Intersectional Inferiorities: Explorations of the Intersectional in Euripidean and Ovidian poetry

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Previous scholarship abundantly examined how Euripidean tragedies challenge established hierarchies, yet did not examine their intersection. For instance, Goff separately analyses the thematic focuses in 'Trojan Women' on class, race, and gender (Goff 2009), yet refuses to investigate the thematic interconnection. While Allan rightly notices that the comparison between Andromache and Hermione in 'Andromache' is articulated with regard to their gender, and that it is further complicated by the recurrent discussion on what being barbarian means (Allan 2000), he does not proceed to unravel such complication. Following Roselli (2007), who provides a partial approach to intersectionality by investigating the overlap of gender and class in Euripides, I propose to investigate the intersection of these issues in 'Andromache', 'Trojan Women', 'Hecuba', and 'Bacchae', also including understudied, fragmentary plays of Euripides such as 'Andromeda' and 'Hypsipyle'. By separately analysing single hierarchies, scholarship, I argue, risks offering only a partial reading of these tragedies, especially those where all three hierarchical discourses simultaneously figure as crucial and underlying themes. I ask why this intersection appears to recur in Euripides' characters; if there is any such a thing as an awareness of how hierarchies intersect to create layers of oppression or foster solidarity between the oppressed; if intersectionality entails implications for the interplay of sameness and difference often noticed in Euripidean drama (Goldhill 1988); if, as it is currently happening in modern social theory, exploring intersected hierarchies rather than one at a time can 'broaden and deepen understandings of human life and behaviour' (Hill-Collins, Bilge 2020). Given the frequently noticed interrelation between Euripidean and Ovidian poetry, it will be of interest to analyse how Ovid handles Euripidean intersectional hierarchies. His 'Heroides' furnish a tantalising parallel to Euripides both because of their thematic affinities and because they give these 'inferior' characters a chance to speak (Curley 2013). I am minded to analyse how Ovid exploits the affinity between the tragic code and the elegiac one, specifically for their shared simultaneous exploration of gender, class, and race. The comparison of Euripides and Ovid necessarily responds to the final plea of Matzner to extend the intersectional analysis of the 'weaker voice' to literature other than Latin (Matzner 2018) to identify structural peculiarities of literary intersectionality. In fact, the ultimate aim of my doctoral research consists in entertaining whether a literary theory of intersectionality could be formulated at all in its application to classical texts and shed light on the partiality of previous feminist, post-colonialist, and Marxist literary approaches.My research then promises to have a significant impact not only on classical studies, but also on literary theory, and to stand in a relationship of mutual support with social sciences. The relationship I envision between my research and social sciences is one of mutual enrichment and reciprocal insight. I ask, for instance, whether intersections of gender, class, and race are further complicated by the addition of other hierarchies. Asking this means progressing along with social sciences, for the breadth of 'intersection' is one of the crucial issues in contemporary studies of intersectionality (Lutz 2015; Ludvig 2006). Because of the fundamentally interdisciplinary nature of my research, I am determined to make great use of the resources provided by TORCH, specifically through the Intersectional Humanities Programme. Through the broad range of critical conversations it promotes, both within and outside academia, Intersectional Humanities constitutes support for the development of my doctoral research that is globally unparalleled.