Gendered Politics In Sophocles Trachiniae Gesthimani Seferiadi by Gesthimani Seferiadi 9781350260313, 9781350260344, 1350260312, 1350260347 instant download after payment.

This is the first book-length examination of the notion of gendered politics in Sophocles’ Trachiniae. Making use of feminist theory and tackling the political nature of the categories of identity, culture and sexuality, Seferiadi brings the interpretation of Sophocles’ play up-to-date with the most recent scholarly developments. She discusses the play in the light of its Amazonian and monstrous background and touches upon topics such as marriage and the exchange of women; reciprocity within a corroded system of gift-exchanges; and the dynamics of female silence and the ‘impaired’ hegemonic masculinity.
Contributing to the topic of rape in the ancient world, this book focuses on sexual violence and the intertwinement of marriage and rape from the perspective of tragedy. With an Amazon being placed within the civilized arrangement of an oikos, the play negotiates the position of the female and advocates the need to expel the monstrous sexualities from the polis. Differing from previous analyses, this study is a reminder that female subjectivity was less foreclosed than is often tacitly assumed.
This book seeks to explore the gendered politics in Sophocles’ Trachiniae. The first chapter, dealing with Deianeira as an Amazon and her monstrous opponents aims to define the background of the dislocation of gender symbols in which the play invests (“An Amazon in Athens: Monsters, Gender and the Polis”). Then, one by one, the next four chapters deal with different aspects of this dislocation; the second chapter offers a discussion of the nuptial narratives of the drama and follows the way the irregular material of Trachiniae is included within a structure that repeatedly refers to marriage but is committed to violating this arrangement (“Three Weddings and a Funeral: Marriage and Sexual Violence”); the third chapter deals with the corroded reciprocal transactions of the play with a view to explain Deianeira’s failure as the inevitable consequence of a general crisis in the network of reciprocities (“Beware of Monsters Bearing Gifts: Exchange and Reciprocity”); the fourth chapter investigates the question of guilt and punishment in terms of Deianeira’s ‘crime’ and the issues of female agency that are raised because of her self-conscious decision to send the poisoned robe to Herakles (“Crime and Punishment: Guilt, Justice and Silence”); the last chapter talks through the issues of authority that are raised in the exodus in order to examine the way the dynamics of negotiation of hegemonic masculinity evolves in the closure of Trachiniae (“Absent in the Exodus: Authority and Masculinity”).