Interpreting Greek Tragedy Also by Charles Segal Landscape in Ovid's Metamorphoses: A Study in the TransJormation oj a Literary Symbol. Hermes Einzelschriften 23 The Theme oj the Mutilation oj the Corpse in the Iliad. Mnemosyne Supplement I7 Tragedy and Civilization: An Interpretation oj Sophocles. Martin Classi­ cal Lectures, vol. 26 Poetry and Myth in Ancient Pastoral: Essays on Theocritus and Virgil Dionysiac Poetics and Euripides' Bacchae Pindar's Mythmaking: The Fourth Pythian Ode Language and Desire in Seneca 's Phaedra As EDITOR: Cedric H. Whitman, The Heroic Paradox: Essays on Homer, Sophocles, and Aristophanes G. B. Conte, The Rhetoric oj Imitation: Genre and Poetic Memory in Virgil and Other Latin Poets Interpreting Greek Tragedy MYTH, POETRY, TEXT Charles Segal Cornell University Press ITHACA AND LONDON Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. Cornell University gratefully acknowledges a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that aided in bringing this book to publication. Copyright © 1986 by Cornell University Second paperback printing 2019 All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu. Printed in the United States of America ISBN 978-0-8014-1890-7 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-5017-4669-7 (pbk.: alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-5017-4670-3 (pdf) ISBN 978-1-5017-4671-0 (epub/mobi) Librarians: A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress An open access (OA) ebook edition of this title is available under the following Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc-nd/4.0/. For more information about Cornell University Press’s OA program or to download our OA titles, visit cornellopen.org. Cover photo: Tragic actor. Terracotta figure, probably late third century B.C. Agora excavations. Athens, T862. Photograph Vincent. Used by permission of the Agora Excavations, American School of Classical Studies at Athens, courtesy of Mrs. Dorothy Burr Thompson. For Bernard Knox Contents Preface 9 Acknowledgments 13 Abbreviations 15 I GREEK TRAGEDY: MYTH AND STRUCTURE I. Greek Tragedy and Society: A Structuralist Perspective 21 2. Greek Myth as a Semiotic and Structural System and the Problem of Tragedy 48 3. Greek Tragedy: Writing, Truth, and the Representation of the Self 75 II SOPHOCLES 4. Visual Symbolism and Visual Effects in Sophocles 113 5. Sophocles' Praise of Man and the Conflicts of the Antigone 137 III EURIPIDES 6. The Tragedy of the Hippolytus: The Waters of Ocean and the Untouched Meadow 165 7. The Two Worlds of Euripides' Helen 222 8. Pentheus and Hippolytus on the Couch and on the Grid: Psy- choanalytic and Structuralist Readings of Greek Tragedy 268 9. Euripides' Bacchae: The Language of the Self and the Language of the Mysteries 294 7 Contents IV TRANSFORMATIONS ro. Boundary Violation and the Landscape of the Self in Senecan Tragedy 3I5 I1. Tragedy, Corporeality, and the Texture of Language: Matricide in the Three Electra Plays 337 12. Literature and Interpretation: Conventions, History, and Universals 359 Index 377 8 Preface The essays collected in this volume were published over a period of some twenty years. They reflect some of the changes in the modes and concerns of the study of Greek tragedy in the United States during this period, from the New Critical approach of the essay on Euripides' Hippolytus to the increasing concern with myth, psycho­ analytic interpretation, structuralism, and language and writing in the recent pieces. They illustrate, I believe, the contention that the many­ fa ceted poetic dramas created by the geniuses of Greek culture at its apogee are, and will probably remain, open to many different modes of interpretation. That these dramas cannot be circumscribed by a single interpretive discourse may disturb positivistically minded scholars who would like to have one final meaning fo r each surviving play, but it augurs well fo r the survival of these works into whatever uncertain fu ture awaits our descendants. These are complex meditations on mortality, on the inevitability of our confrontation with death, suffe ring, and the unpredictable in human life, on the fo rce of the passions and the irrational behind our actions, on justice and retribution, and on the question of what larger power, if any, is responsible fo r the shape that our world and our lives take. They will, we may expect, continue to intrigue, attract, disturb, puzzle, and in their own mysterious way help us make sense of the strange and precarious thing that life often seems to be. The essays were chosen to illustrate particular methodologies and to present Greek tragedy in a perspective