Ladies' Greek

Victorian Translations of Tragedy

Yopie Prins (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

312 Seiten

2017
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-0-691-14189-3 (ISBN)

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In Ladies' Greek, Yopie Prins illuminates a culture of female classical literacy that emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century, during the formation of women's colleges on both sides of the Atlantic. Why did Victorian women of letters desire to learn ancient Greek, a "dead" language written in a strange alphabet and no longer spoken? In the words of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, they wrote "some Greek upon the margin--lady's Greek, without the accents." Yet in the margins of classical scholarship they discovered other ways of knowing, and not knowing, Greek. Mediating between professional philology and the popularization of classics, these passionate amateurs became an important medium for classical transmission. Combining archival research on the entry of women into Greek studies in Victorian England and America with a literary interest in their translations of Greek tragedy, Prins demonstrates how women turned to this genre to perform a passion for ancient Greek, full of eros and pathos.
She focuses on five tragedies--Agamemnon, Prometheus Bound, Electra, Hippolytus, and The Bacchae--to analyze a wide range of translational practices by women and to explore the ongoing legacy of Ladies' Greek. Key figures in this story include Barrett Browning and Virginia Woolf, Janet Case and Jane Harrison, Edith Hamilton and Eva Palmer, and A. Mary F. Robinson and H.D. The book also features numerous illustrations, including photographs of early performances of Greek tragedy at women's colleges. The first comparative study of Anglo-American Hellenism, Ladies' Greek opens up new perspectives in transatlantic Victorian studies and the study of classical reception, translation, and gender.

Yopie Prins is the Irene Butter Collegiate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan and the author of Victorian Sappho (Princeton).

List of Illustrations ix Preface xi Between Alpha and Omega xi Acknowledgments xv Introduction: Women and the Greek Alphabet 1 An Ode in Greek 1 "Some Greek upon the Margin" 5 "Ought Women to Learn the Alphabet?" 12 Translating Greek Tragedy 26 Chapter One: The Spell of Greek 35 Virginia Woolf 's Agamemnon Notebook 35 Cassandra between the Stage and the Page 45 OTOTOTOI 52 Chapter Two: IOTAOMEGA in Prometheus Bound 57 "So Harsh a Chain of Suffering" 57 Greek Verbs in Me 62 "A Goodly Company of Lady-Translators" 83 The Flight of Io, to America and Back to Greece 95 Chapter Three: The Education of Electra 116 Behold and See 116 Electra at Girton College 124 Electra at Smith College 137 Chapter Four: Hippolytus in Ladies' Greek (with the Accents) 152 New Measures for New Women 152 "A Brisk Interchange of Letters" 155 Euripidean (De)Cadence 163 H.D.'s Euripides: Feet, Feet, Feet, Feet 180 Chapter Five: Dancing Greek Letters 202 Modern Maenads 202 Jane Harrison's Thrill 209 Bryn Mawr College Rituals 218 Postface 233 Reading the Surface 233 Refractions of Antigone 236 How to Read Ladies' Greek 242 Notes 247 Bibliography 265 Index 289

Zusatzinfo	30 halftones.
Verlagsort	New Jersey
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 235 mm
Gewicht	482 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
ISBN-10	0-691-14189-4 / 0691141894
ISBN-13	978-0-691-14189-3 / 9780691141893
Zustand	Neuware