Melissa Mueller | University of Massachusetts Amherst (original) (raw)
Articles and Chapters by Melissa Mueller
The Routledge Handbook of Classics and Queer Theory, 2023
Tragic Rhetoric: The Rhetorical Dimensions of Greek Tragedy, edited by M.Carmen Encinas Reguero and M.Quijada Sagredo, 2021
Scholars have debated Deianeira's culpability and her character by considering in turn her behavi... more Scholars have debated Deianeira's culpability and her character by considering in turn her behavior, her intentions, and her knowledge, excerpting these from the dramatic performance context of Sophocles' Trachiniae. But to appreciate Deianeira's deliberations, and to gauge her responsibility for her husband's death, we have to consider both what she has done and how (that is, under what circumstances) she has done it-and by this I mean both her frame of mind as well as her affective environment. This contribution aims not so much to exonerate Deianeira as to reach a more nuanced understanding of the factors that influence her decision-making, and to claim a larger role in that process for the agency of fear. engaging with scholarship in affect theory and rhetoric, I demonstrate the explanatory potential of bodily rhetoric as a tool for analyzing non-verbal speech acts, and I argue in particular that the silent communication between Iole and Deianeira attests to the powerful role of fear qua affect in this tragedy.
The Cambridge Companion to Sappho, edited by P.J. Finglass and A. Kelly, 2021
Few readers today would deny that Sappho's lyrics are intensely homoerotic, yet there is little a... more Few readers today would deny that Sappho's lyrics are intensely homoerotic, yet there is little agreement on what, if anything, this tells us about Sappho herself. In one camp are the radical constructivists, the heirs to Foucault's legacy, who insist on the historical contingency of sexuality. For them, 'homosexuality' and 'heterosexuality' are discursive inventions of the modern world; they are cultural phenomena with no currency in pre-modern societies. To refer to Sappho (or any of the female gures in her lyrics) as lesbian is to project on to antiquity a binary oppositionbetween hetero-and homosexuality-where none existed. 1 e ancient Greeks, they claim, did not conceptualise their sexual acts in terms of their partner's gender, whether this was the same or di erent from their own. ey were concerned instead with whether they were occupying an active or passive position relative to their sexual partner, whether that partner was male or female. In the opposing camp are the essentialists who, seeking continuities between past and present, argue that even if the discourse of sexuality had not yet been invented, the reality was there. 2 Gays and lesbians, they claim, have always existed. Sappho and her contemporaries may not have been familiar with the binary axes of sexual orientation that we use today, 3 but their passions and persuasions were fundamentally the same as our own. Naming is of course a political act. By naming, we legitimise and affirm. We performatively call into being something that may not have existed prior to its naming. 4 Calling Sappho a lesbian poet has political ramifications. As a female poet, she has been a torchbearer for * I am grateful to the editors and to Mario Telò for their help with this chapter.
Queer Euripides: Re-readings in Greek Tragedy, edited by Sarah Olsen and Mario Telò. Bloomsbury, 2022
The prefix/preposition para appears at poignant moments in Electra, giving particular emphasis to... more The prefix/preposition para appears at poignant moments in Electra, giving particular emphasis to the paratactic (i.e., non-biological, non-reproductive) relationships that bind the Atreid children to one another and their past. By attending closely to Electra’s sidelong, horizontally inflected orientations as well as its discourse on marriage, we gain insight into the parapoetics of this tragedy. Euripides’ Electra asks to be read alongside Aeschylus’ trilogy. Similarly, the children of Agamemnon sidestep, in their different ways, biological ties and sexual reproduction. By bringing into alignment Marquis Bey’s understanding of paraontology with Electra’s own queering of para, I argue that both the play and its heroine exemplify what it means to inhabit the spaces in between prescriptive categories of being.
Landscapes of Dread in Classical Antiquity: Negative Emotions in Natural and Constructed Spaces, edited by Debbie Felton, 2018
Reception of the Antigone, 2012
Gli oggetti sulla scena teatrale ateniese: Funzione, rappresentazione, comunicazione. Edited by Alessandra Coppola, Caterina Barone, and Monica Salvadori. CLEUP, Padua, 2016
Brill's Companion to Euripides, edited by A. Markantonatos, 2020
Ramus, 2016
Hesiod's Theogony is not overtly concerned with the world of mortals. The place of humans in the ... more Hesiod's Theogony is not overtly concerned with the world of mortals. The place of humans in the Theogony nevertheless holds a certain fascination, perhaps more for what is not revealed-our origins, for example-than for what is. Focusing on a relatively neglected passage of the poem (Theogony 521-32), I want to trace here the way Hesiod lays out the cosmic coordinates of kleos ('fame' or 'glory') with a view to better situating the condition of mortality within the poem as a whole. Kleos, as we will see, is part of the fallout for humans of the battle of wits between Zeus and Prometheus: it is the compensation for their new, temporally inflected existence.
