KLS 3. oktober: Isabelle Torrance & Evert van Emde Boas

KLS Seminar 3 October
13.15-15.00, Antikmuseet

Isabelle Torrance (AU) & Evert van Emde Boas (AU)
New approaches to Euripides’ Heracles and Seneca’s Hercules: Grief, gender, cognition

Isabelle Torrance: As war rages on various fronts in Europe and in the rest of the world, and in light of the 2022 publication of the revised Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), I revisit earlier work reading the experiences of Euripides’ Heracles as those of a PTSD-affected war veteran, and suggest that there is something to be learned from a cultural context where ritualized communal grief provides some form of reprieve. The Roman Hercules in Seneca’s play is considered, by way of contrast, as a figure representing a different kind of emotional and cultural landscape.

Evert van Emde Boas: Starting from theories of extended cognition and queer approaches to the body in ancient literature, I look at Heracles' intense relationship with his bow in Euripides’ play. I focus on a vital scene after the killing of the children, in which the bow “speaks” and reasons on Heracles’ behalf, and in which he considers the implications of being separated from it. In this scene, I argue, the bow can be seen to become part of Heracles’ embodied sense-making system — an extension of his body. Implicated here are gendered issues of (heroic) masculinity and bodily integrity.

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