Blaming Helen: Beauty
and Desire in Contemporary Literature
by L. Michelle Baker
Literary scholars are
reminded by Umberto Eco’s recent anthology, The
History of Beauty, of the magic, the mystery, and the power of his
subject. It is a reminder for which
contemporary authors have much less need than scholars. For more than thirty years, literary theory
has been dominated by social critics and linguists while questions of the
aesthetic, with which authors are predominately concerned, are often
marginalized. This dissertation will
identify common aesthetic assumptions shared by authors and scholars using one
powerful symbol of beauty and dispute:
Helen of Troy. By analyzing
Helen, the icon of beauty for more than 3,000 years in the Western world, the
dissertation will try to reintroduce into the critical vocabulary the language
of aesthetics and thus suggest new ways of discussing both theory and
literature.
A preliminary survey of approximately 85 literary texts that deal with Helen of Troy and that take beauty as a primary theme indicates that—across genres, languages, and cultures—the works resolve themselves into several distinct categories based upon the aesthetic implications of their treatments of her. All take as their starting point the intersection of the aesthetic ideal with the real impact of beauty, an intersection which theorists frequently deny as an element of a true aesthetic experience. Nine such works, listed in the bibliography as “Primary Texts,” have been chosen as the most obvious or the most complicated treatments of the specific sets of aesthetic assumptions to be examined, although not necessarily as examples of such assumptions. Each of the nine works will be explicated in some detail and treated as test cases within their respective categories.
Given that the postmodern
period is still being defined, the dissertation, rather than applying literary
theory, will attempt to discover it, thereby engaging in a “poetics of
postmodernism.” Linda Hutcheon, who
coined the phrase, argues that such a paradigm “would seek to integrate [theory
and practice] and would organize itself around issues […] which both theory and
art problematize and continually reformulate in paradoxical terms.” She identifies aesthetic theory as one such
issue. The dissertation will therefore
compare aesthetic theories of the postmodern period with symbolic treatments of
Helen to determine areas of overlap and disjunction between theory and
praxis.
Several
critics have grappled with issues symbolized by Helen in classical texts. Linda Clader’s Helen: The Evolution from
Divine to Heroic in Greek Epic Tradition identifies a pre-Homeric legend of
Helen as fertility goddess, relying upon feminist theory for her suppositions,
as any study of Helen must. Norman
Austin works with the eîdolon tradition in Helen
of Troy and Her Shameless Phantom, while Matthew Gumpert discusses the
fundamentally different ways in which she is treated in classical texts in Grafting Helen: The Abduction of the Classical Past. In general terms, these studies concentrate
on Helen as a metaphor for either economic and power relations or as the last
representative of the matriarchy in the Greek world. As opposed to such studies, this dissertation will explore the
classical authors’ uses of Helen as a symbol for beauty and will examine her
appearance in contemporary literature in a detailed and systematic fashion—two
closely related projects which have not been previously undertaken.
Brief Outline
The introduction will establish the place and purpose of myth in postmodern theory and practice as derived from a combined reading of Jung, Hutcheon, and Lyotard. The introduction will also locate the limits of the theoretical range imposed by both the specific symbol of Helen and the understanding of myth in the postmodern period. Each chapter will examine the aesthetic theory stated and/or implied by the symbols, plot, and construction of the selected texts; will place that theory in its historical context; and will examine its relation to germane postmodern literary theories. The conclusion will identify similarities and differences between the aesthetic viewpoints analyzed and will consider the implications of such viewpoints for contemporary practice.
Gorgias, Homer, and Euripides, widely disparate
writers from the classical period, imply through Helen of Troy conceptions of
beauty that reflect artistic assumptions or the attitudes of popular
culture. Such viewpoints differ,
sometimes radically, with the theories of classical philosophers and thus
challenge received critical ideas about beauty. This chapter will reexamine the classical attitude toward beauty
and suggest a broader base of aesthetic thought than has previously been
considered.
Ironically, several
postmodern authors including Hilary Bailey and Yannis Ritsos participate in
what aestheticians such as Elaine Scarry have identified as a denigration and
devaluation of beauty in contemporary culture.
Both Cassandra, Princess of Troy by
Bailey and The Fourth Dimension by
Ritsos claim that Helen is not beautiful or that she should not be valued for
her beauty. Despite these assertions,
Helen still exerts a powerful influence within the texts by virtue of her
physical appearance. A deconstructionist
reading will reveal the irony inherent in denying the power of art’s beauty even
while creating a work of art in which beauty reasserts itself. Such a reading will also identify the
critical assumptions underlying the authors’ denials of beauty’s impact and
will expose the means by which beauty reclaims its place in art and culture.
Chapter 3:
Beauty’s Corruption:
Manipulation and the Troubled Creator
Barry Unsworth, Valerio
Manfredi, and Christa Wolf, like many other postmodern authors, treat language
as an aesthetic system. Such authors,
anxious over the powerful and often destructive results of the manipulation and
creation of aesthetic objects, tend to avoid or expose their own role in the
creative process. In each of these three novels—The Songs of the Kings, the
Talisman of Troy, and Cassandra—symbols and aesthetic objects are distorted
and/or manufactured thereby generating a false aesthetic which, in the action
of the novels, causes a cultural collapse of apocalyptic proportions. This chapter will employ linguistic and
semiotic theory to explore aesthetic generation, manipulation, and revelation
while examining the potentially destructive consequences of each upon a
culture.
