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THE DISPLAY OF THE CORPSE A perfect example is the exhibition of the corpse, which is both a primary feature of tragic representation and “an eminently ritual act.” The display (prothesis) of the corpse “[reproducing] a religious practice familiar to the audience,” would allow the spectators to recognize a ritualized reality within the disturbing displacement of the familiar in tragedy. A similar analysis can be made of the mourning song scenes, which many scholars view as faithful reproductions of shared social experiences for the audience. It has thus been suggested that “these acts of funereal piety, [although] integrated in the dramatic fabric at different levels of formalization, [. . .] all exercise the same function: that of bringing the audience back from the disquieting anomaly of tragic violence to the framework of known and hence reassuring religious practice. By relieving the paralysis of grief through phonic and mimetic means, lamentation becomes, even in theatrical representation, an element that compensates for afflictions; it corrects emotion through rigorously defined institutional forms of expression.” Let us agree that lamentation, as a social practice—in his study on lamentation in tragedy, Ernesto De Martino would call it a ritual—relieves suffering and redirects the excess, to honor a term from Herodotus and Sophocles, toward codified songs and acts. This normative and reassuring representation of society as a functional site of all balance in very widely shared. I doubt, however, that it is relevant to an understanding of the tragic genre. For even we were to assume—and this is far from being established—that a social institution could be portrayed on stage without too many modifications that would affect its meaning, we cannot assume that simply recognizing it for what it is in everyday life means that it will have the same effect upon the audience. Moreover, we would have to distinguish between the effect that the portrayal of an institution exercises, within the plot, on the agents of the drama, and the feeling of relief that the audience is supposed to feel—relief at having recognized the familiar, but also it seems, closely linked to this, the calm that is almost automatically brought about the performance of the kommos, the funeral song, even one performed in the theater.
The point is that theater is about theater. That is precisely, in my view, the principal objection one can make about such a construct. Theater is mimesis; no doubt there will be some disagreement about whether, by that very token, it is imitation or representation; it nevertheless remains something other than the thing itself. Theater in this case is something other than a real prothesis or a real kommos.
THE MOURNING VOICE
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THE DISPLAY OF THE CORPSE A perfect example is the exhibition of the corpse, which is both a primary feature of tragic representation and “an eminently ritual act.” The display (prothesis) of the corpse “[reproducing] a religious practice familiar to the audience,” would allow the spectators to recognize a ritualized reality within the disturbing displacement of the familiar in tragedy. A similar analysis can be made of the mourning song scenes, which many scholars view as faithful reproductions of shared social experiences for the audience. It has thus been suggested that “these acts of funereal piety, [although] integrated in the dramatic fabric at different levels of formalization, [. . .] all exercise the same function: that of bringing the audience back from the disquieting anomaly of tragic violence to the framework of known and hence reassuring religious practice. By relieving the paralysis of grief through phonic and mimetic means, lamentation becomes, even in theatrical representation, an element that compensates for afflictions; it corrects emotion through rigorously defined institutional forms of expression.” Let us agree that lamentation, as a social practice—in his study on lamentation in tragedy, Ernesto De Martino would call it a ritual—relieves suffering and redirects the excess, to honor a term from Herodotus and Sophocles, toward codified songs and acts. This normative and reassuring representation of society as a functional site of all balance in very widely shared. I doubt, however, that it is relevant to an understanding of the tragic genre. For even we were to assume—and this is far from being established—that a social institution could be portrayed on stage without too many modifications that would affect its meaning, we cannot assume that simply recognizing it for what it is in everyday life means that it will have the same effect upon the audience. Moreover, we would have to distinguish between the effect that the portrayal of an institution exercises, within the plot, on the agents of the drama, and the feeling of relief that the audience is supposed to feel—relief at having recognized the familiar, but also it seems, closely linked to this, the calm that is almost automatically brought about the performance of the kommos, the funeral song, even one performed in the theater.
The point is that theater is about theater. That is precisely, in my view, the principal objection one can make about such a construct. Theater is mimesis; no doubt there will be some disagreement about whether, by that very token, it is imitation or representation; it nevertheless remains something other than the thing itself. Theater in this case is something other than a real prothesis or a real kommos.
THE MOURNING VOICE
INSERT EXAMPLES OF EKKYKLEMA
