The Center for Hellenic Studies

lament
Curated Books

The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition

Margaret Alexiou’s The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition, first published in 1974, has long since been established as a classic in several fields. This is the only generic and diachronic study of learned and popular lament and its socio-cultural contexts throughout Greek tradition in which a great diversity of sources are integrated to offer a comprehensive and penetrating synthesis. Its interdisciplinary orientation and broad scope have rendered The Ritual Lament in Greek… Read more

Curated Articles

Foreword to Mothers in Mourning, by Nicole Loraux. Trans. Corinne Pache. Cornell University Press, 1998.

[In this online version, the original page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{ix|x}” indicates where p. ix of the printed version ends and p. x begins.] In the poetics of classical Athenian tragedy, it is conventional for a woman to react to the death of a loved one by singing a song of lamentation. The representations of these mythical laments as performed… Read more

Curated Articles

Ancient Greek Elegy

[[This essay is an online version of an original printed version that appeared in The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy, ed. Karen Weisman (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2010) 13-45. In this online version, the original page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{13|14}” indicates where p. 13 of the printed version ends and p. 14 begins.]] The word elegy comes from the ancient… Read more

Publications

Rowman and Littlefield | Homeric Variations on a Lament by Briseis

Greek Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches Foreword by Gregory Nagy, General Editor Homeric Variations on a Lament by Briseis, by Casey Dué, centers on the figure of Briseis in the Iliad—who may seem at first sight to be marginal to the plot of that epic but who turns out to be essential to it—and even to the character-definition of the central hero of the Iliad, Achilles himself. Moreover, Briseis turns out… Read more

Publications

Rowman and Littlefield | Homeric Variations on a Lament by Briseis

Greek Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches Foreword by Gregory Nagy, General Editor Homeric Variations on a Lament by Briseis, by Casey Dué, centers on the figure of Briseis in the Iliad—who may seem at first sight to be marginal to the plot of that epic but who turns out to be essential to it—and even to the character-definition of the central hero of the Iliad, Achilles himself. Moreover, Briseis turns out… Read more