Invention of the Barbarian Flashcards
The Amazons - P. Walcot
‘They challenged and defied women’s function as wife and as mother’
‘rejecting the institution of marriage’
‘define the norm and the acceptable by setting that norm on its head’
The Amazons - F. Brown and B. Tyrrell
‘The Amazons defy sexual classification’
‘can have no legitimacy as Greek wives’
‘Herodotus’ omission of their status as mothers’
The Amazons - A. Stewart
show male patrons of art and the public ‘curiosity, anxiety, desire, pride in possession, the need to control and sheer brute macho sexism’
‘unruly teenagers: unripe, undeveloped, undomesticated, and unrestrained’
‘lure of forbidden fruit’
‘wave of xenophobia’ -influx of foreign girls meant more Athenian women didn’t have a place
The Amazons - P. Loman
‘used as an archetype of the defeated barbarian’
‘civilised Greek women were expected to marry and let their men do the politics and the fighting’
Medea - B. Knox
‘imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates’
Medea - R. Scodel
‘women in drama are the Other that enabled male audiences to explore their own concerns’
women could ‘both represent real women and serve as instruments’
Medea - Edith Hall
‘philosophical bewilderment’ of the play felt strongly connected to the gods and to modern audiences
Medea - P. Vellacott
‘civilised men ignore the world of instinct, emotion and irrational experience’
‘carefully worked out notions and right and wrong are dangerous unless they are flexible’
Medea - J. Gould
‘tone of triumph and elation that women are at last to stand up to men and defend their honour’
Medea - K. McLeish
‘Jason’s pain endemic to his mortal condition’ Medea’s is ‘self-inflicted’
Medea - R. Omitowoju
Modern critics undecided on Euripedes
‘proto-feminist’ ‘crushing unfairness’
‘misogynistic light’ ‘uncontrollable rage and violence as ultimate source of instability in society’
Reality of Persia - A. Villing
‘the projection of the Persians as a barbarian other was a convenient foil’ ‘Greek values and norms can be set’
‘two-way cultural interactions’
Reality of Persia - P. Green
‘static culture’ ‘hostile’ or ‘blindly indifferent’ to ‘original creativity in any form’
Reality of Persia - T. Harrison
‘drew upon the skills of its subject peoples’
When Xerxes whips the water, is not a ‘sign of hubristic excess but as an expression of his Zoroastrian beliefs’
Reality of Persia - J. Sharwood-Smith
‘the great king’s wealth was always 100 times greater than that of his nobles’
Reality of Persia - J. Hart
‘war is the proper business of a Persian King’
Reality of Persia - M. Brosius
‘allowed each ethnic group to retain its cultural identity and heritage’
Reality of Persia - A. Kuhrt
‘emphasise the diversity’ to ‘enhance the supreme power of the Persian Monarch’
Greek identity - Cartledge
‘Greekness had at least enough purchase on reality to allow a definition that was not purely wishful thinking’
Persian wars - Cartledge
Thermopylae was ‘a turning point not only in the history of Classical Greece, but in all world’s history, eastern as well as western’
Persian wars - L. Fox
‘the battle was for Greek freedom, but the contrasts of justice and luxury were woven into memories of it’
The Persians and Herodotus - Hartog
despotic power and hubris ‘transgression and repetition are its law’ ‘doomed to ultimate failure’
Herodotus and The Persians - Flower
the contrast between ‘free and manly Greek and servile and effeminate Barbarian may be valid for The Persians but doesn’t correspond to the Persian representation in Herodotus’
Reality of Persia - Tom Holland
‘light morning mist’ over their Empire, ‘aware of it but it was never obtrusive’
Reality of Persia - M. Axworthy
Different to earlier Empires which insisted on ‘might being right’