A Companion to Euripides, edited by Laura K. McClure (Wiley Blackwell), 2017
Men and women were two separate species for the ancient Greeks. In hesiod's cosmogonic poem, the ... more Men and women were two separate species for the ancient Greeks. In hesiod's cosmogonic poem, the Theogony, the origin of mankind remains untold, creating the impression that men were simply there from the beginning. By contrast, the origin of womankind is related twice, once in the Theogony (507-616) and again in the Works and Days (42-105); in each case it is linked with related myths about the origins of sacrifice and agriculture. 1 In the Theogony, for example, Zeus creates the "species and tribes of women" (genos kai phula gunaikôn, 591) as an inescapable curse on men for their acquisition of promethean fire. ever since, hesiod's narrative(s) implies, men have had to plow the earth for sustenance, sacrifice to the gods, and take wives in order to beget progeny. this triad of marriage, sacrifice, and agriculture defines the human condition for hesiod as for other early Greek poets. Woman's entrance on the scene marks the fall of mankind from a godlike, goldenage existence.
Classical Quarterly, 2011
Classical Antiquity, 2011
While readers of Euripides’ Hippolytus have long regarded Phaedra’s deltos as a mechanism of puni... more While readers of Euripides’ Hippolytus have long regarded Phaedra’s deltos as a mechanism of punitive revenge, I argue here that the tablet models itself on a judicial curse (defixio) and that its main function is to ensure victory for Phaedra in the upcoming “trial” over her reputation. In support of my thesis I examine three interrelated phenomena: first, Hippolytus’ infamous assertion that his tongue swore an oath while hismind remains unsworn (612); second, Phaedra’s status as a 'biaiothanatos'; and third, Phaedra’s claim that Hippolytus “will learn sophrosune” (731), a speech act that, I conclude, anticipates the silencing effect on Hippolytus of Phaedra’s death and her writing.
Arethusa, 2010
In lieu of an abstract, here is a preview of the article. Imagine that becoming Athenian were as... more In lieu of an abstract, here is a preview of the article.
Imagine that becoming Athenian were as simple as opening a basket and finding therein the objects needed to secure your citizenship. This is the fantasy dramatized by Euripides’ Ion, where things in a basket—a woven aegis, golden snakes, and an olive wreath—reunite the hero with his long lost mother and his native city. There is something paradoxical, however, in “re-cognizing” what one has never known. Recognition presupposes familiarity, whereas Ion’s story is that of a foundling baby, abandoned at birth, then rescued and raised by Apollo in a foreign city. How is he to know his mother when he finds her? This essay sets out to explore the cultural agency of the tokens that enable this unusual kind of recognition.
Helios, 2010
In lieu of an abstract, here is a preview of the article: When Helen offers Telemachus a robe sh... more In lieu of an abstract, here is a preview of the article:
When Helen offers Telemachus a robe she herself has made in book 15 of the Odyssey, she bestows her gift with the hope that it will act as "a monument to the hands of Helen" (μνῆμ᾿ Ἑλένης χειρῶν, 15.126). Helen's peplos attests to the potential for handcrafted objects to immortalize those who have made them. It also serves as a useful reminder that even within Homeric epic, which in itself is an outstanding example of male kleos, various technologies exist for men and women to craft their own kleos. Helen's is the only garment in either epic to have its commemorative function expressly articulated, but other woven textiles are intricately bound up with scenes of recognition and reciprocity, where they implicitly refer to their makers' hands. The connection between aural and material sources of kleos is suggestively drawn by a scholiast to the Iliad who comments that, in representing Helen weaving the Trojan War ( Il. 3.125-8), "the poet has crafted a worthy model for his own poetic enterprise" (ἀξιόχρεων ἀρχέτυπον ἀνέπλασεν ὁ ποιητὴς τῆς ἰδίας ποιήσεως). 2 Helen as a model for Homer? Weaving, as the scholiast's words suggest, is an apt metaphor for the production of epic verse. But insofar as textile makers in the Homeric poems are all female, weaving and its associated products provide what appears to be a unique opportunity for women to circulate their kleos…
Arethusa, 2007
In lieu of an abstract, here is a preview of the article. Women in the Homeric epics “remember” ... more In lieu of an abstract, here is a preview of the article.
