Thrênoi to Moirológia: Female Voices of Solitude, Resistance, and Solidarity

• Issue: Volume 23, Number 2
• Author(s): Andrea Fishman
• Article: View PDF | Download PDF
• Citation: http://journal.oraltradition.org/issues/23ii/fishman

Abstract

This essay examines the relationship among gender, lamentation, and death in the Greek lament tradition by comparing ancient Greek literary representations of women in mourning from Euripides’ Suppliants to documented examples of women’s ritual laments for the dead from modern-day rural Greece—specifically Inner Mani and Epiros. The author explores the aesthetics of pain, lament as social protest, and the function of lament for creating solidarity among women mourners.