Nicole Loraux (; 26 April 1943 â 6 April 2003) was a French historian of classical Athens.
Biography
Loraux was born in Paris and died in Argenteuil. She graduated in Classics at the ÃÂcole normale supérieure des filles (1962). In 1965, she obtained the agrégation de lettres classiques (examination equivalent to the Postgraduate Higher Education Teaching Certificate, but more competitive), before writing a PhD thesis under the supervision of Pierre Vidal-Naquet.
Her doctoral thesis Athènes imaginaire. Histoire de l'oraison funèbre athénienne et de sa fonction dans la cité classique (1977) became Loraux's best known work, The Invention of Athens: the Funeral Oration in the Classical City (Cambridge, MA 1986; New York 2006; orig. fr. Paris 1981).
Loraux was influential in the rise of gender as an important category of analysis in ancient Greek history. She has been described as a "preeminent" structuralist historian. In 2007, a conference was held in Paris to explore Loraux's legacy in feminist and classical scholarship. In 2018, a conference in Strasbourg entitled 'The Athenian Funeral Oration: 40 Years after Nicole Loraux' paid homage to the "huge impact" of Loraux's work on our understanding of the funeral oration's "central part in maintaining Athenian self-identity".
Publications
- La Tragédie dâÂÂAthènes. La politique entre lâÂÂombre et lâÂÂutopie, Seuil, 2005
- La Cité divisée. LâÂÂoubli dans la mémoire dâÂÂAthènes, Paris, Payot, <abbr>coll.</abbr> ë Petite Bibliothèque Payot û, 2005
- (dir.), (<abbr>it</abbr>) Grecia al femminile, Roma-Bari, Gius. Laterza & Figli, 1993; (<abbr>fr</abbr>) La Grèce au féminin, traduction française des articles en italien par Hélène Monsacré, Belles Lettres, <abbr>coll.</abbr> ë Histoire û, 2003
- avec Carles Miralles (dir.), Figures de lâÂÂintellectuel en Grèce ancienne, Belin, 2000
- La Voix endeuillée. Essai sur la tragédie grecque, Gallimard, 1999
- Né de la terre. Mythe et politique àAthènes, Paris, Seuil, <abbr>coll.</abbr> ë La Librairie du <abbr>xx<sup>e</sup></abbr> siècleû, 1996
- La Cité divisée. Critique de la politique, Payot, 1997
- LâÂÂInvention dâÂÂAthènes. Histoire de lâÂÂoraison funèbre dans la ë cité classique û, Paris/La Haye, <abbr>éd.</abbr> de lâÂÂEHESS/Mouton, 1981; nouvelle éd., nouvelle préface, Payot, 1993
- QuâÂÂest-ce quâÂÂune déesse dans Histoire des femmes en Occident I, Plon, 1991
- Les Enfants dâÂÂAthéna. Idées athéniennes sur la citoyenneté et la division des sexes, Paris, Maspero, 1981 ; <abbr>éd.</abbr> augmentée d'une postface, Seuil, <abbr>coll.</abbr> ë Points/Essais û, 1990
- Les Mères en deuil, Paris, Seuil, 1990
- Les Expériences de Tirésias. Le féminin et lâÂÂhomme grec, Paris, Gallimard, NRF Essais, 1990
- Façons tragiques de tuer une femme, Paris, Hachette, 1985
English translations
- The invention of Athens: the funeral oration in the classical city, New York, Zone Books, 2006 ; Cambridge, M.A., Harvard University Press, 1986
- The divided city: on memory and forgetting in ancient Athens, New York, Zone Books, 2002
- The mourning voice: an essay on Greek tragedy, Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University Press, 2002 .
- Born of the earth: myth and politics in Athens, Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University Press, 2000
- Mothers in mourning: with the essay, Of amnesty and its opposite, Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University Press, 1998
- The experiences of Tiresias: the feminine and the Greek man, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1995
- The children of Athena: Athenian ideas about citizenship and the division between the sexes, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1993
- âÂÂWhat is a Goddess?â in A History of Women, Volume I: From Ancient Goddesses to Christian Saints, ed. Pauline Schmitt Pantel, Cambridge, M.A., Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992, 11âÂÂ44, orig. it. Roma-Bari 1990
- Tragic ways of killing a woman, Cambridge, M.A., Harvard University Press, 1987
References