Kenward, Claire (2011) 'Memory wrapped round a corpse' : a cultural history of English Hecubas. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis investigates “English Hecubas” as they appear in the recurring stories
my culture tells itself about legendary Troy. Analysing a necessarily select
number of Hecubas, spanning from the twelfth to the twenty-first century, I
uncover a history of intricate cultural negotiations as theatre, literature and
pedagogy attempt to domesticate the grief-stricken Trojan queen and recruit the
classical past into the service of an ever-changing English present.
My interest lies in the performative potential of texts. I therefore consider
the reception of English Hecubas as they are culturally activated, looking to textbooks
and classrooms, play-texts and theatres, print material and their
readerships, insisting that schoolmasters, pupils, actors, authors, spectators and
readers remain visible as the creators of meaning.
Adopting ‘Presentism’ (as developed by Terence Hawkes) as my
theoretical approach, the thesis is structured achronologically. This configuration
gestures toward a more synchronic reading of Hecuba, replicating twenty-first
century encounters with ancient mythological characters, by starting with our
present “situatedness” yet juggling accumulations of history gathered with each
prior acculturation.
Classical Hecubas (of Homer’s Iliad, Euripides’ Hecuba and Trojan
Women, Virgil’s Aeneid, Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Seneca’s Troas), entered
England in the Renaissance via the imported texts and tenets of continental
humanism. Pre-existing Hecubas of England’s oral tradition, medieval romance
epics and indigenous Troynovant myths were forced into dialogue with their
long-lost textual origins. This clash of Hecubas occurred within a crisis of
mourning, resulting from the Reformation’s radical alteration of English funeral
rites, which left maternal grief a culturally contentious site of anxiety. Thus,
within its eight-hundred year span, the thesis repeatedly returns to the
Renaissance to investigate the origins of the modern English Hecubas with which
I begin.
Hecuba’s grief can lead her to gouge out men’s eyeballs and murder their
sons; tactics of accommodation and assimilation have been necessary to render
this potentially violent ‘alien’ valuable within England’s cultural lexicon. By
exposing the systemic marginalisation, mitigation, suppression and sublimation
of Hecuba’s maternal grief and fury, this study hopes to recuperate the value of
Hecuba’s essential mourning work.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PR English literature
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Hecuba (Legendary character) in literature, Legends -- England
Official Date:	June 2011
Dates:	Date Event June 2011 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Rutter, Carol Chillington
Sponsors:	Arts & Humanities Research Council (Great Britain) (AHRC) ; University of Warwick
Description:	Some material has been removed on copyright grounds. Please see official URL for details of how to access the full version.
Extent:	382 leaves : illustrations
Language:	eng

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