Women in the Homeric epics “remember” (μιμνήσκεσθαι) differently from men. This difference contributes to the distinctive quality of Penelope’s kleos in the Odyssey as well as, more generally, to the characterization of the ideal wife in archaic and classical Greece. Αlthough studies on Penelope constitute practically a sub-genre within the critical literature on the Odyssey, the subject of her memory (and its contribution to the poetics of the Odyssey) has received only sporadic attention. This is surprising, especially given the explicit link that Αgamemnon makes between Penelope’s kleos and her memory (ὡς εὖ μέμνητ᾿ Ὀδυσῆος), in a famous passage of Book 24 (lines 192–202). is “remembering” just a synonym for constancy? To be sure, Penelope’s mêtis, with which she deceives the suitors and even her own husband, provides more immediately gratifying food for thought. Upon closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that even within the discourse on female fidelity of which “remembering” is a part, Penelope sets her own terms, defining both memory and marital fidelity in radically innovative ways.
American Journal of Philology, 2001
In lieu of an abstract, here is a preview of the article. EURIPIDES’ MEDEA is a character who is... more In lieu of an abstract, here is a preview of the article.
EURIPIDES’ MEDEA is a character who is adept at speaking many languages. To the chorus of Corinthian women, she presents herself as a woman like any other, but with fewer resources; to Jason in the agon she speaks as if man to man, articulating her claim to the appropriate returns of charis and philia. Even when she addresses herself, in the great monologue, two distinct voices appear, that of the pitiful mother who loves her children and, opposed to this, the voice of the heroic warrior who demands revenge. The subject of this article will not be the versatility of Medea's speech, per se. Rather, I will consider the narrower but related issue of how—with what words and weapons—Medea enacts her revenge on Jason.
Book Reviews by Melissa Mueller
The Routledge Handbook of Classics and Queer Theory, 2023
Tragic Rhetoric: The Rhetorical Dimensions of Greek Tragedy, edited by M.Carmen Encinas Reguero and M.Quijada Sagredo, 2021
Scholars have debated Deianeira's culpability and her character by considering in turn her behavi... more Scholars have debated Deianeira's culpability and her character by considering in turn her behavior, her intentions, and her knowledge, excerpting these from the dramatic performance context of Sophocles' Trachiniae. But to appreciate Deianeira's deliberations, and to gauge her responsibility for her husband's death, we have to consider both what she has done and how (that is, under what circumstances) she has done it-and by this I mean both her frame of mind as well as her affective environment. This contribution aims not so much to exonerate Deianeira as to reach a more nuanced understanding of the factors that influence her decision-making, and to claim a larger role in that process for the agency of fear. engaging with scholarship in affect theory and rhetoric, I demonstrate the explanatory potential of bodily rhetoric as a tool for analyzing non-verbal speech acts, and I argue in particular that the silent communication between Iole and Deianeira attests to the powerful role of fear qua affect in this tragedy.
The Cambridge Companion to Sappho, edited by P.J. Finglass and A. Kelly, 2021
Few readers today would deny that Sappho's lyrics are intensely homoerotic, yet there is little a... more Few readers today would deny that Sappho's lyrics are intensely homoerotic, yet there is little agreement on what, if anything, this tells us about Sappho herself. In one camp are the radical constructivists, the heirs to Foucault's legacy, who insist on the historical contingency of sexuality. For them, 'homosexuality' and 'heterosexuality' are discursive inventions of the modern world; they are cultural phenomena with no currency in pre-modern societies. To refer to Sappho (or any of the female gures in her lyrics) as lesbian is to project on to antiquity a binary oppositionbetween hetero-and homosexuality-where none existed. 1 e ancient Greeks, they claim, did not conceptualise their sexual acts in terms of their partner's gender, whether this was the same or di erent from their own. ey were concerned instead with whether they were occupying an active or passive position relative to their sexual partner, whether that partner was male or female. In the opposing camp are the essentialists who, seeking continuities between past and present, argue that even if the discourse of sexuality had not yet been invented, the reality was there. 2 Gays and lesbians, they claim, have always existed. Sappho and her contemporaries may not have been familiar with the binary axes of sexual orientation that we use today, 3 but their passions and persuasions were fundamentally the same as our own. Naming is of course a political act. By naming, we legitimise and affirm. We performatively call into being something that may not have existed prior to its naming. 4 Calling Sappho a lesbian poet has political ramifications. As a female poet, she has been a torchbearer for * I am grateful to the editors and to Mario Telò for their help with this chapter.
