Perhaps of interest.
Best,
Roberto
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From: Bryn Mawr Classical Review <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 9:14 AM
Subject: BMCR 2012.01.35: Brown on Monrós Gaspar, Reece, Cassandra
Laura Monrós Gaspar, Robert Reece, Cassandra, the Fortune-teller:
Prophets, Gipsies and Victorian Burlesque. le Rane. Studi, 56. Bari:
Levante editori, 2011. Pp. 330. ISBN 9788879495752. €35.00 (pb).
Reviewed by Joanna Brown, University of Reading ([log in to unmask])
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[Table of Contents listed below.]
The Trojan princess Cassandra remains a haunting figure in the cultural
imagination, being most recently
reinterpreted by novelists Christa Wolf in Cassandra (1984) and Marion
Zimmer Bradley in The
Firebrand (1988). In her mythical personae as unheeded prophetess,
madwoman, and victim of Apollo,
Cassandra is a powerful symbol of the silenced woman, or the abuse
survivor whose attacker accurately predicts that
she will not be believed. In an impressive chronological span, Laura
Monrós Gaspar explores Cassandra’s previous
incarnations in English literature from the Renaissance to the
Victorian era, concluding with Robert Reece’s 1868
burlesque, Agamemnon and Cassandra. Recent scholarship has noted that
most of the dramatic texts in
which Cassandra appeared have since been ‘forgotten’ (Grafton, Most and
Settis 2010: 176), a failure of memory that
Monrós Gaspar seeks to rectify.
In her preface, Monrós Gaspar places her work in the context of recent
studies of Victorian classical and burlesque
theatre (such as Eltis 2004, Macintosh 2000, Hall 1999), trends in the
theory of classical reception (Martindale and
Thomas 2006) and research on the reception of Cassandra in particular
(Mazzoldi 2001, Neblung 1997). Monrós
Gaspar describes her research as ‘unveiling [the] cultural processes’
behind the refigurations of this myth, focussing
on ‘the semiotic dialogue between art and reality.’ Accordingly, Monrós
Gaspar conceptualises a break between the
realm of art and that of reality, and regards burlesque ‘as a
refracting and a reflecting mirror’ of Victorian ideals and
preoccupations.
In her Introduction, Monrós Gaspar sketches a reception history of the
figure of Cassandra from the Middle Ages to
the seventeenth century. She locates figurations of Cassandra as
belonging to a collection of images of females
‘conceived by the anxieties of patriarchal society’ (21). From the
beginning, then, Monrós Gaspar utilises the term
‘patriarchal’ as an analytical tool, one which has provoked much
dissent within studies of feminist historiography
(Morgan 2006). Monrós Gaspar seems to use the term as a convenient
shorthand to denote features common to the
male-dominated societies in which the Cassandra myth was created and
refigured. She surveys the ancient literature
in which Cassandra appears, drawing attention to the emphases on her
beauty (in the Iliad, Virgil, Ovid and
Ionnes Malalas), on her ‘mad’ look and visions (in Dares of Phrygia,
Tzetzes and Ennius) and on the physical effects
of prophecy on Cassandra’s body (Aischylos, Euripides, Seneca). It is
these ancient descriptions of her marginal
knowledge and dramatic visions, Monrós Gaspar argues, that set the
scene for her nineteenth-century appearance as
a gypsy, witch, and fortune-teller. The Cassandra of the Middle Ages,
as seen in Chaucer, she asserts, consists of
‘the conceptualisation of unorthodox access to knowledge,’ (30) while
in the sixteenth century she was associated
with contemporary heretics and prophets. As the century matured,
emphasis came to rest on Cassandra as a cunning
enchantress, in line with the seventeenth-century peak in belief in
witchcraft.
Chapter One focuses on the way in which nineteenth century translations
of Aischylos’ Agamemnon and
Homer’s Iliad ‘foreshadow popular reworkings of Cassandra’ (60). Noting
that translations of these texts
served as the ‘cultural models’ through which refigurations of myth
could be conceived, Monrós Gaspar draws
attention to the use of pejorative terms used in the translations of
Cassandra episodes. Looking at three popular and
influential translations of Agamemnon by William Sewell, Hart Milman
and Anna Swanwick, Monrós Gaspar
analyses the vocabulary choices made by the translators to render the
words such as pseudomantis and
thurokopos, which Cassandra says are insults used against her by the
Trojans in the Agamemnon
(1194-5, 1269-74). Overall, Monrós Gaspar concludes that these
translators utilise words which ‘attempt to depict
sage women with images related to the peripheral elements of society.’
The second half of the chapter concentrates
on the translation of Cassandra’s appearance in the Iliad. Monrós
Gaspar notes the general familiarity with
excerpts from the Iliad (24: 699-708) appearing in translation, and
alluded to in street fairs, penny books
and burlesques. Here she argues that, in the episode in which Cassandra
announces the return of Hektor’s body to
Troy, the translations of kokosen and gegone connect Iliadic myth with
dramatic gestures seen in
Victorian melodramas and burlesques. Kokosen, for example, was
translated as ‘shriek,’ a word which held
particular associations for Victorians with women, madness and
hysteria.
