Thesis by Aspasia Skouroumouni Stavrinou
The words of Medea or Alcestis may be the only thing we are left with. Yet it was not the only me... more The words of Medea or Alcestis may be the only thing we are left with. Yet it was not the only means Euripides had at his disposal to render them onstage; his dramatic toolkit included spatial staging. This aspect of his dramaturgy provides the lens through which I explore Euripidean tragedy and Euripidean females. The tragic female has been studied in depth in past and more recent scholarship, with vital insights gained. Nevertheless, what previous scholarship has rarely considered in any detail is the physical representation of the female (the particularities of her postures, movement, physical action, and interaction) in physical and imagined dramatic space (what I term ‘female space’). My focus, both performative and gendered, falls on the staging techniques defining the female, explored against the background of fifth-century cultural values of original spectators. By combining analysis of theatrical features with readings of Euripidean females and plays, the thesis engages in a process of visualizing female physicality in interactive theatrical space and exploring its thematic significance in the construction of character, theme, and action.
An introductory chapter delineates my conceptual and methodological framework (theoretical background, approach, terms). Three case studies constitute the three main chapters: Helen, Iphigenia Taurica, and Andromache. In each of the chosen dramas, the female is placed away from home and homeland: in Helen and IT the Greek woman is displaced in foreign lands, in Andromache, the non-Greek is transported into Greece. Dislocation to alien environments is the extreme form of the theatrical challenge to the female spatial experience; hence the need (and the choice) for special investigation. The examination of the different ways in which aspects of female experience are (literally) played out allows us to evaluate Euripides’ skill as a writer and director from a new perspective.
The thesis can be downloaded as PdF, visit :
http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1317801/
Book Reviews by Aspasia Skouroumouni Stavrinou
Journal of Hellenic Studies, 2021
Both within the different areas of the ancient Greek household and outside it, historical and arc... more Both within the different areas of the ancient Greek household and outside it, historical and archaeological research provides us today with a potentially more flexible assessment of the ability of ancient Greek women to move from space to space: some mobility was possible, dependent on age/status and time/occasion. The exact relation of that nuanced picture of ancient social reality to ancient social ideology cannot, given the evidence, be decidedly defined. Konstantinou opts for an alternative quest: deciphering the interplay between social ideology, social praxis and mythic imagination (also one of her long-term concerns in previous talks and published papers). The resulting monograph comes as a welcome contribution to a number of domains: the reading of ancient mythology, cultural history, space and gender analysis and the study of epic and tragic poetry (her two key primary sources).
Papers by Aspasia Skouroumouni Stavrinou
Journal of Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies 1.1–2 , 1–40, 2022
Extant medical treatises from Greco-Roman antiquity and early Byzantium (second-seventh century C... more Extant medical treatises from Greco-Roman antiquity and early Byzantium (second-seventh century CE) repeatedly foreground human milk as a therapeutic and a nutritional agathon (good), but also as a potential cause of malfunctioning and disease. Through a discussion of the juxtaposition of 'good' and 'bad' milk in the examined treatises, along with an investigation of the milk terminology and rhetoric employed, this article shows that milk's usefulness was primarily defined not according to its effects on the human body, but in terms of the producer's moral worth: the lactating woman's (i.e. biological mother's or wet nurse's) ability to meet certain moral standards.
Το θέατρο στη νεότερη και στη σύγχρονη Κύπρο (Επιστημονική Επιμέλεια: Α.Χ. Κωνσταντίνου, Κ. Διαμαντάκου, Λ. Γαλάζης), 2020
Euripides’ Hecuba is originally performed in the ancient theatre of Dionysus around 425 BC, durin... more Euripides’ Hecuba is originally performed in the ancient theatre of Dionysus around 425 BC, during the Peloponnesian war. The moral and political corruption of the Athenian society at the time is strikingly reflected onto the ethos of Hecuba’s chaotic dramatic world. Euripides’ relocation of the events concluding the Trojan War from Troy to Thrace is counted among the most bold and successful Euripidean mythic innovations of the specific play. Thrace, a place charged with heavily negative associations in his contemporary Greek consciousness, functions as the most suitable context within which to set Hecuba’s drama and onto which to project Euripides’ problematization on the grim consequences of war onto the human identity. What is more, Euripides’ use of his actors’ skeue (costume and accoutrements) and hypocrisis
(gesture, movement) further promotes that theme as central in the play.
