Froma I. Zeitlin

The Retrospective Muse showcases the celebrated work of Froma I. Zeitlin. Over many decades, Zeitlin's innovative studies have changed the field of classics. Her instantly recognizable work brings together anthropology, gender studies, cultural studies, and an acute literary sensibility to open ancient texts and ideas to new forms of understanding. A selection of her luminous essays on topics still timely today are collected for the first time in a volume that shows the full range and flair of her remarkable intellect. Together, these illuminating analyses show why Zeitlin's work on ancient Greek culture has had an enduring impact on scholars around the world, not just in classics but across multiple fields. From Homer to the Greek novel, from religion to erotics, from myth and ritual to theatrical performance, she expounds on some of the most important works of ancient writing and some of modernity's most significant critical questions. Zeitlin's writing still sheds light on the durable aspects of classics as a discipline, and this book encapsulates her achievement.

Described as "a powerful, brilliant, and original study" when first published, this second edition of Froma Zeitlin's experiment in decoding the Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes in the light of contemporary theory now updates her explorations of the tragic struggle between Eteocles and Polyneices, the doomed sons of Oedipus, with a new preface, a new afterword, and the addition of the relevant Greek texts. The mutual self-destruction of the enemy brothers in this last act of the cursed family is preceded (and determined) by one of Aeschylus' most daring innovations through the pairing of the shields of attackers and defenders in the central scene of the play as an extended dialogue explicitly concerned with visual and verbal symbols. In a preliminary consideration of the relations between language and kinship and between city and family, between self and society, as determining forces in fifth-century drama, the heart of the book is a detailed investigation of this tour de force of semiotic energy. Zeitlin's decipherment of this provocative text yields a heightened appreciation of Aeschylus' compositional artistry and the complexity of his worldview. At the same time, this study points the way to Zeitlin's larger engagement with the special ideological role that the city of Thebes comes to play on the tragic stage as the negative counterpart to the self-representation of Athens.

These are paperback editions of important works on Greek and Roman literature, history, philosophy and archaeology. New introductions bring the works up to date in the light of more recent scholarship. In "The Imagery of Euripides," Shirley Barlow demonstrates, by a close analysis of Euripides' use of language and of imagery in particular, that his imaginative powers differ in kind, not just in quality, from those of Aeschylus and Sophocles, and that they serve a different purpose in the structure of the plays. This third edition includes a substantial new foreword by the eminent classical scholar Froma I. Zeitlin and substantial new introduction by the author. This classic study should have a place on the shelf of every student of Greek tragedy.

Relations between the sexes was a concern of ancient Greek thought and literature, extending from considerations of masculine and feminine roles in domestic and political spheres to the organization of the cosmos in a pantheon of gods and goddesses. This study explores the diversity and complexity of these interactions through the influential literary texts of the archaic and classical periods ranging from epic (Homer) and didactic poetry (Hesiod) to the theatrical productions of tragedy and comedy in 5th-century Athens. The author demonstrates the workings of gender as a major factor in Greek social, religious and cultural practices and in ideas about nature and culture, public and private, citizen and outsider, self and other, and mortal and immortal. Focusing on the prominence of female figures in these male authored texts, she enlarges perspectives on critical components of political order and civic identity by including issues of sexuality, the body, modes of male and female maturation, and speculations about parentage, kinship and reproductive strategies. Along with considerations of genre, poetics and theatrical mimesis, she points to the powerful myth-making capacities of Greek culture for creating memorable paradigms and dramatic scenarios that far exceed simple notions of male and female opposition and predictable enforcement of social norms.

According to one myth, the first Athenian citizen was born from the earth after the sperm of a rejected lover, the god Hephaistos, dripped off the virgin goddess Athena's leg and onto fertile soil. Henceforth Athenian citizens could claim to be truly indigenous to their city and to have divine origins that bypassed maternity. In these essays, the renowned French Hellenist Nicole Loraux examines the implication of this and other Greek origin myths as she explores how Athenians in the fifth century forged and maintained a collective identity.