Queer Euripides: Re-readings in Greek Tragedy, edited by Sarah Olsen and Mario Telò. Bloomsbury, 2022
The prefix/preposition para appears at poignant moments in Electra, giving particular emphasis to... more The prefix/preposition para appears at poignant moments in Electra, giving particular emphasis to the paratactic (i.e., non-biological, non-reproductive) relationships that bind the Atreid children to one another and their past. By attending closely to Electra’s sidelong, horizontally inflected orientations as well as its discourse on marriage, we gain insight into the parapoetics of this tragedy. Euripides’ Electra asks to be read alongside Aeschylus’ trilogy. Similarly, the children of Agamemnon sidestep, in their different ways, biological ties and sexual reproduction. By bringing into alignment Marquis Bey’s understanding of paraontology with Electra’s own queering of para, I argue that both the play and its heroine exemplify what it means to inhabit the spaces in between prescriptive categories of being.
Landscapes of Dread in Classical Antiquity: Negative Emotions in Natural and Constructed Spaces, edited by Debbie Felton, 2018
Reception of the Antigone, 2012
Gli oggetti sulla scena teatrale ateniese: Funzione, rappresentazione, comunicazione. Edited by Alessandra Coppola, Caterina Barone, and Monica Salvadori. CLEUP, Padua, 2016
Brill's Companion to Euripides, edited by A. Markantonatos, 2020
Ramus, 2016
Hesiod's Theogony is not overtly concerned with the world of mortals. The place of humans in the ... more Hesiod's Theogony is not overtly concerned with the world of mortals. The place of humans in the Theogony nevertheless holds a certain fascination, perhaps more for what is not revealed-our origins, for example-than for what is. Focusing on a relatively neglected passage of the poem (Theogony 521-32), I want to trace here the way Hesiod lays out the cosmic coordinates of kleos ('fame' or 'glory') with a view to better situating the condition of mortality within the poem as a whole. Kleos, as we will see, is part of the fallout for humans of the battle of wits between Zeus and Prometheus: it is the compensation for their new, temporally inflected existence.
A Companion to Euripides, edited by Laura K. McClure (Wiley Blackwell), 2017
Men and women were two separate species for the ancient Greeks. In hesiod's cosmogonic poem, the ... more Men and women were two separate species for the ancient Greeks. In hesiod's cosmogonic poem, the Theogony, the origin of mankind remains untold, creating the impression that men were simply there from the beginning. By contrast, the origin of womankind is related twice, once in the Theogony (507-616) and again in the Works and Days (42-105); in each case it is linked with related myths about the origins of sacrifice and agriculture. 1 In the Theogony, for example, Zeus creates the "species and tribes of women" (genos kai phula gunaikôn, 591) as an inescapable curse on men for their acquisition of promethean fire. ever since, hesiod's narrative(s) implies, men have had to plow the earth for sustenance, sacrifice to the gods, and take wives in order to beget progeny. this triad of marriage, sacrifice, and agriculture defines the human condition for hesiod as for other early Greek poets. Woman's entrance on the scene marks the fall of mankind from a godlike, goldenage existence.
Classical Quarterly, 2011
Classical Antiquity, 2011
While readers of Euripides’ Hippolytus have long regarded Phaedra’s deltos as a mechanism of puni... more While readers of Euripides’ Hippolytus have long regarded Phaedra’s deltos as a mechanism of punitive revenge, I argue here that the tablet models itself on a judicial curse (defixio) and that its main function is to ensure victory for Phaedra in the upcoming “trial” over her reputation. In support of my thesis I examine three interrelated phenomena: first, Hippolytus’ infamous assertion that his tongue swore an oath while hismind remains unsworn (612); second, Phaedra’s status as a 'biaiothanatos'; and third, Phaedra’s claim that Hippolytus “will learn sophrosune” (731), a speech act that, I conclude, anticipates the silencing effect on Hippolytus of Phaedra’s death and her writing.
Arethusa, 2010
In lieu of an abstract, here is a preview of the article. Imagine that becoming Athenian were as... more In lieu of an abstract, here is a preview of the article.
Imagine that becoming Athenian were as simple as opening a basket and finding therein the objects needed to secure your citizenship. This is the fantasy dramatized by Euripides’ Ion, where things in a basket—a woven aegis, golden snakes, and an olive wreath—reunite the hero with his long lost mother and his native city. There is something paradoxical, however, in “re-cognizing” what one has never known. Recognition presupposes familiarity, whereas Ion’s story is that of a foundling baby, abandoned at birth, then rescued and raised by Apollo in a foreign city. How is he to know his mother when he finds her? This essay sets out to explore the cultural agency of the tokens that enable this unusual kind of recognition.