Chapter Two discusses the general appearance of Cassandra in the
nineteenth century, placing her in the context of
the contemporary renaissance of the occult and the trend for works of
‘social prophecy.’ Monrós Gaspar argues that
the nineteenth-century Cassandra marked a turning point from the
eighteenth-century theatrical portrayal of her as
a victim to be pitied, experiencing not madness but grief. By the
mid-nineteenth century, Monrós Gaspar suggests,
Cassandra had come to be associated with figures who had ‘marginal
access to culture,’ such as women, prophets,
gypsies and fortune-tellers. Mid- to late- century Cassandras were
based upon pejorative female types, in part of a
reaction to the 1857 Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act, which made
divorce easier for women to access. Monrós
Gaspar draws on visual representations of Cassandra, noting that
Rossetti’s 1870 Cassandra aligned the
prophetess with pre-Raphaelite ‘fallen’ women and that artists
expressed Cassandra’s rage through depictions of her
unbound hair. In the final section, Monrós Gaspar draws together the
themes of Victorian sage writing and
figurations of prophetesses, gypsies and fortune-tellers in popular
Victorian culture. She notes that gypsies were
treated as anthropological subjects in periodicals, and that, like
Cassandra, gypsies ‘are peripheral figures who stray
from the paths of conventional and mainstream access to and possession
of knowledge’ (116). While these peripheral
characters are heroic when male (as in the works of Carlisle), they are
malevolent when female.
Chapter Three traces the evolution of Cassandra from the virtuous sage
in the eighteenth century to the mad
fortune-teller in the nineteenth, focussing on Cassandra’s appearances
in comic theatre. She notes that Victorian
burlesque grew out of eighteenth-century street entertainments which
often used classical mythology to amuse a
popular audience. The first comic Cassandras appear in the eighteenth
century, as well as ‘sentimental Cassandras in
high brow entertainment’ (130). In the early eighteenth century,
Cassandra is depicted as a mournful victim, far from
the mad Victorian figure. However, it was in the mid-century that
Cassandra was first connected with peripheral
figures such as gypsies. In an 1819 play, produced at the time when
Queen Caroline was being divorced for adultery,
Cassandra criticises Paris and Helen for their adulterous behaviour
and portrays Paris as a dandy. However, despite
her overt moralising, hints are made towards the prophetess’s madness,
which Monrós Gaspar argues ‘foreshadows’
Reece’s burlesque treatment of her. From her image as moral sage in
1819, Cassandra morphs into a frenzied
‘shrew’ taking vengeance on Clytaimnestra in 1868.
Chapter Four is a close reading of Robert Reece’s 1868 burlesque,
Agamemnon and Cassandra, which acts
as the teleological focal point for the book. Monrós Gaspar remarks
upon Reece’s contribution to the genre of
burlesque, and situates his Agamemnon within the context of the debates
of the 1850s and 1860s about the
‘strong-minded woman’ and divorce. She cites the play as the first to
treat Cassandra as a three-dimensional
character and argues that ‘the ambivalence of burlesque favours a comic
Cassandra which both perpetuates and
departs from the Greek prototypes, reimagining the signs within an
ideological context in which her predictions are
believed’ (158). Cassandra in her speeches directly associates herself
with nineteenth-century fortune-telling
almanacs, which Victorians ‘rejected as well as demanded’ (191). The
craze for fortune-telling represented ‘the social
recognition of peripheral knowledge’ (191). In Reece’s burlesque, then,
Cassandra is rejected as well as heeded, and
the ambivalence of the genre towards intellectual models and marginal
knowledge allows it to associate Cassandra
both with the ugly and vengeful Furies, and with the revelation of
truth. While revealing the plot to kill Agamemnon,
and crafting Clytaimnestra’s exposure in a dramatic and clever way, she
remains ambivalent. Clytaimnestra is
portrayed rather as a soulless and calculating murderer without the
mitigating factor of a sacrificed daughter, ruling
over the henpecked Aigisthos. The play, Monrós Gaspar suggests,
constructs two approaches to the figure of the
New Woman in Clytaimnestra and Cassandra. Monrós Gaspar locates
burlesque questioning of women’s roles beside
the use of the figure of Cassandra as the paradigmatic silenced woman
by Margaret Fuller and Florence Nightingale
(see also Monrós Gaspar 2007).
Despite continuities in the portrayal of the Trojan princess between
Reece and earlier treatments, Monrós Gaspar
argues that there is a substantial gap between them. Agamemnon and
Cassandra coincides temporally with
feminist upheaval, and ‘[b]urlesque offered Victorian audiences a
cathartic mirror where social stereotypes were
decoded for laughter’ (202). Concluding, Monrós Gaspar suggests that
Victorian refigurations of Cassandra include
the juxtaposition of Cassandra as the false prophet with her as the
wise and heeded; she is ambivalently presented
between conservative fears of women’s education with the Victorian
craze for peripheral prophetic figures. It was the
‘ambivalence’ of burlesque, Monrós Gaspar concludes, that allowed for
the ‘coexistence of opposing refigurations of
the myth and staged both a scorned and a strong-minded heroine’ (205).
