A Companion to Euripides E-Book
177,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World
- Sprache: Englisch
A COMPANION TO EURIPIDES
A COMPANION TO EURIPIDES
Euripides has enjoyed a resurgence of interest as a result of many recent important publications, attesting to the poet’s enduring relevance to the modern world. A Companion to Euripides is the product of this contemporary work, with many essays drawing on the latest texts, commentaries, and scholarship on the man and his oeuvre.
Divided into seven sections, the companion begins with a general discussion of Euripidean drama. The following sections contain essays on Euripidean biography and the manuscript tradition, and individual essays on each play, organized in chronological order. Chapters offer summaries of important scholarship and methodologies, synopses of individual plays and the myths from which they borrow their plots, and conclude with suggestions for additional reading. The final two sections deal with topics central to Euripidean scholarship, such as religion, myth, and gender, and the reception of Euripides from the 4th century BCE to the modern world.
A Companion to Euripides brings together a variety of leading Euripides scholars from a wide range of perspectives. As a result, specific issues and themes emerge across the chapters as central to our understanding of the poet and his meaning for our time. Contributions are original and provocative interpretations of Euripides’ plays, which forge important paths of inquiry for future scholarship.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 1506
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
Ähnliche
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
PART I: Text, Author, and Tradition
CHAPTER 1: Introduction
1 Euripides
2 New Approaches
3 This Volume
4 Conclusion
CHAPTER 2: Text and Transmission
1 The Earliest Copies
2 From Alexandria to Late Antiquity
3 The Middle Ages
4 The Lost Plays
5 Modern Editions
CHAPTER 3: The Euripidean Biography
1 What We Know
2 The Poetic Career
3 Ancient Biographical Traditions
4 Misogyny and Misanthropy
5 Popularity
6 A Death in Macedon
7 Summary
CHAPTER 4: Euripides and the Development of Greek Tragedy
1 Life in the Theater
2 Women Bad and Good
3 Language and Composition
4 Coming to the End
5 Conclusion
PART II: Early Plays (438–416 BCE)
CHAPTER 5: Alcestis
1 The
Alcestis
and Genre
2 Structure, Characterization, and Major Themes in the
Alcestis
3 Gender
4 Incongruous Feelings? Pity and
Eros
in the
Alcestis
CHAPTER 6: Medea
1 Medea as Barbarian?
2 Medea as Woman
3 Medea as Avenger: The Ending of the Play
CHAPTER 7: Children of Heracles
1 The Legend of the Heraclidae and Athenian Patriotism
2 Supplication and Athenian Idealism
3 Political Paralysis and Transformation
4 Reversals of Power
CHAPTER 8: Hippolytus
1 Second Attempts and Second Thoughts
2 Phaedra
3 Hippolytus
4 Theseus
5 The Role of the Gods
6 Finding Sympathy
CHAPTER 9: Andromache
1 Synopsis
2 Date and Production
3 Euripides and the Myth
4 “If gods do wrong . . .”
