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Introduction Gender, Politics, Interpretation

Daniel Mendelsohn

in Gender and the City in Euripides' Political Plays

This introductory chapter begins with a description of the current state of interpretative >aporia surrounding Euripedes' plays, Children of Herakles and Suppliant Women. It argues that the ... More

This introductory chapter begins with a description of the current state of interpretative >aporia surrounding Euripedes' plays, Children of Herakles and Suppliant Women. It argues that the widespread interpretative dismay about the form of the texts seems to follow from erroneous assumptions about their content. It is also argued that in the political plays, the pairings of seemingly opposite feminine types — good/bad, fetishized/uncanny, constructive/destructive — constitute a coherent structural device with particular implications for political theorizing.Less

Children of Herakles Territories of the Other

Daniel Mendelsohn

in Gender and the City in Euripides' Political Plays

This chapter analyses the play, Children of Herakles. The play is a drama of displacement, underscoring the problematics of place — the priorities and codes that govern religious, political, and ... More

This chapter analyses the play, Children of Herakles. The play is a drama of displacement, underscoring the problematics of place — the priorities and codes that govern religious, political, and social space. It opens with a shocking violation of the religious space represented by the altar standing at the centre of the orkhestra; it traces the desperate flight of a hero's kin who, deprived by exile of their political status, are forced to wander from polis to polis; and its high point is the self-sacrifice of a young girl who, in order to perform her heroic deed, must cross the invisible but culturally well-guarded border between male and female spaces.Less

Conclusion

Daniel Mendelsohn

in Gender and the City in Euripides' Political Plays

This chapter argues that Euripides' Children of Herakles and Suppliant Women should be studied together because both are remarkably similar products of a moment in the playwright's career and the ... More

This chapter argues that Euripides' Children of Herakles and Suppliant Women should be studied together because both are remarkably similar products of a moment in the playwright's career and the history of Athens. That moment, in the early stages of a (Peloponnesian) War — a conflict with a foe who was ideologically and culturally different, if not in fact opposite — made those myths particularly suggestive as vehicles for re-examination of what it meant to be Athenian. It further argues that an understanding of these plays as living theatrical examples of the complex and elusive principle of negotiation can be key to viewing them as coherent and especially apt dramatic investigations of the nature of the democratic polis — which is to say, as truly ‘political’ plays.Less

Lyric-and-iambic Duets in Euripides *

W. S. Barrett

in Greek Lyric, Tragedy, and Textual Criticism: Collected Papers

This chapter examines those scenes in the plays of Euripides which consist of a duet or dialogue conducted partly in excited lyric metres (predominantly dochmiac) and partly in iambic trimeters ... More

This chapter examines those scenes in the plays of Euripides which consist of a duet or dialogue conducted partly in excited lyric metres (predominantly dochmiac) and partly in iambic trimeters similar to the spoken iambics of dialogue. First, it classifies certain ‘licences’ — that is, divergences, real or apparent, from the strict distinction of complete iambic trimeters on the one hand and lyric metres on the other — and maintains that these licences do not constitute exceptions to the general distinction. Second, it examines, scene by scene, the surviving exceptions to the distinction, and attempts to show that each of them either has a motive or is to be removed by the correction of a false ascription in the manuscripts or the current texts.Less

The Epitome of Euripides' Phoinissai: Ancient and Medieval Versions *

W. S. Barrett

in Greek Lyric, Tragedy, and Textual Criticism: Collected Papers

This chapter examines the epitome of Phoinissai. The part of this published in P. Oxy. 2455, fr. 17, amounts to fifteen lines of the papyrus text, covering the last two-fifths of the epitome; it ... More

This chapter examines the epitome of Phoinissai. The part of this published in P. Oxy. 2455, fr. 17, amounts to fifteen lines of the papyrus text, covering the last two-fifths of the epitome; it contains nineteen discrepancies from the medieval vulgate. The three versions of the epitome is first transcribed in three columns. The problems raised by their comparison are then discussed.Less