Helios, 2010
In lieu of an abstract, here is a preview of the article: When Helen offers Telemachus a robe sh... more In lieu of an abstract, here is a preview of the article:
When Helen offers Telemachus a robe she herself has made in book 15 of the Odyssey, she bestows her gift with the hope that it will act as "a monument to the hands of Helen" (μνῆμ᾿ Ἑλένης χειρῶν, 15.126). Helen's peplos attests to the potential for handcrafted objects to immortalize those who have made them. It also serves as a useful reminder that even within Homeric epic, which in itself is an outstanding example of male kleos, various technologies exist for men and women to craft their own kleos. Helen's is the only garment in either epic to have its commemorative function expressly articulated, but other woven textiles are intricately bound up with scenes of recognition and reciprocity, where they implicitly refer to their makers' hands. The connection between aural and material sources of kleos is suggestively drawn by a scholiast to the Iliad who comments that, in representing Helen weaving the Trojan War ( Il. 3.125-8), "the poet has crafted a worthy model for his own poetic enterprise" (ἀξιόχρεων ἀρχέτυπον ἀνέπλασεν ὁ ποιητὴς τῆς ἰδίας ποιήσεως). 2 Helen as a model for Homer? Weaving, as the scholiast's words suggest, is an apt metaphor for the production of epic verse. But insofar as textile makers in the Homeric poems are all female, weaving and its associated products provide what appears to be a unique opportunity for women to circulate their kleos…
Arethusa, 2007
In lieu of an abstract, here is a preview of the article. Women in the Homeric epics “remember” ... more In lieu of an abstract, here is a preview of the article.
Women in the Homeric epics “remember” (μιμνήσκεσθαι) differently from men. This difference contributes to the distinctive quality of Penelope’s kleos in the Odyssey as well as, more generally, to the characterization of the ideal wife in archaic and classical Greece. Αlthough studies on Penelope constitute practically a sub-genre within the critical literature on the Odyssey, the subject of her memory (and its contribution to the poetics of the Odyssey) has received only sporadic attention. This is surprising, especially given the explicit link that Αgamemnon makes between Penelope’s kleos and her memory (ὡς εὖ μέμνητ᾿ Ὀδυσῆος), in a famous passage of Book 24 (lines 192–202). is “remembering” just a synonym for constancy? To be sure, Penelope’s mêtis, with which she deceives the suitors and even her own husband, provides more immediately gratifying food for thought. Upon closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that even within the discourse on female fidelity of which “remembering” is a part, Penelope sets her own terms, defining both memory and marital fidelity in radically innovative ways.
American Journal of Philology, 2001
In lieu of an abstract, here is a preview of the article. EURIPIDES’ MEDEA is a character who is... more In lieu of an abstract, here is a preview of the article.
EURIPIDES’ MEDEA is a character who is adept at speaking many languages. To the chorus of Corinthian women, she presents herself as a woman like any other, but with fewer resources; to Jason in the agon she speaks as if man to man, articulating her claim to the appropriate returns of charis and philia. Even when she addresses herself, in the great monologue, two distinct voices appear, that of the pitiful mother who loves her children and, opposed to this, the voice of the heroic warrior who demands revenge. The subject of this article will not be the versatility of Medea's speech, per se. Rather, I will consider the narrower but related issue of how—with what words and weapons—Medea enacts her revenge on Jason.
Classical World 106.4:704-5, 2013
University of Chicago Press, Dec 2016
http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/O/bo22053857.html
Thursday, January 7, 2016 1:45 p.m. – 4:45 p.m. Session #27 Objects and Affect: The Materialities... more Thursday, January 7, 2016
1:45 p.m. – 4:45 p.m.
Session #27
Objects and Affect: The Materialities of Greek Drama
Mario Telò, University of California, Los Angeles, and Melissa Mueller, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Organizers
This panel aims to reconceptualize theoretical and practical approaches to materiality in Greek drama. Though stage objects have long been investigated, new materialism complements their interpretation as symbols with an interest in their agency, sensuous force, and psychosomatic impact. At the same time, critical theory’s reassessment of emotion has drawn attention to the exchange of energy between performers (humans and objects) and audience, what can be called “affect.” Our speakers reflect on objects, nonhuman agency, and affect, pointing toward a newly robust sense of the physicality of Greek drama.