This essay examines two distinct modes of sonic disjunction in Rosanna Bruno and Anne Carson's Th... more This essay examines two distinct modes of sonic disjunction in Rosanna Bruno and Anne Carson's The Trojan Women: A Comic and Carson's H of H Playbook. The Trojan Women shows how noticing sounds that are dislocated from expectations exposes hard truths about reality. H of H interrogates our "regular" mode of hearing other people and implies that there is a gap in how we can know others and know ourselves. Thus, though both are graphic texts, their power and effect are nonetheless garnered also through the sounds they describe and conjure in the minds of their readers.
What does knowledge do-the pursuit of it, the having and exposing of it, the receiving again of k... more What does knowledge do-the pursuit of it, the having and exposing of it, the receiving again of knowledge of what one already knows? How, in short, is knowledge performative, and how best does one move among its causes and effects? 1
UChicago Classics Professor Sarah Nooter explores questions of agency, truth, and fate in Sophocl... more UChicago Classics Professor Sarah Nooter explores questions of agency, truth, and fate in Sophocles' OEDIPUS REX.
In this piece, I contend that the war-trumpet (salpinx) was understood in ancient Greek literatur... more In this piece, I contend that the war-trumpet (salpinx) was understood in ancient Greek literature as connected to the divine and invincible. I show how this understanding arose from a focus on the sound of the war-trumpet, accompanied by silence around the physical act of playing it, inasmuch as this act, in the parallel case of the aulos, reveals embodiment and vulnerability. In archaic and classical texts, ranging among Aristophanes, Thucydides, Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Aristotle, we see that the sound of the salpinx is both infallible and capable of connoting the domination of Greek males in several fields: battles, courts of law, and the imagining of human and nonhuman ontology.
This essay examines two distinct modes of sonic disjunction in Rosanna Bruno and Anne Carson's Th... more This essay examines two distinct modes of sonic disjunction in Rosanna Bruno and Anne Carson's The Trojan Women: A Comic and Carson's H of H Playbook. The Trojan Women shows how noticing sounds that are dislocated from expectations exposes hard truths about reality. H of H interrogates our "regular" mode of hearing other people and implies that there is a gap in how we can know others and know ourselves. Thus, though both are graphic texts, their power and effect are nonetheless garnered also through the sounds they describe and conjure in the minds of their readers.
What does knowledge do-the pursuit of it, the having and exposing of it, the receiving again of k... more What does knowledge do-the pursuit of it, the having and exposing of it, the receiving again of knowledge of what one already knows? How, in short, is knowledge performative, and how best does one move among its causes and effects? 1
UChicago Classics Professor Sarah Nooter explores questions of agency, truth, and fate in Sophocl... more UChicago Classics Professor Sarah Nooter explores questions of agency, truth, and fate in Sophocles' OEDIPUS REX.
In this piece, I contend that the war-trumpet (salpinx) was understood in ancient Greek literatur... more In this piece, I contend that the war-trumpet (salpinx) was understood in ancient Greek literature as connected to the divine and invincible. I show how this understanding arose from a focus on the sound of the war-trumpet, accompanied by silence around the physical act of playing it, inasmuch as this act, in the parallel case of the aulos, reveals embodiment and vulnerability. In archaic and classical texts, ranging among Aristophanes, Thucydides, Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Aristotle, we see that the sound of the salpinx is both infallible and capable of connoting the domination of Greek males in several fields: battles, courts of law, and the imagining of human and nonhuman ontology.
Voice connects our embodied existence with the theoretical worlds we construct. Th is book argues... more Voice connects our embodied existence with the theoretical worlds we construct. Th is book argues that the voice is a crucial element of mortal identity in the tragedies of Aeschylus. It fi rst presents conceptions of the voice in ancient Greek poetry and philosophy, understanding it in its most literal and physical form, as well as through the many metaphorical connotations that spring from it. Close readings then show how the tragedies and fragments of Aeschylus gain meaning from the rubric and performance of voice, concentrating particularly on the Oresteia. Sarah Nooter demonstrates how voice-as both a bottomless metaphor and performative agent of action-stands as the prevailing confi guration through which Aeschylus' dramas should be heard. Th is highly original book will interest all scholars and students of classical literature as well as those concerned with material approaches to the interpretation of texts. SARAH NOOTER is Associate Professor in Classics and Th eater and Performance Studies at the University of Chicago. She is the author of When Heroes Sing: Sophocles and the Shifting Soundscape of Tragedy (Cambridge, 2012) and co-editor of Sound and the Ancient Senses (2018).
Sound leaves no ruins and no residues, but it is experienced constantly. It is ubiquitous but fle... more Sound leaves no ruins and no residues, but it is experienced constantly. It is ubiquitous but fleeting. Even silence has sound, even absence resonates. Sound and the Ancient Senses aims to hear the lost sounds of antiquity, from the sounds of the human body to those of the gods, from the bathhouse to the Forum, from the chirp of a cicada to the music of the celestial spheres. Sound plays so great a role in shaping our environments as to make it a crucial sounding board for thinking about space and ecology, emotions and experience, mortality and the divine, orality and textuality, and the self and its connection to others. From antiquity to the present day, poets and philosophers have strained to hear the ways that sounds structure our world and identities. This volume looks at theories and practices of hearing and producing sounds in ritual contexts, medicine, mourning, music, poetry, drama, erotics, philosophy, rhetoric, linguistics, vocality, and on the page, and shows how ancient ideas of sound still shape how and what we hear today. As the first comprehensive introduction to the soundscapes of antiquity, this volume makes a significant contribution to the rapidly growing fields of sound and voice studies and is the final volume of the series, The Senses in Antiquity.
Sophoclean heroes engage in lyric song and lyrical speech far more than other heroes of tragedy. ... more Sophoclean heroes engage in lyric song and lyrical speech far more than other heroes of tragedy. This has profound implications for both the hero himself and tragedy as a genre. The lyrical voice grounds the heroes in a world of poetic identity and power, demonstrating how tragedy was influenced by other kinds of poetry in fifth-century Athens. Yet, at the same time, the heroes' lyrical voices set them apart from their communities and lend them the authority and abilities of poets. Through close readings, this book demonstrates how the voice of each hero is inflected by song and other markers of lyric poetry, in order to discuss the purpose of their lyric passages and the wider issue of defining the nature and function of the poetic voice. This study offers new insight into the ways that Sophoclean tragedy inherits and refracts the traditions of other poetic genres.
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