5 Reading
Andromache
6 Staging
Andromache
7 Final Thoughts
CHAPTER 10: Hecuba
1
Hecuba
’s Historical Context and Reception
2
Hecuba
’s Binary Structure
3
Hecuba
’s Divine Machinery
4
Hecuba
’s Moral Ontology
5 The Ethical Positions of Hecuba’s Principal Characters
6 Conclusion:
Hecuba
’s Transformations as Expressions of its Moral Landscape
CHAPTER 11: Suppliant Women
1 Myth and Plot
2 The Chorus
3 Aethra
4 Recovery of the Bodies
5 Suicide of Evadne
CHAPTER 12: Electra
1 Synopsis
2 Date
3 The Myth
4 Dramatic Treatments of the Myth
5 Setting
6 The Farmer’s Hut
7 Themes
CHAPTER 13:
Heracles
1
Heracles
in Pieces
2 A Hero’s Return
3 Heracles in Pieces
4 Of God to Man
PART III: Later Plays (After 416 BCE)
CHAPTER 14: Trojan Women
1 Background
2 Anti‐War
3 Women as Victim or Heroic
4 The Love Charm
5 Neither Simply Anti‐war nor Simply Feminist
6 Mortal and Immortal
CHAPTER 15: Iphigenia in Tauris
1 The Myths
2 The Play within the Euripidean Corpus
3 Rescue/Escape/Safety
CHAPTER 16: Ion
1 Autochthony and Identity
2 Psychological Readings: The Role of the Son
3 Psychological Readings: the Role of the Mother
4 Men and Gods
5 Food for the Soul
6 Conclusion
CHAPTER 17: Significant Inconsistencies in Euripides’
Helen
1 A Twisted Plot
2 Diverse Interpretations
3 Paradoxes and Discrepancies
4 Formal Anomalies, and a Most Unusual Chorus
5 Final Indeterminacy
CHAPTER 18: Phoenician Women
1 Synopsis
2 Date and Trilogy
3 Staging and Features of the Fifth‐Century Premiere
4
Phoenician Women
and Theban Myth
5 On and Off Stage: Space and the
Phoenician Women
6 Final Thoughts
CHAPTER 19: Orestes
1 Electra and Helen Exchange Pleasantries, and Then . . .
2 Agonizing with Orestes
3 More Plotting, Helen Killed (?), Hermione Taken Hostage, the Friends Encircled, the House of Atreus Set on Fire, Apollo Intervenes
4 A Tragedy for All Ages
CHAPTER 20: Iphigenia at Aulis
1 Plot
2 Characters and Changes of Mind
3 Chorus
4 Marriage and Sacrifice
5 War, Slavery, Politics
6 A Self‐Conscious Drama
CHAPTER 21: Bacchae
1 Recent Trends in Scholarship on the
Bacchae
2 Foreign Cult
3 Sex, Drugs, and Kettledrums
PART IV: Satyr, Spurious, and Fragmentary Plays
CHAPTER 22: Cyclops
1 Satyr Drama: “Tragedy at Play”
2
Cyclops
and Major Themes of Satyric Drama
3 Setting the Scene
4 Burgeoning
Philia
: Odysseus and the Satyrs vs Polyphemos
5 With(out) a Little Help from his Friends, or Odysseus’ Revenge
6
Cyclops
and Satyrs: An Overview
CHAPTER 23: Rhesus
1 What Happens in
Rhesus
?
2 The Rhesus Myth before
Rhesus
3 Stagecraft and Dramaturgy: Accomplishments and Failures
4 Language and Style: A Derivative Play
5 Did Euripides Write the
Rhesus
we Have?