Monrós Gaspar’s book ends with illustrations of Cassandra and of
gypsies in ethnographic articles and usefully
reproduces the entire script of Reece’s Agamemnon, a play which would
otherwise be difficult for her
readers to access.
Monrós Gaspar’s volume is an extremely valuable contribution to
nineteenth-century social history, women’s history
and classical reception studies, drawing attention to non-elite and
neglected texts while drawing on recent rich
studies of classics and Victorian popular culture. Monrós Gaspar
surveys and analyses an impressive range of
material, both textual and visual, and throws a light upon the
reception of a deeply evocative and ambivalent
classical figure. The focus on Reece’s play as the culminating point of
the work is suggestive of an evolutionary
process through which Cassandra ‘becomes’ the heeded New Woman of 1868.
While this highlights nicely the ways in
which aspects of Cassandra’s presentation in previous contexts
contribute to Reece’s portrait, it does run the risk of
presenting a single, developing Cassandra rather than multiple
Cassandras. Also notable and evocative is Monrós
Gaspar’s use of terms such as ‘anticipating’ and ‘foreshadowing’, in
places where she suggests that certain
representational aspects of Cassandra provide clues towards her future.
These phrases harmonise with the theme of
the second-sighted Cassandra, bringing the marginalised prophetess’s
vision to bear in Monrós Gaspar’s text.
Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Cassandras are themselves prophecies
of Cassandras yet to be realised in the
classical tradition. Monrós Gaspar’s book adeptly illustrates the ways
in which mythical figures are refigured and
reproduced through layers of text and spectacle and brings a marginal
classical figure in equally marginal popular
texts into the limelight. Monrós Gaspar centralises Cassandra in
classical discourse, reinvoking an evocative
marginalised figure who continues to be a source of female
identification.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements 9
Preface 11
Introduction: Cassandra from Homer to the 1600s 21
Chapter 1: Cassandra and the Classics in Translation(1820-1868) 59
1.1. Knowledge, Witchcraft and Fortune-telling: Aeschylus’ Agamemnon 61
1.2. Images of the Voice: Cassandra in Homer’s Iliad 76
1.3. Other Sources 84
Chapter 2: Nineteenth-Century Cassandra 89
2.1. Gestures, Movements and Attitudes 90
2.2. Prophets, Gipsies and Fortune-Tellers 107
Chapter 3: Comic Cassandra (1707-1854) 125
3.1. Eighteenth-century Comic Street Theatre 128
3.2. Cassandra and the Equestrian Burlesque (1819-1854) 139
Chapter 4: Cassandra, Robert Reece and the heyday of burlesque 157
4.1. Robert Reece and Burlesque 158
4.2 Agamemnon and Cassandra or the Prophet and Loss of Troy (1868) 171
4.2.1. The Liverpool Scene 171
4.2.2. Textual Sources: An ‘Intertextual Extravaganza’ 180
4.2.3. Cassandra: a Witch, a Fortune-Teller and a New Woman 186
Appendix I: Illustrations 205
Appendix II: List of Modern Cassandras 221
Appendix III: Agamemnon and Cassandra, or; the Prophet and Loss of Troy
225
References 287
Index 319
Bibliography
Bradley, M. Z. 1988The Firebrand. Michael Joseph, London
Eltis, S. 2004 ‘The Fallen Woman on Stage: Maidens, Magdalens and the
Emancipated Female’ in K. Powell ed.
The Cambridge Companion to Victorian and Edwardian Theatre. Cambridge,
CUP: 222-36
Grafton, A., G. W. Most and S. Settis eds. 2010 The Classical
Tradition. Cambridge MA, London: Harvard
Hall, E. 1999 ‘Classical Mythology in the Victorian Popular Theatre’
International Journal of the Classical
Tradition, 5: 336-66
Hall, E., F. Macintosh and O. Taplin eds. 2000. Medea in Performance
1500-2000. Oxford, OUP
Macintosh, F. 2000 ‘Medea Transposed: Burlesque and Gender on the
Mid-Victorian Stage’ in E. Hall, F.
Macintosh and O. Taplin 2000: 74-99
Martindale, C. and R. Thomas eds. 2006 Classics and the Uses of
Reception. Blackwell, Oxford
Mazzoldi, S. 2001 Cassandra, la vergine e l’indovina. Identita di un
personaggio da Omero all’Ellenismo.
Pisa
Monrós Gaspar, L. 2007 ‘The Voice of Cassandra: Florence Nightingale's
Cassandra (1852) and the
Victorian Woman’ New Voices in Classical Reception Studies Vol. 3:
61-76
Morgan, S. 2006 The Feminist History Reader. Routledge, Abingdon
Neblung, D. 1997 Der Gestalt der Kassandra in der antiken Literatur.
Stuttgart and Leipzig
Wolf, C. trans. Jan van Heiurk 1984 Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays.
Virago, London
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