that would interest the 9 Preface general reader as well as the classical specialist. The arrangement is by topic rather than by date of publication, proceeding fr om the more general to the more particular and then back to the general. I begin with three recent pieces, all concerned with tragedy in relation to myth and language. There fo llow two essays on Sophocles and fo ur on Euripides. In some cases the pairing of essays on the same play (as with the Hippolytus and the Bacchae) shows how a shift in one's critical viewpoint and terminology may illuminate quite different fa cets of the same work. Essays 10 and II are paired because each in a different way explores the partial dependence of the tragic effect on our basic sense of physicality, on our consciousness of the mortal vulnerability of our bodies. The finalessay, though not directly con­ cerned with drama, I have included because it articulates some of the problems and assumptions underlying the interpretation of literature now. It thus places the study of the tragic drama of the Greeks in the larger fr amework of the humanities in general. In selecting these pieces, I have tried to avoid overlap with my other books on ancient drama and to present material that could stand on its own. Although the temptation to revise, add, subtract, and annotate was strong, I have resisted the temptation and let these pieces, with some excisions and additions noted below, stand as pub­ lished. The collection, I felt, should indicate the shifting critical stances, developments, and varied points of view that one student of these works has experienced over many years rather than the imposed uniformity of a single moment. The changes fr om the original fo rm of publication are as fo llows. From the first essay, "Greek Tragedy and Society," I have deleted a fe w pages discussing Euripides' Hippolytus and Bacchae to avoid over­ lap with material in part III of this book. For the same reason I have deleted a fe w sentences of essay 8. To the third essay, "Greek Trag­ edy: Writing, Truth, and the Representation of the Self, " I have added a paragraph on the Oedipus Tyrannus and incorporated (in revised fo rm) three pages on the Ip higeneia in Tauris from another essay that is absent fr om this volume. Considerations of space and scale made it necessary to abbreviate the long essay on Euripides' Helen, with accompanying changes in the notes. The fo otnotes to essay 6, "The Tragedy of the Hippolytus," have been slightly cur­ tailed. In a fe w cases the notes have been slightly recast fo r the sake of 10 Preface uniformity of reference. There are also minor stylistic revisions throughout. Translations are my own unless otherwise noted. In looking back at work done over so many years, I am made aware of how much I owe to fo rmer teachers and to friends and colleagues. I cannot render all those thanks here, but they are none­ theless deeply felt. I also express my gratitude to the students with whom I have read and discussed these plays, both in Greek and in English, over the last quarter century. Their intense questioning of what these works had to say to them about the meaning oflife often taught me as much as I taught them. I renew, with pleasure, the expressions of thanks in the individual essays. I warmly thank my colleagues in classics and in comparative literature at Brown Univer­ sity fo r many years of friendship, encouragement, and advice. I am sensible of the great debt of gratitude that I owe to numerous other fr iends and colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic, and in some cases on the other side of the Pacific, who discussed these works with me, generously sent copies of publications, and gave me the benefit of their insight, acumen, and learning. Fellowships fr om the American Academy in Rome, the Center fo r Hellenic Studies in Washington, the American Council of Learned Societies, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the National Endowment fo r the Humanities provided the leisure and fr eedom in which many of these essays were developed and written. I thank all of these institutions fo r their trust and support. The task of typing and retyping the manuscripts over the years was undertaken with ever-cheerful efficiency by Frances Eisenhauer and Ruthann Whitten. Mrs. Whitten also retyped the notes fo r several of the es­ says. Karen Bassi helped with editorial details. Two anonymous readers of Cornell University Press provided helpful advice about selecting the essays. Bernhard Kendler of the Press, who conceived and encouraged this project, displayed exemplary patience toward my changing views of what to include.