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Lorna Shaughnessy
Michele Najlis is a Nicaraguan poet whose work emerged alongside the Sandinista insurrection. The Sandinistas were removed from office in 1990, creating, in political and cultural terms, one of those �boundary situations� outlined by Paul Ricoeur, when a community will �return to [�] that mythical nucleus which ultimately grounds and determines it� (Ricoeur 1982: 262). In 1991, Najlis published her collection Cantos de Ifigenia, which mines that mythical nucleus. This article reads Najlis' collection in the light of hermeneutic theory and classical myth, and situates it as a conscious reworking of the Iphigenia myth and an exploration of the dynamics of sacrifice in Sandinista Nicaragua. It examines the profound sense of war-weariness that Najlis' Iphigenia shares with the dramatizations of Iphigenia by Euripides and Aeschylus in fifth-century BC Athens. Ricoeur's reflections on myth and �the recreation of language� are presented as a possible explanation for Najlis' use of classical mythology in her work at this time
