Female Agency in Greek Tragedy and Its Receptions in the Late Twentieth and Early Twenty-First Centuries

Abstract

In this chapter, the author explores some examples of how ancient treatment of female agency was both omnipresent and elusive and how these issues have been addressed, or marginalised, in some modern receptions of ancient Greek tragedy. The core themes in tragedy – especially war, conflict, religious and social norms and their nuancing in words and actions – also dominate modern global concerns. Andropodismos, the use of women as currency in time of war, to be seized from defeated communities, enslaved and traded, resonates with practices in antiquity and underlies the tensions between dread of the future, acquiescence and the agencies of revenge that permeate Greek epic and tragedy. Female agency in Greek tragedy, whether filtered through the lens of Clytemnestra or of Antigone. It takes many forms in the ways in which it is explored by the Greek tragedians, translated, adapted and performed by practitioners.