetheless perceive a more radical rejection of social norms that transcends genital sexuality and merits the label of "queerness", insofar as queerness can be defined as a resistance to normativity.
Resumen En este trabajo analizaremos dos tragedias en las cuales consideramos que los conceptos de libido y luxus juegan papeles centrales dentro de la representación: Phaedra y Thyestesofrecen dos ...puestas en escena particulares del lujo impulsadas por un tipo particular de libido, las cuales, en apariencia, se adecúan a las habituales condenas moralizantes de la época de nuestro autor. Pero estas obras van un poco más allá, pues a través de la puesta en escena y la representación retórica de la paupertas y cierto regreso a un estado natural, se deconstruye la idea de Naturaleza al mostrarla, paradójicamente, también como artificio.
This close reading of Seneca's most influential tragedy explores the question of how poetic language produces the impression of an individual self, a full personality with a conscious and unconscious ...emotional life.
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In classical myth Phaedra plays a particular role: a main figure in ancient literature (Euripides, Ovid, Seneca write extensively about her vicissitudes), she occupies a very limited space in the ...artistic repertoire of the classical world. In the Greek world, Phaedra’s figure is unknown to the Hellenic artistic repertoires. There is however an interesting exception: the pictures painted by Polygnotos for the Lesche of the Cnidians at Delphoi, where Phaedra is on a swing. The annotation of Pausania is by no means secondary: it is common knowledge, as the myths of Erigon or Charila show, that there is a very close symbolic connection between the swing and the hanging, which is also how Phaedra chooses to kill herself. But the binomial swing/hanging, mainly related to sexual relations by ancient sources, also represents symbolically the kind of death enacted in female puberty rituals.
Artykuł przedstawia analizę porównawczą trzech współczesnych inscenizacji mitu Fedry wyreżyserowanych przez Maję Kleczewską (Teatr Narodowy w Warszawie, 2006), Michała Zadarę (Narodowy Stary Teatr w ...Krakowie, 2006) i Grzegorza Wiśniewskiego (Teatr Wybrzeże w Gdańsku, 2019). Ramę teoretyczną rozważań stanowi koncepcja abiektalności postaci Fedry i jej reprezentacji w języku dramatu. Przedmiotem analizy są reżyserskie interwencje w teksty literackie podejmujące mit Fedry: strategie ich multiplikacji, modyfikacji i anihilacji. W intertekstualnym przedstawieniu Kleczewskiej, zestawiającej różne powiązane z tematem dramaty, tekst i język stają się mniej istotne niż ciała aktorów. W ironicznym teatrze Zadary formacja dyskursywna klasycystycznego tekstu Racine’a zostaje poddana dekonstrukcyjnej analizie, ale staje się zarazem głównym tematem przedstawienia. Wiśniewski powraca do języka Racine’a, ale próbuje go przekroczyć, kontrapunktując go wyciszoną i oszczędną grą aktorską wzmacnianą kilkoma mocnymi frazami muzycznymi. Trzy analizowane przedstawienia wpisują się w koncepcję teatru jako laboratorium kryzysu, w tym przypadku – kryzysu abiektalności.
This article presents a comparative analysis of three contemporary stagings of the myth of Phaedra: by Maja Kleczewska (Teatr Narodowy, Warsaw 2006), Michał Zadara (Narodowy Teatr Stary, Cracow ...2006), and Grzegorz Wiśniewski (Teatr Wybrzeże, Gdańsk 2019). The theoretical framework refers to the abject quality of the character of Phaedra and its representation in language. The author analyses the directors’ interventions in literary texts reworking the myth of Phaedra: strategies ranging from multiplication, through modification, to annihilation of the dramatic text. In Kleczewska’s intertextual staging, which juxtaposes different plays addressing the theme, the text and the language become less important than the actors’ physicality. Zadara’s ironic theatre deconstructs the discursive formation of Racine’s classical tragedy, while retaining it as the main subject of the performance. Wiśniewski returns to Rancine’s language, but tries to transcend it, counterbalancing it with quiet, restrained acting, enhanced by strong musical phrases. The three stagings resonate with the concept of the theatre as a laboratory of crisis, here: of the crisis of the abject.