Naming Names, Telling Tales: Sexual Secrets and Greek Narrative

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dc.contributor.authorMurnaghan, Sheila
dc.contributor.authorMurnaghan, Sheila
dc.date2023-05-17T15:17:48.000
dc.date.accessioned2023-05-22T13:03:55Z
dc.date.available2023-05-22T13:03:55Z
dc.date.issued2014-01-01
dc.date.submitted2016-08-05T09:02:48-07:00
dc.description.abstractAs Creusa finds the courage to reveal her long-concealed union with Apollo, Euripides aligns the powerful narrative at the heart of his Ion with the disclosure of a sexual secret. Such disclosures make good stories, interesting in part for their sexual content, but even more, I suggest, for the circumstances that lead to their telling. As Peter Brooks argues in Reading for the Plot, narratives engage us in the desires of their characters, which we follow through a trajectory of frustration and fulfillment, propelled by a corresponding passion for knowledge. Among the strongest of those desires, more powerful even than erotic longing or material ambition, is the wish to tell one’s own story, “the more nearly absolute desire to be heard, recognized, listened to” (Brooks 1984: 53), so that narratives often include an account of their own origin in a character’s quest for recognition. But a story like Creusa’s can only be told after a difficult struggle with fear and shame, which have to be overcome before one party in a sexual encounter breaks the bond of silence to reveal what had been a shared and exclusive secret.
dc.identifier.citation“Naming Names, Telling Tales: Sexual Secrets and Greek Narrative,” in Mark Masterson, Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz and James Robson, eds. Sex in Antiquity: Exploring Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient World, London: Routledge, 2014: 260-277.
dc.identifier.urihttps://repository.upenn.edu/handle/20.500.14332/8142
dc.legacy.articleid1091
dc.legacy.fields10.4324/9781315747910
dc.legacy.fulltexturlhttps://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1091&context=classics_papers&unstamped=1
dc.rights<p>Copyright © 2014 Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Reprinted with permission by Routledge. Available from Routledge at: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781315747910">http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781315747910</a>.</p>
dc.source.beginpage260
dc.source.endpage277
dc.source.issue85
dc.source.journalDepartmental Papers (Classical Studies)
dc.source.journaltitleSex in Antiquity: Exploring Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient World
dc.source.statuspublished
dc.subject.otherArts and Humanities
dc.subject.otherClassics
dc.titleNaming Names, Telling Tales: Sexual Secrets and Greek Narrative
dc.typeBook Chapter
digcom.contributor.authorisAuthorOfPublication|email:smurnagh@sas.upenn.edu|institution:University of Pennsylvania|Murnaghan, Sheila
digcom.identifierclassics_papers/85
digcom.identifier.contextkey8933272
digcom.identifier.submissionpathclassics_papers/85
digcom.typechapter
dspace.entity.typePublication
relation.isAuthorOfPublicationb3854a3a-c86f-4dd0-91c0-10632c0dc168
relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscoveryb3854a3a-c86f-4dd0-91c0-10632c0dc168
upenn.schoolDepartmentCenterDepartmental Papers (Classical Studies)
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