This article summarizes the ndings of an unpublished PhD dissertation, "The Form of Lament in Greek Tragedy" by E. Wright, which provide for the rst time objective criteria for identi cation of lamentation in tragedy. It applies these criteria to the Trojan Women, and argues, on the basis of metrical and stylistic devices, that virtually every scene in the Trojan Women shows the characteristics of lament. The play is, from both the minute technical, and the overall structural, point of view, a lament. This provides explanations for some of the long-standing critical issues of the play, e.g., no unity, no plot, an ill-conceived prologue. The article then considers also how the Trojan Women ts into current discussions of lament as a gendered genre. It replies especially to work on the development of 5th-century Athenian attitudes towards female lament, in which a pattern of increased criticism and restriction, it is argued, is re ected in the changing treatment of lament in Athenian tragedy. The treatment of lament in the Trojan Women does not conform to this perceived development. This suggests that there were still a variety of attitudes current and in uential in late 5th-century Athens towards female lamentation. This essay has two purposes: rst, to oVer an answer to what seems the eternal question of the unity, or lack of unity, or irrelevance of the lack of unity, of Euripides' Trojan Women, and second, to investigate the nature and implications of Euripides' use of lament in the Trojan Women in the context of current discussions of lament as a gendered voice. The play's laments have so far been studied only individually; 1 ) the formal structure of lament itself has not been seen as the model for the structure of the whole play.
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