ABSTRACT
The story of the representation of masculinity does not, of course, end with the Greeks. But for someone who writes and teaches in a Department of English, as I do, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the Greeks uncovered the issues so lucidly, and unforgettably, that later literatures have done no more than follow in their wake – though employing the terms and vocabularies of their own day. Perhaps the one thing the modern stage can pride itself on is having put an end to the automatic prestige of masculinity, and having knocked the warrior-hero off his pedestal. But even here, where we might seem most anti-classical, doubts arise: for the scepticism and satirical habits that are characteristic of our democracy were once considered characteristic of democratic Athens, too. Can a case be made out for claiming that heroism was never an unproblematic quantity in drama from the first? This chapter borrows classical spectacles to look again at modern representations of the hero, and ends by looking at classic representations (of Agamemnon, Pentheus and Oidipous) through modern ones. Is the ‘heroic’ intrinsically elusive, like the Golden Age of pastoral – always located in the distant past, never actually to be found in the present?
