Dangerous Voices Women's Laments and Greek Literature

From the sixth century onward, legislation was introduced in Athens and a number of the advanced city states which restricted mourning the dead, particularly women's laments. "Dangerous Voices investigates the threat which mourning posed to the society and the way in which the state attempted to subdue and subvert laments.
"Dangerous Voices suggests that the loss of the traditional lament in Greece and other countries deprived women of their traditional control over the rituals of death and left them without a language to address the dead.
An investigation of laments from New Guinea to Greece suggests that they are essentially a female art form, one that gives women considerable power over the rituals of death. Women's prominence in the death rituals and their use of the public forum of the funeral to express grief and anger presented a powerful challenge to established social order. The state's need to raise a standing army meant that death in war hadto be glorified, not lamented. At the same time, the existence of official law courts discouraged the cycle of private retribution which was inflamed by laments.

In Dangerous Voices Holst-Warhaft investigates the power and meaning of the ancient lament, especially women's mourning of the dead, and sets out to discover why legislation was introduced to curb these laments in antiquity. An investigation of laments ranging from New Guinea to Greece suggests that this essentially female art form gave women considerable power over the rituals of death. The threat they posed to the Greek state caused them to be appropriated by male writers including the tragedians. Holst-Warhaft argues that the loss of the traditional lament in Greece and other countries not only deprives women of their traditional control over the rituals of death but leaves all mourners impoverished.

Acknowledgements, A note on transliteration and translation, Introduction: Dangerous voices: women’s laments and Greek literature, 1. Death, tears and ideas: lament in cross-cultural perspective, 2. The painful art: women’s laments for the dead in rural Greece, 3. The politics of revenge in the laments of Inner Mani: duty, honour and poisoned eggs, 4. Mourning in a man’s world: the Epitaphios Logos and the banning of laments in fifth-century Athens, 5. From the Erinyes to the Eumenides: tragedy and the taming of lament, 6. Epitaphs and photographs: laments in modern Greek literature, Notes, Bibliography, Index

Gail Holst-Warhaft