The Epitome of Euripides' Auge *

W. S. Barrett

in Greek Lyric, Tragedy, and Textual Criticism: Collected Papers

This fragment (P. Colon. 1, inv. 264), with the beginning of the epitome of Auge, was first published by L. Koenen in ZPE 4 (1969), 7-18 with Tafel iii(a) and iv, under the title ‘Eine Hypothesis zur ... More

This fragment (P. Colon. 1, inv. 264), with the beginning of the epitome of Auge, was first published by L. Koenen in ZPE 4 (1969), 7-18 with Tafel iii(a) and iv, under the title ‘Eine Hypothesis zur Auge des Euripides und tegeatische Plynterien’. This chapter presents a reconstruction of the text of the epitome, and discusses the implications of Euripides' version of the legend for ritual practices at Tegea. It begins by transcribing the papyrus text. The transcript is placed side-by-side with Koenen's reconstruction, so that it may be seen (a) what the author is differing from, (b) what borrowings he is making.Less

Shorter Notes

W. S. Barrett

in Greek Lyric, Tragedy, and Textual Criticism: Collected Papers

This chapter discusses works by several writers including Pindar, Sophocles, and Euripedes. Among these are Pindar's Nemean 4. 23, Sophocles' Antigone 411 f., and Euripides' Alkestis.

Speech within Speech in Menander

René Nünlist

in The Language of Greek Comedy

This chapter describes the dramatic use of speech within speech in Menander's comedies. It begins with a historical review that stretches from Homer down to Hellenistic literature, then considers the ... More

This chapter describes the dramatic use of speech within speech in Menander's comedies. It begins with a historical review that stretches from Homer down to Hellenistic literature, then considers the specific role ‘speech within speech’ takes on in New Comedy. By distinguishing factual and imagined quoted speech, it shows that Menander's usage is closer to that of Euripides than to that of Aristophanes even though the absolute frequency of quoted speech is comparable in all three authors.Less

The Politics of Form

Victoria Wohl

in Euripides and the Politics of Form

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, namely to prove the very simple proposition that in Euripidean tragedy, dramatic form is a kind of political content. The project is motivated ... More

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, namely to prove the very simple proposition that in Euripidean tragedy, dramatic form is a kind of political content. The project is motivated by two separate but intersecting problems. The first is the problem of Euripidean tragedy. There are eighteen extant tragedies confidently attributed to Euripides and many of them are, for lack of a better word, odd. With their disjointed, action-packed plots, comic touches, and frequent happy endings, they seem to stretch the generic boundaries of tragedy as we usually think of it. The second problem is the relation between the play and its contemporary world, the political world of democratic Athens. Tragic dramas were, almost without exception, set in the mythic past, not in the fifth-century polis, and almost never allude overtly to their contemporary moment. The remainder of the chapter discusses the meaning of politics of form by way of a brief illustration.Less

Beautiful Tears

Victoria Wohl

in Euripides and the Politics of Form

This chapter asks about the ethics of (lyric and structural) beauty and the politics of pathos in two plays, Trojan Women and Hecuba. The first, Trojan Women, presents a tale of unmitigated misery ... More

This chapter asks about the ethics of (lyric and structural) beauty and the politics of pathos in two plays, Trojan Women and Hecuba. The first, Trojan Women, presents a tale of unmitigated misery and renders it self-consciously beautiful. But how are we to watch this sublime suffering? The play won't let us maintain a safe spectatorial distance; it demands that we watch with pity, but also suggests the insufficiency of that response. Our tears do no good. The insufficiency of pity is also a central theme of the second play, Hecuba. Here pity is shown to be not only politically ineffectual, but in fact morally dangerous: the beauty of tragic suffering generates a perverse investment in that suffering itself, and our longing for the beautiful symmetry of justice makes us complicit in a vicious act of injustice. Both plays thus propose that aesthetic judgments bear ethical and political consequences, but neither takes it for granted that beauty will make us just.Less

