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TRAUMA in EURIPIDES' HECUBA by Julia E. Paré

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TRAUMA in EURIPIDES' HECUBA by Julia E. Paré Falling on Deaf Ears: Trauma in Euripides' Hecuba Item Type text; Electronic Thesis Authors Pare, Julia Elizabeth Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction, presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 30/09/2021 16:07:09 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/641676 FALLING ON DEAF EARS: TRAUMA IN EURIPIDES’ HECUBA by Julia E. Paré ____________________________ Copyright © Julia Paré 2020 A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES AND CLASSICS In Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements For the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS WITH A MAJOR IN CLASSICS In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2020 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Master’s Committee, we certify that we have read the thesis prepared by Julia E. Paré, titled “Falling on Deaf Ears: Trauma in Euripides’ Hecuba,” and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Master’s Degree. _________________________________________________________________ Date: ____________May 25, 2020 David Christenson _________________________________________________________________ Date: ____________May 25, 2020 Courtney Friesen _________________________________________________________________ Date: ____________May 25, 2020 Arum Park Final approval and acceptance of this thesis is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the thesis to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this thesis prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the Master’s requirement. _________________________________________________________________ Date: ____________May 25, 2020 David Christenson Master’s Thesis Committee Chair Department of Religious Studies and Classics Paré 2 Acknowledgements First, I want to thank God, whose word has been “a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Ps. 119:105). Next, thanks to my thesis committee, Dr. Christenson, Dr. Friesen, and Dr. Park, for their encouragement and continual guidance of my work. I would also like to thank my parents, David and Youn-Hee Paré, and my siblings Grace and David Paré, for their unfailing love and support. I would certainly not be here without you all. Thank you as well to my church in Tucson, especially Captains David and Ellen Oh, Lieutenant Stephanie Simmons, Corps Sergeant Major Woon Chung, and Sangjoon Park, whose love and prayers have helped me feel at home during my time in Arizona. And last, thank you to my friends, especially my best friend Stavroula Benetatos, and my fellow University of Arizona MAs. Thank you specifically to Samantha Richter and Mal Main, for sharing snack drawers, laughing obligingly at my bad puns, and for being willing to lend an ear of support at all times of day. “Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute.” Prov. 31:8 Paré 3 Table of Contents ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... 5 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................ 6 CHAPTER 1: Intersections of Literary and Psychological Trauma ....................................... 8 CHAPTER 2: Traumatic Loss of Speech and Identity: Examining ὄλλυμι and temporal markers ........................................................................................................................................ 16 Traumatic Time and Shattered Assumptions .................................................................................... 17 Loss and Identity Erasure .................................................................................................................... 27 CHAPTER 3: Shattered Assumptions, De-communalization, and Adopting the Ethic of Revenge ........................................................................................................................................ 31 CONCLUSION: Ancient Tragedy and Bearing Witness to the Testimony of Modern Trauma Survivors ....................................................................................................................... 49 FIGURES ..................................................................................................................................... 54 WORKS CITED ......................................................................................................................... 56 Paré 4 ABSTRACT This thesis explores the manifestations of trauma and its impact on language and the titular character’s behavior in Euripides’ Hecuba. Trauma signifies a psychological phenomenon encompassing feelings of dissociation and aporia resulting from an event or events that “break in” upon an individual’s previously understood assumptive worldview. The outcome, or “traumatic response,” constitutes the victim’s attempt to remake and function in their new world and can be characterized by violence and previously uncharacteristic reactions. Literary representations of trauma include fractured time, declarations of speechlessness, and intrusive repetitive images or narratives. Because psychological trauma is a distinctly modern construct involving diagnostic criteria, Chapter 1 addresses the limitations of reading trauma into ancient texts, as well as how literary trauma studies deal with interpreting texts in a framework related to, but not wholly dependent upon, psychologically defined trauma. I establish a working definition of trauma that illuminates Hecuba beyond ethical interpretations. In Chapter 2 I consider how repetitive applications of ὄλλυμι and time constructions reveal Hecuba’s psychological state. In Chapter 3 I argue that a traumatic framework is best for consistently understanding Hecuba’s experience of denial and final violent reaction. My conclusion compares Hecuba’s tragedy and the testimony of war-crime survivors, to extend work relating tragedies such as Sophocles’ Ajax to veterans to include women’s traumatic wartime experiences. Paré 5 INTRODUCTION What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her? Hamlet, 530-1 What is the purpose of examining representations of “trauma” in ancient literature? An attention to trauma, which by its nature destabilizes language, is seemingly contradictory to the aims of philology which seek to account for the specific meaning of language in different contexts. Definitions of trauma themselves are unstable, and have experienced shifts over recent decades, largely in response to Holocaust studies, Vietnam War-era examinations of PTSD, and more recently, the events of 9/11. But while trauma studies has emerged relatively recently as an academic field, the experience of trauma, it may be argued, is a universal occurrence, when certain personal and environmental conditions are met. A traumatic reading of Greek tragedy must take care not to read modern definitions of trauma into the text. But because trauma is a decidedly modern psychological category, it is impossible to not impose some modern framework on an ancient text when examining evidence of psychological trauma. The Greek τραῦμα itself only appears for the first time in a seventh century BC fragment of Mimnermus.1 While clinical symptoms of trauma will figure in this thesis, the chief literary theoretical framework Follows Cathy Caruth’s interpretation of literary trauma (in Unclaimed Experience). I will also take into account the changing contours of victimhood and understandings of “traumatic experience.” 1 Τροιζηνίας δὲ τραῦμα φοιτάδος πλάνης ἔσται κακῶν τε πημάτων παραίτιον, “The injury of the frequent Troezenian wandering will be the cause of evils and pains.” Mimnermus Eleg. Fragmenta 22 (Dubia et Spuria), retrieved from Thesaurus Linguae Graecae© Digital library. Ed. Maria C. Pantelia. University of California, Irvine. http://stephanus.tlg.uci.edu (accessed Feb. 3, 2020). Words in the same linguistic family, relating to “piercing” or “wounding,” occur as early as Homer. It later occurs in the context of Athenian law courts with a legal, technical sense to mean “injury” (Phillips 2007: 74-5). Paré 6 My project came about, in part, in reaction to a prevailing view that Euripides’ Hecuba is a story of moral decline, that is, the destruction of a virtuous person. Martha Nussbaum’s The Fragility of Goodness emblematizes this reading, as it characterizes Hecuba at the start of the play as “merely unhappy,” and subsequently descending to moral turpitude when she becomes a child-murderer, and then an inhuman dog (2001: 399). This undervalues Hecuba’s emotions and over-simplifies her psychological and ethical situation. Whereas ancient depictions of soldiers’ battlefield and homecoming narratives have been examined through the lens of PTSD and the struggle to reintegrate combat veterans into society, e.g., Dorries 2015, Meineck 2012, Shay 1994, Hecuba’s story is too often seen as the degradation of character. While Hecuba’s transgressive actions are undeniable, we might more productively ask “what happened to her?” instead of “what is wrong with her?”, as per Ferrer’s 2016 recommendations in his study of traumatized youth in the criminal justice system. Some scholars have reacted against the condemnation of Hecuba
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