Synopses & Reviews
Classical PresencesSeries Editors: Lorna Hardwick, Professor of Classical Studies, Open University, and James I. Porter, Professor of Greek, Latin, and Comparative Literature, University of Michigan
The texts, ideas, images, and material culture of ancient Greece and Rome have always been crucial to attempts to appropriate the past in order to authenticate the present. They underlie the mapping of change and the assertion and challenging of values and identities, old and new. Classical Presences brings the latest scholarship to bear on the contexts, theory, and practice of such use, and abuse, of the classical past.
Laughing with Medusa explores a series of inter-linking questions, including: Does history's self-positioning as the successor of myth result in the exclusion of alternative narratives of the past? How does feminism exclude itself from certain historical discourses? Why has psychoanalysis placed myth at the center of its explorations of the modern subject? Why are the Muses feminine? Do the categories of myth and politics intersect or are they mutually exclusive? Does feminism's recourse to myth offer a script of resistance or commit it to an ineffective utopianism? Covering a wide range of subject areas including poetry, philosophy, science, history, and psychoanalysis as well as classics, this book engages with these questions from a truly interdisciplinary perspective. It includes a specially commissioned work of fiction, "Iphigeneia's Wedding," by the poet Elizabeth Cook.
Synopsis
Classical Presences
Series Editors: Lorna Hardwick, Professor of Classical Studies, Open University, and James I. Porter, Professor of Greek, Latin, and Comparative Literature, University of Michigan
The texts, ideas, images, and material culture of ancient Greece and Rome have always been crucial to attempts to appropriate the past in order to authenticate the present. They underlie the mapping of change and the assertion and challenging of values and identities, old and new. Classical
Presences brings the latest scholarship to bear on the contexts, theory, and practice of such use, and abuse, of the classical past.
Laughing with Medusa explores a series of inter-linking questions, including: Does history's self-positioning as the successor of myth result in the exclusion of alternative narratives of the past? How does feminism exclude itself from certain historical discourses? Why has psychoanalysis placed
myth at the center of its explorations of the modern subject? Why are the Muses feminine? Do the categories of myth and politics intersect or are they mutually exclusive? Does feminism's recourse to myth offer a script of resistance or commit it to an ineffective utopianism? Covering a wide range of
subject areas including poetry, philosophy, science, history, and psychoanalysis as well as classics, this book engages with these questions from a truly interdisciplinary perspective. It includes a specially commissioned work of fiction, "Iphigeneia's Wedding," by the poet Elizabeth Cook.
Synopsis
Laughing with Medusa explores a series of interlinking questions, including: Does history's self-positioning as the successor of myth result in the exclusion of alternative narratives of the past? How does feminism exclude itself from certain historical discourses? Why has psychoanalysis placed myth at the centre of its explorations of the modern subject? Why are the Muses feminine? Do the categories of myth and politics intersect or are they mutually exclusive? Does feminism's recourse to myth offer a script of resistance or commit it to an ineffective utopianism? Covering a wide range of subject areas including poetry, philosophy, science, history, and psychoanalysis as well as classics, this book engages with these questions from a truly interdisciplinary perspective. It includes a specially commisssioned work of fiction, `Iphigeneia's Wedding', by the poet Elizabeth Cook.
Synopsis
Laughing with Medusa explores a series of interlinking questions, including: Does history's self-positioning as the successor of myth result in the exclusion of alternative narratives of the past? How does feminism exclude itself from certain historical discourses? Why has psychoanalysis
placed myth at the centre of its explorations of the modern subject? Why are the Muses feminine? Do the categories of myth and politics intersect or are they mutually exclusive? Does feminism's recourse to myth offer a script of resistance or commit it to an ineffective utopianism? Covering a wide
range of subject areas including poetry, philosophy, science, history, and psychoanalysis as well as classics, this book engages with these questions from a truly interdisciplinary perspective. It includes a specially commisssioned work of fiction, `Iphigeneia's Wedding', by the poet Elizabeth
Cook.
About the Author
Vanda Zajko is Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History, University of Bristol. Miriam Leonard is Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History, University of Bristol.
Table of Contents
Introduction,
Vanda Zajko and Miriam LeonardI. Myth and Psychoanalysis
Hope, Promise, Threaten, and Swear: Psychoanalytic Myths of the Future for Boys and Girls, Rachel Bowlby
`Who are we when we read?' Keats, Klein, Cixous, and Elizabeth Cook's Achilles, Vanda Zajko
Beyond Oedipus: Feminist Thought, Psychoanalysis, and Mythical Figurations of the Feminine, Griselda Pollock
2. Myth and Politics
Lacan, Irigaray, and Beyond: Antigones and the Politics of Psychoanalysis, Miriam Leonard
Antigone and the Politics of Sisterhood, Simon Goldhill
Fascism on Stage: Jean Anouilh's Antigone, Katie Fleming
3. Myth and History
A Woman's History of Warfare, Ellen O'Gorman
Beyond glorious Ocean': Feminism, Myth, and America, Greg Staley
4. Myth and Science
Atoms, Individuals, and Myths, Duncan Kennedy
The Philosopher and the Mother Cow: Towards a Gendered Reading of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, Alison Sharrock
Science Fictions and Cyber Myths: Or, Do Cyborgs Dream of Dolly the Sheep?, Genevieve Liveley
5. Myth and Poetry
Putting the Women Back into the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, Lillian Doherty
Reclaiming the Muse, Penny Murray
Defying History: The Legacy of Helen in Modern Poetry, Efi Spentzou
`This tart fable': Daphne, Apollo, and Contemporary Women's Poetry, Rowena Fowler
Iphigeneia's Wedding, Elizabeth Cook