Recognition and Realism

Victoria Wohl

in Euripides and the Politics of Form

This chapter focuses on Euripides' Electra. It argues that the play offers us a vision of egalitarianism premised on the claim that a man's virtue cannot be judged by his wealth or birth but only by ... More

This chapter focuses on Euripides' Electra. It argues that the play offers us a vision of egalitarianism premised on the claim that a man's virtue cannot be judged by his wealth or birth but only by his own ēthos (character). It associates that democratic vision with “reality.” But as the play unfolds that vision is prevented from realization and indeed is de-realized, as we are led to abandon this reality—our own democratic reality—for an illusion explicitly recognized as such. This process of de-realization proceeds alongside the play's demythologization. The myth is shown to be implausible, an empty form. And yet we are asked to accept this mythic form in place of “reality” and its ethical and political content.Less

The Politics of Political Allegory

Victoria Wohl

in Euripides and the Politics of Form

This chapter reads Suppliants, focusing on the form of its allegory and allegory as a tragic form. If all tragedy is inherently allegorical, as historicist scholarship assumes, Euripides turns this ... More

This chapter reads Suppliants, focusing on the form of its allegory and allegory as a tragic form. If all tragedy is inherently allegorical, as historicist scholarship assumes, Euripides turns this generic feature into a resource for thought. His experiment in mimetic compression allows him to explore the nature of tragic mimesis as a mode of representation, both aesthetic and political. The mimetic form itself becomes a kind of theoretical content: the doubleness of allegory offers not only a means of saying one thing through the vehicle of another, but also a way of thinking about the relationship between vehicle and tenor, tragedy and politics. By heightening tragedy's inherent allegorical potential, Suppliants challenges our historicist presuppositions, forcing us to rethink tragedy's role in and relation to the city and the possibilities and paradoxes of “political tragedy.”Less

Broken Plays for a Broken World

Victoria Wohl

in Euripides and the Politics of Form

This chapter analyzes the relation between tragedy and its historical moment, focusing in particular on Orestes. It elaborates on an anticipatory temporality of tragic politics suggested at the end ... More

This chapter analyzes the relation between tragedy and its historical moment, focusing in particular on Orestes. It elaborates on an anticipatory temporality of tragic politics suggested at the end of chapters 2 and 3. Chapter 2 showed that the ethical demands tragedy makes on its audience cannot be met within the Theater of Dionysus: if tragedy's beauty (or its ugliness) makes us just, that justice remains to come, and it is our responsibility to bring it into being. Chapter 3 proposed that Electra's utopianism lies not in its “realist” depiction of an egalitarian scenario, but in its staging of egalitarianism as an emergent possibility, not yet realized in the present time of the play's production. The chapter argues that tragedy can do more than just imagine such future possibilities. By literally representing the affective experience of emergent scenarios, it can make them real.Less

Content of the Form

Victoria Wohl

in Euripides and the Politics of Form

This chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. It argues that Euripides' imperfect alignment of form and meaning forces form itself onto center stage. It makes us aware of a ... More

This chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. It argues that Euripides' imperfect alignment of form and meaning forces form itself onto center stage. It makes us aware of a play's form, granting it density and texture. Even at its emptiest, form is always full, replete with meaning. We have seen Euripides exploring that meaning, thinking in form about tragic form and its fullness and emptiness. The plays have shown us form as generative and enabling, producing, for example, an aspiration to justice (in Hecuba and Trojan Women), or a renewed attachment to the polis (in Ion), or even history itself (in Suppliants and Orestes. We have also seen the constraints and oppressions of form, both dramatic and social. In Electra, empty forms encrusted with outdated content constrained human behavior and foreclosed radical social possibilities. Form functioned as a deadweight upon the play's own imagination.Less

