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The Hurford Center’s 2017 Mellon Symposium “Songs for the Dead: Cross-
Cultural Perspectives on Lament and Elegy”
24
th
March 2017, Haverford College, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
Oliver Hughes, Maria Mitiuriev and Katelyn St. Onge, Haverford
College
The
Hurford
Center’s
2017
Mellon
Symposium “Songs for the Dead: Cross-
Cultural Perspectives on Lament and Elegy”
was held on March 24
th
at Haverford College
in Haverford, Pennsylvania. Six speakers took
turns giving forty-five minute talks on the
concept and practice of lament across a variety
of cultural experiences and interpretive angles,
addressing ancient and modern Greek, Old
Irish, Old Norse, and Finnic traditions. The
event was organized by Kristen Mills, Visiting
Assistant Professor of English at Haverford
College.
The symposium began on the morning of
Friday the 24
th
with introductory remarks by
Mills welcoming the speakers. The floor then
went to Casey Dué (University of Houston),
presenting on the topic “Mourning Achilles:
Achilles and the Captive Woman’s Lament in
Iliad 19”. Dué offered a compelling
interpretation of Achilles’ grief in the
Iliad,
which she noted was strikingly similar to that
of the women of Troy and captive woman
generally in Greek literary tradition. In
particular, Dué drew parallels between
Achilles’ mourning for the fallen Patroclus and
both Andromache’s lament for Hector and
Briseis’ grief in captivity. Dué argued that
Achilles mourns in the style of traditional
female laments not because he is feminized in
the epic, but because, as the warrior with by far
the greatest
kleos [‘glory’], he must likewise
possess the most profound grief (
akhos), which
tellingly may be the root of the name Achilles
itself. The grief of the Trojan women, Dué
asserted, came to represent the epitome of
suffering and loss to the Greeks, and so it is this
to which Achilles’ sorrow must be likened.
Thus Homer’s epic poetry both celebrates
heroes and mourns them, and for the greatest
of all heroes, only the heights of both glory and
grief are appropriate.
The next speaker was Gail Holst-Warhaft
(Cornell
University),
who
spoke
on
“Containing Passion: The Structuring of Grief
in Greek Lament”. Holst-Warhaft began with
an argument which she openly acknowledged
to be controversial: that lament in Greek
society was and is not intended as a form of
consolation or therapy for the living, nor was it
an uncontrolled and spontaneous display of
emotion. Rather, she argued, Greek lament was
practiced primarily for the sake of society, in
order to properly conclude the life of one of its
deceased members and so enable the rest to
continue on. Lamenters thus served as
intermediaries between the worlds of the living
and the dead, a potentially polluting role. For
this reason, lamenters were most often
professionals, drawn from the less than
respectable outskirts of society. Additionally,
professionals were considered fitter than
relatives to perform laments because they were
less likely than relatives to be overcome by
emotion, a critical point. As Holst-Warhaft
made clear, Greek lament was highly ritualized
and focused on the containment of emotion,
not indulgence in it. Indeed, excessive emotion
could present a grave danger to the lamenters
and trap them permanently in the world of the
dead. All the more so for its controversy,
Holst-Warhaft’s argument was a riveting and
compelling piece.
After the first session of the symposium, the
presenters and audience members alike took a
brief break before the symposium resumed.
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