Objects as Actors: Props and the Poetics of Performance in Greek Tragedy

283 Pages·2016·4.23 MB·English

by  Melissa Mueller

Objects as Actors

Objects as Actors
Props and the Poetics of Performance in Greek Tragedy
melissa mueller
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London
Melissa Mueller is associate professor of classics at the University of Massachusetts,
Amherst.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2016 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2016.
Printed in the United States of America
25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 1 2 3 4 5
isbn-13: 978-0-226-31295-8 (cloth)
isbn-13: 978-0-226-31300-9 (e-book)
doi: 10.7208/chicago/9780226313009.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Mueller, Melissa, author.
Objects as actors : props and the poetics of performance in Greek tragedy /
Melissa Mueller.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-226-31295-8 (cloth : alk. paper)—isbn 978-0-226-31300-9 (ebook)
1. Greek drama (Tragedy)—History and criticism. 2. Stage props. I. Title.
pa3203.m84 2015
792.02'50938—dc23
2015014455
♾ This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48- 1992
(Permanence of Paper).
For my parents

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Props and the Poetics of Performance 4
Props and Deixis 7
Organization and Chapters 8
part i
1 Epic Weapons on the Tragic Stage 15
Exekias’s Ajax 16
From Text to Performance: Reading the Sword in Sophocles’ Ajax 19
The “Deception” Speech (646– 92) 22
Hector’s Revenge (815– 65) 29
A Riddle Resolved 31
Weapons and the Poetics of Reperformance 34
Philoctetes’ Bow as a Haptic Actor 38
Conclusion 40
2 Tragic Textiles and the House of Atreus 42
Electra in Rags 44
Playing Priam in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon 48
Silver- Bought Textiles and Sensory Overload 51
Textilizing Agamemnon: Aeschylus and the Dokimasia Painter 58
The Weaver Woven: The Tapestry Scene Re- played 60
From Costume to Character 64
Conclusion 68
3 The Material Poetics of Tragic Recognition 70
Euripides’ Ion and the Power of the Replica 72
Objects and Interpellation 73
A Mother’s Symbola 75
viii contents
Containing Time in an Ageless Basket 78
Autopsy, Recognition, and Collective Memory 80
Signatures of the Self: Signet Rings and Secret Signs 84
Putting Tokens to the Test in Euripides’ Electra 88
Grafting Culture onto the Body 90
The City’s Test: Recognition as Dokimasia 94
A Nature- Culture Hybrid 99
Falling into the Present: Recognition and Embateusis 100
Conclusion 105
part ii
4 Electra’s Urns: Receptacles and Tragic Reception 111
Receptacles and Reception 112
Electra’s Urn and “ The Haunted Stage” 114
Hidden in the Bushes 116
Somatic Memories and Mourning 119
Temporal Materialities 125
Props as Props: An Intermedial Turn 127
Props, Pathos, and Nachleben 128
Conclusion 132
5 Ajax’s Shield: Bridging Troy and Athens 134
Ajax’s Shield as a Second Skin 135
Eurysakes the Shield- Receiver 140
Solon’s Sakos 144
Ajax’s Exodos 148
Conclusion 153
6 Tragic and Tragicomic “Letters” 155
The Deltos from Dodona: A Hidden Prop in Sophocles’ Trachiniae 158
Co- opting the Plot: Phaedra’s Deltos and Aphrodite’s Revenge 163
Reading Phaedra’s Deltos as a Defixio 170
Epistolary Dysfunction in the Iphigenia Plays 178
The “Rape” of the Tablet in Iphigenia at Aulis 184
Conclusion 188
Epilogue 190
Notes 195
Bibliography 235
General Index 259
Index Locorum 269
Acknowledgments
This book is the product of a long period of reflection on objects in Greek
tragedy. It is a pleasure to thank here the colleagues and friends who offered
support and guidance over many years, and to acknowledge the institutions
that enabled the book’s completion. A residential fellowship at the Center for
Hellenic Studies in Washington, DC, in 2009– 10, gave me the time and the
courage to envision the project anew. I’m grateful to CHS director Gregory
Nagy and the senior fellows for making the resources of the Center available
to me and to my cohort of fellow researchers for their stimulating conversa-
tion and camaraderie. The College of Humanities and Fine Arts at the Uni-
versity of Massachusetts, Amherst, generously provided the supplementary
funding that made my stay in DC possible.
Individual chapters of this book have been read and judiciously critiqued
by Joshua Billings, John Gibert, Justina Gregory, Mark Griffith, Debbie Fel-
ton, Donald Mastronarde, Alex Purves, Antonia Syson, and Oliver Taplin. I’m
also indebted to the anonymous readers of two previously published articles:
“Athens in a Basket: Naming, Objects, and Identity in Euripides’ Ion,” which
appeared in Arethusa (43:365– 402) in 2010, and “Phaedra’s Defixio: Scripting
Sophrosune in Euripides’ Hippolytus,” which appeared in Classical Antiquity
(30:148– 77) in 2011. I acknowledge with gratitude the permission granted by
the Johns Hopkins University Press and the University of California Press to
include portions of these articles in chapters 3 and 6, respectively.
Audiences at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the Univer-
sity of Toronto, the American University of Paris, Brandeis University, the
University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Leiden University, the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Smith College, and Yale University heard early
versions of several chapters, and provided valuable feedback.