Chapter 4:
Beauty’s Cognitive Function:
Essence and Identity
Helen’s numerous
abductions continually place her outside the community and thus align her
character with the marginalized population studied by postcolonial and minority
theorists. These critics, concerned
with identity creation, have largely overlooked beauty’s cognitive function as
a mediator. In such a theory, beauty
creates a desire for “the other,” thereby facilitating personal and cultural
definition. In Howard Barker’s play The Bite of the Night, Mark Merlis’
novel An Arrow’s Flight (or Pyrrhus), and Elizabeth Cook’s short
work of prose Achilles, Helen and
other beautiful outsiders lead a small minority to understanding and acceptance
rather than war and destruction. This
viewpoint represents perhaps the most radical departure in postmodern aesthetic
practice from classical understandings of beauty.
Chapter 5:
Erotic Nation: Beauty and Desire
in Literature and Politics
Derek Walcott’s epic poem Omeros is a major work of the postmodern period that rewrites and
reexamines classical literature. Thus,
his work functions as a test case in which multiple theories are recapitulated
and sometimes synthesized. As Walcott
establishes and questions national identity within the West Indies, he reminds
readers that beauty is an omnipresent factor in the author’s task through the
lush island imagery that pervades the text.
The poem suggests many of the foregoing theories but also complicates
and sometimes rejects them. Walcott has
agreed to be interviewed for the dissertation and will thereby allow actual
commentary to supplement implicit textual assumptions, providing valuable
information on the contemporary author’s theoretical perspective.
NOTE:
“Contemporary” is defined, somewhat artificially, for the purposes of
this work as post-1970. Significant
earlier works from the twentieth century, such as H.D.’s Helen in Egypt or The Private
Life of Helen of Troy by John Erskine, will be treated in footnotes where
appropriate and in an annotated bibliography.
Primary
Texts:
Bailey, Hilary.
Cassandra, Princess of Troy. London:
Jonathan Cape, 1993.
Barker,
Howard. The Bite of the Night: An
Education. First performed London,
Barbican Theatre, 1988. NY: Riverrun Press, 1988.
Cook, Elizabeth. Achilles. NY: Picador, 2001.
Manfredi, Valerio
Massimo. Talisman of Troy.
London: Macmillan, 2004.
Merlis, Mark.
An Arrow’s Flight. NY:
St. Martin’s P, 1998.
Ritsos,
Yannis. The Fourth Dimension: Selected Poems of Yannis Ritsos. Tr. by Peter Green. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993.
Unsworth, Barry. The Songs of the Kings. NY: Doubleday, 2003.
Walcott, Derek.
Omeros. NY:
Farrar, Straus, 1990.
Wolf,
Christa. Cassandra: A Novel and Four
Essays. Tr. by Jan van Heurck.
NY: Farrar, Straus, 1984.
Secondary Texts:
Austin,
(John) Norman. Helen of Troy and Her Shameless Phantom. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell UP, 1994.
Clader,
Linda Lee. Helen : The Evolution From Divine to Heroic in Greek Epic
Tradition. Lugduni Batavorum:
Brill, 1976.
Gumpert,
Matthew. Grafting Helen: The Abduction
of the Classical Past. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2001.
Meagher,
Robert E. Helen: Myth, Legend, and the
Culture of Misogyny. NY: Continuum Pub, 1995.
Suzuki,
Mihoko. Metamorphoses of Helen:
Authority, Difference and the Epic.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP,
1989.
Methodology:
Adorno,
Theodor W. Aesthetic Theory.
Minneapolis, MN: U of MN P,
1997.
Cassirer, Ernst.
The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms,
II: Mythical Thought. New Haven:
Yale UP, 1953.
Eagleton,
Terry. The Ideology of the Aesthetic.
Cambridge: Blackwell, 1990.
Eliade,
Mircea. Myth and Reality. Tr.
Willard R. Task. NY: Harper and Row, 1963.
Frye, Northrop.
Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1957.
Hutcheon, Linda.
A Poetics of Postmodernism. NY:
Routledge, 1988.
Jung,
C.G. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. 1959.
Tr. R.F.C. Hull in The Collected
Works of C. G. Jung. NY: Pantheon,
1969.
Kant,
Immanuel. Critique of Judgment. Tr. and
intro by J.H. Bernard. NY: Hafner Publishing Co, 1951.
McHale, Brian.
Postmodernist Fiction. NY:
Methuen, 1987.
Scarry, Elaine.
On Beauty and Being Just. Princeton:
Princeton UP, 1999.
Schiller,
Freidrich. Essays and Letters. Tr. A.
Lodge, E.B. Eastwick and A.J.W. Morrison.
London: The Anthological
Society, 1901.
Tatarkiewicz,
Wladyslaw. History of Aesthetics. 3
vols. Ed. J. Harrell. Tr. Adam and Ann Czerniawski. The Hague:
Mouton, 1970.
Wolf,
Naomi. The Beauty Myth: How Images of
Beauty are Used Against Women.
London: Vintage, 1991.