Dangerous Voices

In Dangerous Voices Holst-Warhaft investigates the power and meaning of the ancient lament, especially women's mourning of the dead, and sets out to discover why legislation was introduced to curb these laments in antiquity. An investigation of laments ranging from New Guinea to Greece suggests that this essentially female art form gave women considerable power over the rituals of death. The threat they posed to the Greek state caused them to be appropriated by male writers including the tragedians. Holst-Warhaft argues that the loss of the traditional lament in Greece and other countries not only deprives women of their traditional control over the rituals of death but leaves all mourners impoverished.

Dangerous Voices: Women's Laments and Greek Literature

Literature & Fiction

Holst-Warhaft, Gail

History & Criticism

Routledge

Having set aside age-old ways of mourning, how do people in the modern world cope with tragic loss? Using traditional mourning rituals as an instructive touchstone, Gail Holst-Warhaft explores the ways sorrow is managed in our own times and how mourning can be manipulated for social and political ends. 
 Since ancient times political and religious authorities have been alert to the dangerously powerful effects of communal expressions of grief--while valuing mourning rites as a controlled outlet for emotion. But today grief is often seen as a psychological problem: the bereaved are encouraged to seek counseling or take antidepressants. At the same time, we have witnessed some striking examples of manipulation of shared grief for political effect. One instance is the unprecedented concentration on recovery of the remains of Americans killed in the Vietnam War. In Buenos Aires the Mothers of the Disappeared forged the passion of their grief into a political weapon. Similarly the gay community in the United States, transformed by grief and rage, not only lobbied effectively for AIDS victims but channeled their emotions into fresh artistic expression. 
 It might be argued that, in contrast to earlier cultures, modern society has largely abdicated its role in managing sorrow. But in The Cue for Passion we see that some communities, moved by the intensity of their grief, have utilized it to gain ground for their own agendas.

The Cue for Passion: Grief and Its Political Uses

Parenting & Relationships

Harvard University Press

Aeschylus, 2 : The Persians, Seven Against Thebes, the Suppliants, Prometheus Bound (Penn Greek Drama Series)

The Penn Greek Drama Series presents original literary translations of the entire corpus of classical Greek drama: tragedies, comedies, and satyr plays. It is the only contemporary series of all the surviving work of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Menander.
This final volume of the tragedies of Aeschylus relates the historic defeat and dissolution of the Persian Empire on the heels of Xerxes disastrous campaign to subdue Greece, the struggle between the two sons of Oedipus for the throne of Thebes, the story of fifty daughters who seek asylum from their uncle, the king of Egypt, because of his demand that they marry his sons, and the well-known tale of the proud and unrepentant Prometheus, who is chained to a massive rock for revealing fire and hope to humankind.
Translations are by David Slavitt (Persians), Stephen Sandy (Seven Against Thebes), Gail Holst-Warhaft (The Suppliants), and William Matthews (Prometheus Bound).

Matthews, William

Dramas & Plays

University of Pennsylvania Press

Sandy, Stephen, Holst-Warhaft, Gail, Matthews, William

Sandy, Stephen

Modern Greeks dominate the world's merchant marine; ancient Greeks like Homer's Odysseus sailed the Mediterranean and beyond. But what do we know about shipboard life? Not much. Reading Kavadias fills this emptiness. He spent his adult life sailing world-wide and writing poems about monsoons, cats dying on shipboard, masts snapping in two, dream-girls or disgusting whores on shore, and fleas jumping off one's pubic hair. "In this fo'c'sle," he laments, "I ruined my calm self / and killed my tender childhood soul. / But I never gave up my obstinate dream, / and the sea, when it roars, tells me a lot." Scrupulously translated, these accessible poems will tell landlubbers a lot about life on the winedark sea. -Peter Bien, Translator of Nikos Kazantzakis and Stratis Myrivilis

The Collected Poems of Nikos Kavadias (The Modern Greek Literature Library) (English and Greek Edition)

Kavadías, Nikos

Attica Editions

Gail Holst-Warhaft has long been one of our leading interpreters of ancient and modern Greek life, literature, and music. Author of Road to Rembetika (1975, 2nd ed. 2005), Theodorakis: Myth and Politics in Modern Greek Music (1980), and Dangerous Voices: Women's Laments and Greek Literature (1992), translator of The Collected Poems of Nikos Kavadias (1987) and I Had Three Lives: Selected Poems of Mikis Theodorakis (2004), she now emerges as a poet in her own right. It would be her best work - the narrow ship bristling with tiny black oars dipped in an indigo sea .... The poet's judgement of Penelope's tapestry may well prove to be true of Penelope's Confession. Half a lifetime labouring at their lonely crafts, both women have waited (a key verb in these poems) until their work can do justice to their experience of love and loss, tenderness and cruelty. Holst-Warhaft's Penelope is a triumph of imaginative possession as, listening for the voice of the lonely weaver, she liberates her own. If this does not prove to be her 'best work', what follows will be worth the wait, however long. - Jon Stallworthy ( The Guest from the Future, Anzac Sonata, editor, Norton Anthology of Poetry) With the publication of Penelope's Confession, Gail Holst-Warhaft has established herself as among the finest poets of her generation. Hers is a unique voice, a subtle meld of the lyrical and reflective, each reinforcing the other, leaving an impression that, unlike much of the poetry being written today, does not evaporate with the reading. - David Solway Franklin's Passage (Grand prix de literature de Montreal), Modern Marriage).

Penelope's Confession (English and Greek Edition)

Poetry

The Fall of Athens reflects the bleak state of present-day Athens and reminds the reader that there is nothing new about Greece’s suffering. Combining present observations with portraits of the Greek musicians and writers, Holst-Warhaft’s book is both a peon of praise for the music and poetry that the author first discovered in the Greece of the 1960’s, and a reminder of how much the country has changed since it returned to democracy in 1974. Having played in the orchestras of such legends as Mikis Theodorakis and Dionysis Savvopoulos, the author had a bird’s eye view of 20th century Greek music at its apogee. Translating Greek poetry and prose later brought her in close contact with some of the leading writers of the period. With the discovery of Greek music and poetry came the forging of lasting friendships with these giants of Greek culture. This eclectic compilation of poetry, prose, translation, memoir, and songs captures the enigmatic, hybrid nature of Greece, a country that has always had the ability to create extraordinary beauty out of suffering.

The Fall of Athens

Fomite

Lucky Country

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Books by Holst-Warhaft, Gail

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Holst-Warhaft, Gail. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Dangerous Voices: Women's Laments and Greek Literature

Dangerous Voices

The Cue for Passion: Grief and Its Political Uses

Aeschylus, 2 : The Persians, Seven Against Thebes, the Suppliants, Prometheus Bound (Penn Greek Drama Series)

Aeschylus, 2 : The Persians, Seven Against Thebes, the Suppliants, Prometheus Bound (Penn Greek Drama Series)

Dangerous Voices: Women's Laments and Greek Literature

The Collected Poems of Nikos Kavadias (The Modern Greek Literature Library) (English and Greek Edition)

Penelope's Confession (English and Greek Edition)

The Fall of Athens

Lucky Country