The Cypriot director Magdalena Zira chooses to restage Euripides’ play for a modern performance at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Experimental Theatre Wing, in 2006. Her principal aim is to use Euripides’ play as a political allegory for the contemporary war in Iraq. Her own directing gestures configuring the opsis of her adaptation are the key subject matter of the analysis. By focusing on the mechanics of dramatic space, the actors’ skeue, and hypocrisis, the analysis exemplifies the ways in
which the different opseis of Hecuba function as a mirror of the socio-political context of each performance and as vehicles of the strong political message of their creator (ancient and modern respectively). In the process, another fundamental feature of the ancient (and particularly Euripidean) theatre and of its modern reception is reaffirmed: its innate nature as political praxis.
This article demonstrates how aspects of the opsis of Euripides' Iphigenia Taurica, in particular... more This article demonstrates how aspects of the opsis of Euripides' Iphigenia Taurica, in particular its construction of dramatic space (mimetic and diegetic), hypokrisis (positioning, movement, gesture), and its usage of the protagonist's skeue (costume and accoutrements), help to articulate the treatment of the dislocated female in this drama, as social outcast and an anomalous priestess in her place of dislocation. Iphigenia, like Helen and Andromache (Euripides' other extant dislocated females), has been transported far away from her domestic sphere (home and homeland) to a place, where she suffers both alienation and a kind of domestication. Read against their socio-historical and theatrical context, space, hypokrisis, and skeue are found to hold unique attributes: an inherently perverted sacred shrine, a useless altar, a temple-house, a statue turned into a movable prop and accoutrement of the actor's skeue. That detection of Euripides' novel and intricate game with the real and theatrical semantics of religious space and body in the IT navigates a rereading of plot, characterization and theme via a different route. In the process, larger questions regarding the tragic dramaturgy of religion and gender are also addressed.
Όταν ο Σοφοκλής καταπιάνεται με το μύθο του οίκου των Ατρειδών και τη δολοφονία της Κλυταιμήστρας... more Όταν ο Σοφοκλής καταπιάνεται με το μύθο του οίκου των Ατρειδών και τη δολοφονία της Κλυταιμήστρας από τον γιό της Ορέστη, επιδεικνύει καινοφανές (σε σύγκριση με τους δύο μεγάλους ομοτέχνούς του, Αισχύλο και Ευριπίδη) ενδιαφέρον για το πάθος και το ήθος της κόρης του Αγαμέμνονα. Στο πρόσωπο της Ηλέκτρας αντί στη δράση του Ορέστη πέφτει ο θεατρικός του προβολέας. Το βίωμα του ακατάπαυστου θρήνου της αντί η πράξη της μητροκτονίας τίθεται στον πυρήνα της δραματικής του αφήγησης. Η Ηλέκτρα του Σοφοκλή θα μπορούσε να ιδωθεί ως μια εμβριθής και εκτενής διατριβή στην προβληματική και στη δυναμική του γυναικείου θρήνου. Ο τρόπος που ο σκηνοθετικός σχεδιασμός της πρώτης παράστασης ενεργοποιεί και νοηματοδοτεί ποικιλοτρόπως αυτό το μεγάθεμα του Σοφόκλειου δράματος είναι το κεντρικό ερώτημα που θέτει η εν λόγω εισήγηση. Εστιάζοντας στη φερώνυμη πρωταγωνίστρια Ηλέκτρα, η ανάλυση εξετάζει το πώς βασικές παράμετροι της σκηνικής της παρουσίας (κινησιολογία, σκευή) λειτουργούν εντός του πλαισίου των ιδεολογικών και θεατρικών συμβάσεων της πρώτης παράστασης. Η απόπειρα να ψηλαφίσουμε το σώμα της θρηνούσας Ηλέκτρας μας καθιστά κοινωνούς του βαθύτερου νοήματος της χαρακτηρολογίας και της θεματικής του Σοφόκλειου έργου. Περαιτέρω δε διαφωτίζει πτυχές της τεχνικής της (ανα)παράστασης του θρήνου στην αρχαιοελληνική θεατρική παράδοση. Μας φέρνει τέλος αντιμέτωπους εκ νέου με θεμελιώδη ερωτήματα για τη φύση του θεατρικού είδους υπό μελέτη, τη στενή σχέση ανάμεσα σε θρήνο και αρχαιοελληνική τραγωδία, για τη θεραπευτική δυνατότητα της θεατρικής αναπαράστασης του πένθους εν γένει.
