We are using four tragedies for our analysis:
The first two plays, Libation Bearers and Medea, were selected because they depict women in pain. Philoctetes and Women of Trachis depict men in pain. This way, we have enough data to make conclusions about women's and men's pain.
This project was originally derived from an adjacently related one, studying pain and gender in Greek tragedies. For that project, our group member, Vidya Surti, was awarded a UHC Research Fellowship to formulate her own 'Greek' tragedy adjacent play focusing on the gendered aspects of pain. During her preliminary research, she had already identified Greek tragedies that place a lot of focus on pain as a plot driver and an element that affects gendered perceptions of certain characters. We tried to divide the content of our corpus based on the type of pain being present. The tragedies we chose were Medea, Philoctetes, Women of Trachis, and Libation Bearers.
We had four group members, so we were each tasked with one tragedy to mark up.
Our group did not opt to use the standard notation for our markup, with the pain
instance wrapped in pain start and end tags. Ex. <pain>Pain
Instance</pain> Instead, we opted to use Trojan markup, where we used an empty
painStart element containing attributes and their values about the specific pain
instance. After the painStart tag with the text of the pain instance, the painEnd
tag would wrap the pain instance together. This painEnd tag would contain no
attributes, unlike the painStart empty element. So, the painStart empty element
would act as the start tag, and the painEnd empty element would act as the end tag.
For each painEnd element, there must be a preceding painStart element. Furthermore,
the document's markup must start with a painStart element and end with a painEnd
element. There cannot be two painStart elements before a painEnd element, and the
document cannot start with a painEnd element or end with a painStart element. So, we
first marked up specific pain instances with the painStart and painEnd elements in
each of our tragedies.
Here is an example of how we used Trojan Markup (the attributes will be introduced later in this methodology section):
<painStart painType="both" rec="Philoctetes" recGen="man" inf="disease"
direct="no" recNorm="no"/>For my part, I pity him when I think how,with no one to
care for him, and seeing no companion'sface, but suffering eternally alone, he is
plagued by fierce disease and bewildered by each need as it arises.How, how does he
endure his bitter fate?<painEnd/>
During a meeting we had as a group, we determined and continued to refine the types of attributes that we thought would add specific layers of depth to our project. The attributes found in the painStart elements include information about the reciever and inflictor, the gender or non-human designation of people involved, the type of pain experienced, if the pain is direct or indirect.
Each painStart element required certain groupings of attributes.
| Attribute | Description |
|---|---|
| rec | receiver, indicates the name of who is experiencing pain, required in all events of pain |
| recGen | gender of receiver, indicates the binary gender of the character who is
experiencing pain, possible values are man, woman,
and mix for a mixed group of individuals, required in all
events of pain |
| recNorm | whether the character experiencing pain fits the general norms of Greek
society, from the perspective of the original Greek audience of the tragedy;
when a receiver of pain would not be socially accepted in Greek society,
this value is no and otherwise yes, required
in all events of pain |
| painType | the type of pain being experienced, possible values are em for
emotional, phys for physical, and both for both
kinds of pain at once in one event, required in all events of
pain |
| inf | inflictor, the name of who is inflicting pain, in the case of a nonhuman inflictor this can only take the values of disease or nature required when someone is inflicting pain, but not in all |
| infGen | gender of inflictor, the gender of the person inflicting pain, possible
values are man, woman, or mix for a
mixed group of people, required for all that have an inf |
| infNorm | whether the character inflicting pain fits the general norms of Greek
society, from the perspective of the original Greek audience of the tragedy,
when a receiver of pain would not be socially accepted in Greek society,
this value is no and otherwise yes, required
for all that have an inf |
| recRel | relation of receiver to inflictor, required for all that have an inf |
| infRel | relation of inflictor to receiver, required for all that have an inf |
| direct | whether the pain that is being inflicted is direct or not, possible values
are yes if the pain is directly caused by the inflictor or
no if the pain is indirectly caused, required for all
that have an inf |