Christa Wolf's Kassandra: reinterpretations of the myth

Date
1987
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
The mythological figure of Cassandra is primarily known [<Jr her prophecies, which were doomed to disbelief. She has become a symbol for those who are foresee a bleak future that their contemporaries fail to see. Christa Wolf became fascinated with this somewhat neglected character by reading Aeschylus and journeying to Greece. Her curiosity about how a woman like Cassandra might have lived, and about a possible cause of the destruction of Troy, led her to write a story about this prophet's life. Wolf reinterprets what has been passed on through mythology by putting it into a present context. She examines the fall of Troy, the role of women in soci??tj, the manner of thinking that presumably gave rise to patriarchy and is responsible for war from that time to the present, by exploring Cassandra's life. The process of development and maturation that she undergoes is similar to that of the protagonist of the Bildungsroman. The perspective presented is new; it represents a first person account of the prophet's life, which necessarily provides the reader with a female point of view. Within this context, the problem of self-expression is also examined. The sto??y is not told for Cassandra's sake, but rather for that of the reader, who is made aware of the continuum of past, present and future events and the manipulation by those in power. Cassandra's tale of Troy's destruction should serve as a particularly strong warning to us in the age of nuclear arms.
Description
Bibliography: p. 90-96.
Keywords
Citation
Hoenle, S. (1987). Christa Wolf's Kassandra: reinterpretations of the myth (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/18967
Collections