Cleopatra: Histories, Dreams, and Distortions PDF
Preview Cleopatra: Histories, Dreams, and Distortions
Date Due MOV -! raw FEB 2 8 2005 71 713 P rinled in U S A THE PROPERTY OF PiCTON BRANCH Jc .+*- A HISTORIES, DREAMS and DISTORTIONS LUCY HUGHES-HALLETT '' THE PROPERTY OF COUNTY OF PmM< PUBLIC PICTON BRANCH 1817 Harper & Row, Publishers, New York Grand Rapids, Philadelphia, St. Louis, San Francisco London, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto C. P. E. P. L. PICTON BRANCH P.O. BOX 260 PICTON. ONT. KOK 2T0 CLEOPATRA. COPYRIGHT © I99O BY LUCY HUGHES-HALLETT. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS BOOK IS PUBLISHED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING LTD. PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE USED OR REPRODUCED IN ANY MANNER WHATSOEVER WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION EXCEPT IN THE CASE OF BRIEF QUOTATIONS EMBODIED IN CRITICAL ARTICLES AND REVIEWS. FOR INFORMATION ADDRESS HARPER & ROW, PUBLISHERS, INC., 10 EAST 53RD STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10022. FIRST U.S. EDITION LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER 89-461OO ISBN 0-06-0l62l6-3 8 6 I 90 91 92 93 94 10 9 7 5 4 3 2 Cleopatra, wrote Theophile Gautier in 1845, ‘is a person to be wondered at... whom dreamers find always at the end of their dreams.’ In this book Lucy Hughes-Hallett describes and interprets those dreams. Even in her own lifetime Cleopatra VII - the last Queen of Egypt, Julius Caesar’s mistress, Antony’s partner, Rome’s adversary — was twice over a fiction, being reinvented in the propaganda of her enemies as a depraved, alien temptress and in her own self-glamorizing ceremonial as a goddess, a universal mother and a liberator. In the two thousand years since her death she has been re-created over and over again, each time in a form that fits the prejudices and fantasies of the age that produced it. To Chaucer she w as the model of a good wife; to Cecil B. De Mille she was ‘the wickedest woman in history’. To the Arabic historian Al-Masudi she was a scholar and a sage; to George Bernard Shaw she was an emotionally retarded sex-kitten. To the painters of the Renaissance she was a swooning victim; to the poets of Romanticism she was a terrifying/emme fatale. These fantastic Cleopatras can be read as mirror-images of the culture that produced them. This book is about them, but it is also about politics — sexual, racial and constitutional — and about morality, neurosis and desire. Above all it is about propaganda and the persuasive power of narrative. Cleopatra, a competent Hellenistic ruler who was celibate for over half her adult life, has been remembered as the heroine of an exotic love story. In asking why, Lucy Hughes-Hallett reminds us that story-telling is never an innocent occupation. In memory of Philip Lloyd-Bostock, 1946-86
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