1. Bacchae's Queer Hyperchorality: Becoming-Wild, Becoming-Choral.
- Author
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Haselswerdt, Ella
- Subjects
DIONYSUS (Greek deity) ,CADMUS (Greek mythology) - Abstract
This essay reconsiders the often remarked-upon queerness of Euripides' Bacchae through the lens of the play's unique deployment of chorality, read with the help of Jack Halberstam's conceptualization of wildness. I argue that the play exhibits a tragic "hyperchorality," that is, a systematic collapse of distinctions between chorus and character, leading to the erosion of boundaries between the dramatic world and the spectators' world, and the suffusion of the narrative with a kind of queer choral time. I trace these dynamics in the play's destabilizing kommos between the chorus and Dionysus, in the Theban women's queer ecofeminist scene on the mountain described in the first messenger speech, and finally in Dionysus' unsettling prophecy to Cadmus. Finally, I argue that the Bacchae defies literary historical inscription, operating instead as, in Halberstam's formulation, "a chaotic forcefield of un-art." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2024
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