Why is it that all men who have become outstai).ding in philosophy, statesmanship, poetry or the arts are melancholic?' This statement, whieh had been ascribed to Aristotle for a long time, can be regarded as the fou ndation of the long-standing cultural history of melancholia. 1 It shows that the phenomenon was regarded as more than an illness already in ancient times. In 350 BC, melancholia is understood as an epiphenomenon of, or even as a prerequisite for, outstanding cultural and political achiev. ements and deep philosophical insight, although Pseudo-Aristotle at the same time acknowledges the pain caused by melancholia. In its interrelated medical and cultural histories, melancholia has maintained such a complex denotation: it has frequently been understood as a painful condition which opens up an avenue to deeper insight, to judiciousness and to creativity. Such a 'nobilitation' constitutes the main difference between melancholia and today's category of depression. Despite the fact that traces of melancholia's history can be found in the current psychiatric definition of depression, the cultural status of the phenomena differ decisively. 2 The 'nobilitation' of melancholia and its association with philosophy, sc1ence and art is emblematically captured in Albrecht Durer's engraving Melencolia I, an image with an immense iconographic influence on later visual representations of melancholia (Fig. 1.1), including Alberto Giacometti's cube that is reproduced on the cover of this book. Here, as elsewhere in the visual arts, the representation of the melancholic makes a psychological state of mind correspond with the outside world; the personification of melancholia is situated in allegorical or symbolic spaces. When studying the history of melancholia from ancient times to today, one is dazzled by the chameleonic changes of melancholia, whose definitions vary decisively in different epochs and cultural contexts. Many epochs have been described as particularly prone to melancholia, including our present day-a diagnosis which concerns literature and the arts as well as literary and cultural theory. Andrew Gibson, for instance, sees the 'contemporary aesthetic realm ... [as] a melancholy space' (136), Juliana Schiesari 1
This article discusses Fémi Òsófisan’s transnational play Tègònni: An African Antigone in the context of other African and European rewritings of Sophocles’ Antigone. The article argues that Òsófisan employs Yoruban ritual for a postcolonial revision of Greek tragedy that constructs an alternative tradition to the Western claim of Antigone as a foundational text of European democratic identity. Through innovative framing and by multiplying the protagonist, the play emphasizes that Sophocles’ Antigone depends on theatrical reincarnations in order to survive. At the same time, the play’s setting in colonial Yorubaland and its cross-racial casting allowed for oblique criticism of the Nigerian leaders of the late 1990s. In contrast to the usual reception of Antigone as a solitary, heroic martyr who scorns her sister’s apolitical cowardice, Òsófisan presents Tègònni’s rebellion as a collective female movement, thus rewriting Ismene’s role. Òsófisan’s portrayal of sisterly solidarity is paralleled in recent feminist readings and literary rewritings of Sophocles’ Antigone which seek to redeem Ismene as a political agent and to explore interpretations beyond the rejection of female commonality that had been taken as typical of Antigone the character and the play itself.
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