The question of the relationship between ethnicity and morality lies at the heart of Euripides’s ... more The question of the relationship between ethnicity and morality lies at the heart of Euripides’s Andromache. Despite the ample work done on the play’s cultural import and Euripides’s costuming technique, there remains a need to articulate one of the most significant strategies by which the play explores the nature of ethnic and moral difference. This article focuses on Hermione’s appearance and the way the Spartan ethos is drawn out of the character’s skeue. This discussion intends to add to the arguments for the dramatic force of her costume, by unfolding Euripides’s unique play with the mythic, literary, and performative associations of the female Dorian dress in the Andromache.
Comicality penetrates Euripides’ Helen much deeper than so far noticed. By focusing on Euripides’... more Comicality penetrates Euripides’ Helen much deeper than so far noticed. By focusing on Euripides’ configuration of various aspects of opsis, this paper argues that the inter-generic give-and-take in the construction of plot and theme is strikingly replicated in the granularity of the staging technique. Elements of comedy and satyr play have been detected at work at the level of plot, individual scenes, characterisation and use of motifs. Irony and a sense of amusement are inherent in the multiple paradoxes which Euripides’ new, chaste and noble, Helen has to face. In any reading, the wit and playfulness of this play cannot be dismissed. What has not received sufficient emphasis in previous analyses is the profound extent to which this interaction between genres operates on several levels: dramatic space, blocking, proxemics, and skeue. The context and the way of handling staging motifs reinforce the association with the comic trope. By focusing on staging technique, this paper rereads the Helen through a different lens. Furthermore, by indulging in a synkrisis of comic and tragic performance poetics of fifth-century drama, it engages in the wider debate on tragedy as genre and its development in the late fifth century.
The interrelation of Hermione and Andromache as mapped out physically in theatrical space is the... more The interrelation of Hermione and Andromache as mapped out physically in theatrical space is the key aspect of the stagecraft of Euripides’ “Andromache”. Its careful study enhances the understanding of the critical importance of the females’ juxtapositional contrast in the dramatic design of the play. It also alerts us to the intricacies of Euripides’ game with social norm regulating the semantics of extra-theatrical domestic space and of his creative reworking of Andromache’s narrative space in Homer’s epic. Euripides innovates in combining the two heroines’ post-war story and placing them as wife and concubine under the same roof, Neoptolemus’ house. Andromache sits outside the scene-building at the shrine of Thetis; excluded from the oikos, as a concubine would be in the reality of fifth-century experience. Hermione, Neoptolemus’ legal wife, dominates inside. By zooming in onto the particularities of movement, action and interaction (with animate and inanimate entities) of these females, this paper offers a meticulous decoding of the dynamics of theatrical domestic space in the “Andromache”.
Organisation of Conferences by Aspasia Skouroumouni Stavrinou
MotherBreast Workshop: Programme and Abstracts, 2020
The Cyprus-based interdisciplinary research project "Lactating Breasts: Motherhood and Breastfeed... more The Cyprus-based interdisciplinary research project "Lactating Breasts: Motherhood and Breastfeeding in Antiquity and Byzantium" (https://ucy.ac.cy/motherbreast/en/) warmly invites proposals for a series of sessions at the International Medieval Congress 2020 (University of Leeds, 6-9 July 2020).
Edited Volume by Aspasia Skouroumouni Stavrinou
Cyprus Pedagogical Institute: Nicosia, 2018
Talks by Aspasia Skouroumouni Stavrinou
This lecture concerns an early chapter of the fascinating social history of breastfeeding. It exa... more This lecture concerns an early chapter of the fascinating social history of breastfeeding. It examines the social realities and ideologies surrounding the nursing woman (mother and wet nurse) from the first centuries of our common era until seventh-century Byzantium. Ancient sources and earlier research are revisited in an attempt to unravel the economic, social, political, cultural, moral and emotional implications that determined the ways in which nursing mothers and wet nurses were perceived and treated in the examined period.
This research has been undertaken in the framework of a three-year project (2018-2021) entitled “Lactating Breasts: Motherhood and Breastfeeding in Antiquity and Byzantium (4th c. BCE-7th c. CE)” (MotherBreast), which is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund and the Republic of Cyprus through the Research and Innovation Foundation.
