Cassandra and the Poetics of Prophecy in Greek and Latin Literature

Author: Emily Pillinger

Using insights from translation theory, this book uncovers the value of female prophets' riddling prophecies in Greek and Latin poetry.

Working from the example of the mythic prophet Cassandra, this book uses insights from translation theory to uncover the value of female seers' riddling prophecies in the most canonical of ancient Greek and Latin poetry. It will interest students and scholars of classics, translation studies, gender studies, and comparative literature.

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Summary

Using insights from translation theory, this book uncovers the value of female prophets' riddling prophecies in Greek and Latin poetry.

Description

This book explores the miscommunications of the prophet Cassandra - cursed to prophesy the truth but never to be understood until too late - in Greek and Latin poetry. Using insights from the field of translation studies, the book focuses on the dialogic interactions that take place between the articulation and the realization of Cassandra's prophecies in five canonical ancient texts, stretching from Aeschylus' to Seneca's Agamemnon. These interactions are dogged by confusion and misunderstanding, but they also show a range of interested parties engaged in creatively 'translating' meaning for themselves from Cassandra's ostensibly nonsensical voice. Moreover, as the figure of Cassandra is translated from one literary work into another, including into the Sibyl of Virgil's Aeneid, her story of tragic communicative disability develops into an optimistic metaphor for literary canon-formation. Cassandra invites us to reconsider the status and value of even the most riddling of female prophets in ancient poetry.

Critic Reviews

“'... this rich monograph provides a multifaceted view of Cassandra from Aeschylus to Seneca that stresses again and again Cassandra's own polyvalence as a figure of translation.' Christopher Trinacty, Classical Philology”

'… an exceptionally detailed and minutely researched text which explores how the figure of Cassandra is used to effect within the texts it examines … Yet the argument of the study remains clear throughout and will encourage its reader to re-examine all that they know of Cassandra, seeking out texts with which they are unfamiliar; a successful result for any academic study.' Anactoria Clarke, Classics For All
'… this rich monograph provides a multifaceted view of Cassandra from Aeschylus to Seneca that stresses again and again Cassandra's own polyvalence as a figure of translation.' Christopher Trinacty, Classical Philology

About the Author

Emily Pillinger is Lecturer in Classics at King's College London. Her research interests range across Latin (and some Greek) poetry and poetics, focusing on themes that describe the power and fragility of both spoken and written communications: she has written on poetry associated with the utterance of prophecies and curses, with letter-writing, and with inscribed monuments. She also works on the reception of the ancient world, and particularly on the influence of Greco-Roman myth and history in music composed after the Second World War.