“Testing the axes of reception: Oedipus repatriated in Modern Greek fiction and Antigone performed on the contemporary transnational stage” (original) (raw)

Abstract

2014 (March 11) Senate House, London, Trivium: Classical Intersections Seminar Series (with Caterina Tsiouma) The aim of this collaborative paper is to test the axes of reception and transmission of classics focusing on the intersection of the diachronic and synchronic axes in the media of fiction and theatre and on a national and international spectrum. Τhe aim of the first section is two-fold: Firstly, it aims at illustrating some aspects of the reception of Oedipus, the Sophocles’ hero, in the contemporary modern Greek novel. Secondly, it reflects on the exploitation of the diachronically formatted mythological material and the new meaning ascribed in Modernism. Taking into consideration examples of recently published Greek novels, we discuss a further option of the myth’s dynamic usage in the vertical “intra-linguistic” axis. Reading and examining works such as Rhea Galanaki’s Fires of Judah, ashes of Oedipus (2009), Nikos Xenios’ A Triplex Apartment for Oedipus (2012), Kostas Kamaras’ Oedipus center-back (2003), it explores how the meaningful figure of the classical hero functions differently in modern writing. In particular, Oedipus is not the protagonist of Galanaki’s novel, despite his intense appearance in paratextual elements (see G. Genette for the term) or on simultaneous narration with the realistic plot. However, the classic version of the myth forms somehow part of the totally contemporary context. Galanaki utilizes traditional medieval sources (Anonym’s poem “Old and New Testament”, Heraklion-Crete, 15th-16th century) and Cretan oral records (G.A. Megas, 1940-1), in which the biblical Judas shares the fate of Oedipus. This material is unfolding alongside the novel’s realistic story about a young Jewish woman living for a while in a Cretan village and facing the hatred of the locals. The presence of Judas as Oedipus and the absent and mediated figure of Oedipus make us reflect on otherness, absolute human evil, Judeo-phobia and neo-racism in a neohellenic society context. In Xenios’ novel the protagonist talks with Oedipus at Colonus and Sophocles in a crucial point of his life on the path of self-consciousness, while he reads the classic text and adopts similar or not attributes with Oedipus. Kamaras wrote a humorous novel about football and ridicules the reader’s expectations with his book’s title. Essentially, the peculiarity of the emergence and reception of Oedipus' myth, examined in the prism of Modern writing and literary criticism (intertextuality (J. Kristeva), dialogism (M. Bakhtin), feminism), lies in the translucent and multileveled narrative structure and is enriched by the bidirectional and interactive process of reading. The aim of the second section of this paper is to explore the dynamics of the horizontal transnational axis of reception of classics. Güthenke (Classical Receptions Journal 2013 Vol.5, No.2) has recently called for a theoretical testing of a spatial and thus multi-cultural axis of classical reception suggesting Damrosch’s model for the study of world literature as a springboard for further contemplation. In this working framework we will examine three versions of Sophocles’ Antigone realized at different corners of the globe between 1980s and 2000s: Griselda Gambaro’s Antígona Furiosa (1986, Argentina), Fémi Ósófisan’s Tègònni: An African Antigone (Nigeria (first production at United States 1994)) and Kshetrimayum Jugindro Singh’s theatrical production of Sophocles’ Antigone (Manipur 2004). The study of the different cultural contexts of the aforementioned plays will enhance our understanding of the dissemination of classics in different territories thus enlightening the vertical axis of reception of Antigone. In particular, it will be suggested that the different uses of the tragic myth in each geographical area are denotative of different notions of postcolonialism/neocolonialism. Gambaro’s play is usually studied as a post-Dirty War Argentinian rendering of a universal text, Ósófisan’s Tègònni participates in a discursive struggle not only with Creon but also with Antigone, whilst Jugindo chooses an ancient Greek rather than a Shakespearean play to comment upon via regional performative techniques. However, except for the cultural and sociopolitical differences, interesting communalities emerge as well from the comparison. The metaphoric sisterhoods and brotherhoods which Antigone “formulates” onstage articulate a collective rather than an individual agon against firm sovereign Creontes. Furthermore, the emphasis on Antigone’s resurrection from death and repetitive return to life constitutes a new politics of an “agonistic humanism” (for the term see Honig 2013) stemming from a metaphoric natal perspective of human existence. Finally, a comparison of contemporary multi-cultural “re-writings” of Antigone triangulated via the vertical axis of reception can stimulate insightful readings of Sophocles’ tragedy beyond the interpretative tradition informed by the Hegelian model of hierarchized oppositional dialectics. On the whole this interdisciplinary approach aims at challenging the limits of the intersected axes asking whether the vertical chain of reception privileges certain themes and figures (eg. Oedipus as exemplary figure of enlightened humanism over Antigone as a model of post-Enlightment universal humanism) or certain genres (eg. fiction over drama) which the horizontal disrupted axis would help us better delineate.

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