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Thesis by Aspasia Skouroumouni Stavrinou
An introductory chapter delineates my conceptual and methodological framework (theoretical background, approach, terms). Three case studies constitute the three main chapters: Helen, Iphigenia Taurica, and Andromache. In each of the chosen dramas, the female is placed away from home and homeland: in Helen and IT the Greek woman is displaced in foreign lands, in Andromache, the non-Greek is transported into Greece. Dislocation to alien environments is the extreme form of the theatrical challenge to the female spatial experience; hence the need (and the choice) for special investigation. The examination of the different ways in which aspects of female experience are (literally) played out allows us to evaluate Euripides’ skill as a writer and director from a new perspective.
The thesis can be downloaded as PdF, visit :
http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1317801/
Book Reviews by Aspasia Skouroumouni Stavrinou
Papers by Aspasia Skouroumouni Stavrinou
(gesture, movement) further promotes that theme as central in the play.
The Cypriot director Magdalena Zira chooses to restage Euripides’ play for a modern performance at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Experimental Theatre Wing, in 2006. Her principal aim is to use Euripides’ play as a political allegory for the contemporary war in Iraq. Her own directing gestures configuring the opsis of her adaptation are the key subject matter of the analysis. By focusing on the mechanics of dramatic space, the actors’ skeue, and hypocrisis, the analysis exemplifies the ways in
which the different opseis of Hecuba function as a mirror of the socio-political context of each performance and as vehicles of the strong political message of their creator (ancient and modern respectively). In the process, another fundamental feature of the ancient (and particularly Euripidean) theatre and of its modern reception is reaffirmed: its innate nature as political praxis.
Organisation of Conferences by Aspasia Skouroumouni Stavrinou
Edited Volume by Aspasia Skouroumouni Stavrinou
Talks by Aspasia Skouroumouni Stavrinou
This research has been undertaken in the framework of a three-year project (2018-2021) entitled “Lactating Breasts: Motherhood and Breastfeeding in Antiquity and Byzantium (4th c. BCE-7th c. CE)” (MotherBreast), which is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund and the Republic of Cyprus through the Research and Innovation Foundation.
An introductory chapter delineates my conceptual and methodological framework (theoretical background, approach, terms). Three case studies constitute the three main chapters: Helen, Iphigenia Taurica, and Andromache. In each of the chosen dramas, the female is placed away from home and homeland: in Helen and IT the Greek woman is displaced in foreign lands, in Andromache, the non-Greek is transported into Greece. Dislocation to alien environments is the extreme form of the theatrical challenge to the female spatial experience; hence the need (and the choice) for special investigation. The examination of the different ways in which aspects of female experience are (literally) played out allows us to evaluate Euripides’ skill as a writer and director from a new perspective.
The thesis can be downloaded as PdF, visit :
http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1317801/
(gesture, movement) further promotes that theme as central in the play.
The Cypriot director Magdalena Zira chooses to restage Euripides’ play for a modern performance at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Experimental Theatre Wing, in 2006. Her principal aim is to use Euripides’ play as a political allegory for the contemporary war in Iraq. Her own directing gestures configuring the opsis of her adaptation are the key subject matter of the analysis. By focusing on the mechanics of dramatic space, the actors’ skeue, and hypocrisis, the analysis exemplifies the ways in
which the different opseis of Hecuba function as a mirror of the socio-political context of each performance and as vehicles of the strong political message of their creator (ancient and modern respectively). In the process, another fundamental feature of the ancient (and particularly Euripidean) theatre and of its modern reception is reaffirmed: its innate nature as political praxis.
This research has been undertaken in the framework of a three-year project (2018-2021) entitled “Lactating Breasts: Motherhood and Breastfeeding in Antiquity and Byzantium (4th c. BCE-7th c. CE)” (MotherBreast), which is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund and the Republic of Cyprus through the Research and Innovation Foundation.
Breastfeeding and the work of mothering are explored through the study of a great variety of sources, mainly works of Greek-speaking cultures, written and visual, anonymous and eponymous, which were mostly produced between the first and the seventh century AD. Due to their multiple interdisciplinary dimensions, ancient and early Byzantine lactating women are approached through three interconnected thematic strands having a twofold focus: society and ideology, medicine and practice, and art and literature.
By developing the model of the lactating woman, the volume offers a new analytical framework for understanding a significant part of the still unwritten cultural history of the period. At the same time, the volume significantly contributes to the emerging fields of breast and motherhood studies. The new and significant knowledge generated in the fields of ancient and Byzantine studies may also prove useful for cultural historians in general and other disciplines, such as literary studies, art history, history of medicine, philosophy, theology, sociology, anthropology and gender studies.