The Ghost of Alcestis

Amy Wygant

in Ancient Drama in Music for the Modern Stage

In the story of Alcestis from Euripides, Alcestis volunteers to die in order to save the life of her husband King Admetus. When the hero Hercules discovers that Alcestis has died, he wrestles with ... More

In the story of Alcestis from Euripides, Alcestis volunteers to die in order to save the life of her husband King Admetus. When the hero Hercules discovers that Alcestis has died, he wrestles with Death, wins, and brings back something veiled to Admetus. But what or whom? This chapter follows the polemical texts around this question that appeared in the wake of the 1674 opera Alceste by composer Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–87) and librettist Philippe Quinault (1635–88). It considers texts from the champion of the modernists, Charles Perrault (1628–1703) and the defender of the ancients, Jean Racine (1639–99).Less

Tragic Fragments, Ancient Philosophers and the Fragmented Self†

Christopher Gill

in Lost Dramas of Classical Athens: Greek Tragic Fragments

This chapter examines connections between ancient philosophy and Greek tragic fragments. First, it considers how tragic fragments are typically cited and used by ancient thinkers in ethical ... More

This chapter examines connections between ancient philosophy and Greek tragic fragments. First, it considers how tragic fragments are typically cited and used by ancient thinkers in ethical philosophy. Second, it discusses an ancient debate about passion and self-division preserved in Galen. Although the key text in this debate is a surviving play (Euripides Medea), ancient philosophers also make suggestive comments about some tragic fragments on psychological division. Third, the chapter takes up a different aspect of the relationship between ancient philosophy and tragic fragments. It questions the view that we can make sense of the fragments of Euripides' first Hippolytus by relating them to Seneca's (surviving) Phaedra. It argues that that Seneca's picture of Phaedra' subjection to her love reflects a specifically Stoic conception of passion, and a different psychological pattern must be used to reconstruct the lost Euripidean drama.Less

What Good Is Innocence?

J. Peter Euben

in In Search of Goodness

This chapter investigates Euripedes' Bacchae and Herman Melville's Billy Budd. In Bacchae, which expresses the story of the god Dionysus returning to Thebes disguised as a human, initially asking, ... More

This chapter investigates Euripedes' Bacchae and Herman Melville's Billy Budd. In Bacchae, which expresses the story of the god Dionysus returning to Thebes disguised as a human, initially asking, then demanding, acknowledgment of the divinity of his mother, Semele, Dionysus transforms the hypermasculine young king into a coquettish “girl.” In Billy Budd, the practice of impressing and oppressing sailors heightens the fear of mutiny, which in turn produces an atmosphere fraught with secrecy, fear, and conspiracy. Both of these texts display a troubling dialectical link between innocence and violence, sacrifice, and evil. The chapter concentrates on the pivotal incident in Billy Budd: Billy's lashing out at Claggart when Claggart slanders him in front of Captain Vere. “Vere” would mediate in the world and soul as he does in the novel. But for reasons adduced before, his claim to do so is suspect.Less

Tony Harrison as Founder of Classical Reception Studies

Edith Hall

in Tony Harrison and the Classics

This chapter argues that not only Harrison’s academic writing but also his creative receptions should be seen as contributing to classical scholarship. It makes the case for Tony Harrison to be ... More

This chapter argues that not only Harrison’s academic writing but also his creative receptions should be seen as contributing to classical scholarship. It makes the case for Tony Harrison to be acknowledged as one of the founders of Classical Reception Studies, which he has been practising since the 1960s. His classical mastery is superior to that possessed by almost all the great poets and translators of the later twentieth century with whom he is routinely compared: Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, Michael Longley, Derek Walcott, Frank McGuinness, Timberlake Wertenbaker, Jon Silkin and Geoffrey Hill. The ancient Greek and Roman worlds loom so large in Harrison’s oeuvre that much work remains to be done to identify and interpret the myriad intertwined classical presences informing Harrison’s chosen forms and contents. This text contributes to that work and establishes the exceptional quality and extent of the reciprocal impact that Harrison’s writing has made on classical scholarship.Less