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Subversion by Sound Sophocles Electra. Translated by Anne Carson. Oxford US $10.95
In "The Gender of Sound" an essay from Glass, Irony and God, Anne Carson provides a list of the "many female celebrities of classical mythology, literature, and cult [who] make themselves objectionable by the way they use their voice." Carson's abbreviated list balances the dangerous erotic persuasions of the Sirens, Helen, or Aphrodite with the hunting "hullaballoo" of Artemis, the Gorgon, and "the Furies whose highpitched and horrendous voices are compared by Aiskhylos to howling dogs or sounds of people being tortured in hell (Eumenides)" Based on Carson's foreword to her translation of Sophocles, Electra should make the list. Her defining characteristic is screaming: "Sophocles has invented for her a language of lament that is like listening to an X-ray. Electra's cries are just bones of sound." In the terms of "The Gender of Sound," she epitomizes "Woman...