CHAPTER 24: Fragments and Fragmentary Plays
1 A Few Facts and Figures
2 The Nature of the Evidence and how it has Survived
3 Collecting, Editing, and Studying the Fragments
4 List of Euripides’ Known Plays, with (Mostly Approximate) Dates
5 Reconstruction of Fragmentary Plays: Possibilities and Limits
6 What and how do Fragments add to the Appreciation of Euripides?
7 Some Individual Phenomena:
Pairs of Name‐Plays
; Satyr‐Plays; Unassigned Fragments
8 Illustrative Case‐Studies:
Ino, Palamedes, Phoenix
; the Oedipus‐myth
9 Supplementary Note 2015
PART V: Form, Structure, and Performance
CHAPTER 25: Form and Structure
1 Aristotelian Basics
2 Formal Structures: Basic Units, Special Scene‐Types, Microstructures, Other Features
3 Narrative Patterns in Euripides
4 The Interplay of Formal Structures and Narrative Patterns
5 Clear Partition and Alternation between Actors’ Scenes and Choral Parts
6 Blending or Interlacing of Actors’ Scenes and Choral Parts
7 Initial Exposition of the Principal Character and His/Her Situation
8 Intense Distress, Violent Backstage Action, Plot Acceleration
9 Conclusion
CHAPTER 26: The Theater of Euripides
1 Theater Industry and Audiences
2 Social Change and Innovation in Euripides
3 Formal Matters
4 “Metatheater” and Stage Machinery: Theater in Construction
5 Plum Roles in Euripidean Drama
6 Theater Beyond Euripides
CHAPTER 27: The Euripidean Chorus
1 Varieties of Choral Experience
2 Choral Sympathies
3 Wider Contexts
4 The Chorus as a Tragic Theme
5 Musical History
CHAPTER 28: Euripides and the Sound of Music
1 The Music of Attic Drama
2 Music in Euripides’ Tragedies
3 Euripides and the New Music
4 The
Orestes
Musical Papyrus
5 The Sound of Music
PART VI: Topics and Approaches
CHAPTER 29: Euripides and his Intellectual Context
1 Literacy and the Alphabet
2 Specialized Skills
3 Relativism and Humanism
4 Anthropology and Progress
5 Agency and Responsibility
CHAPTER 30: Myth
1 Tradition, Innovation, and Multiplicity
2 The Selection and Deployment of Myths
3 “Skepticism” and “Heterodoxy” in Context
4 What Makes Euripides’ Myths Distinctive?
CHAPTER 31: Euripides and Religion
1 The Gods
2 Impiety and Perjury
3 Ritual
4 Deformed Rituals
5 False Rituals
6 Syncretism
7 Priestesses
8 Conclusion
CHAPTER 32: Gender
1 Critical Responses
2 Gender in Context
PART VII: Reception
CHAPTER 33: Euripides, Aristophanes, and the Reception of “Sophistic” Styles
1 Euripides, Agathon, and the Bumsy Style
2 Socrates and Euripides
3 Styles and “Styles”
4 Literary Critical Practices and Places
5 Euripides, Plato, and Later Reception
Acknowledgments
CHAPTER 34: Euripides in the Fourth Century BCE
1 Euripides’ Supposed Unpopularity
2 Fourth‐century Performances of Euripides
3 Evidence for Euripides’ Influence on Fourth‐century Tragedy
4 Conclusions
CHAPTER 35: Euripides and Senecan Drama
1 Seneca on Euripides
2
Madness of Hercules
3
Trojan Women
4
Phoenician Women
5
Medea
6
Phaedra
7 Conclusion
CHAPTER 36: All Aboard the Bacchae Bus
1 Criticism and Translation
2 Performances
3 Published Adaptations
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Pages
ii
iii
iv
viii
ix
x
xi
xii
xii
xiii
xiv
xv
9
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
197
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
313
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
445
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577
578
579
580
581
582
583
584
585
586
587
588
589
590
591
592
593
594
595
596
597
598
599
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
BLACKWELL COMPANIONS TO THE ANCIENT WORLD
This series provides sophisticated and authoritative overviews of periods of ancient history, genres of classical literature, and the most important themes in ancient culture. Each volume comprises approximately twenty‐five and forty concise essays written by individual scholars within their area of specialization. The essays are written in a clear, provocative, and lively manner, designed for an international audience of scholars, students, and general readers.
Ancient History
Published
A Companion to the Roman ArmyEdited by Paul Erdkamp
A Companion to the Roman RepublicEdited by Nathan Rosenstein and Robert Morstein‐Marx
A Companion to the Roman EmpireEdited by David S. Potter
A Companion to the Classical Greek WorldEdited by Konrad H. Kinzl
A Companion to the Ancient Near EastEdited by Daniel C. Snell
A Companion to the Hellenistic WorldEdited by Andrew Erskine
A Companion to Late AntiquityEdited by Philip Rousseau
A Companion to Ancient HistoryEdited by Andrew Erskine
A Companion to Archaic GreeceEdited by Kurt A. Raaflaub and Hans van Wees
A Companion to Julius CaesarEdited by Miriam Griffin
A Companion to ByzantiumEdited by Liz James
A Companion to Ancient EgyptEdited by Alan B. Lloyd
A Companion to Ancient MacedoniaEdited by Joseph Roisman and Ian Worthington
A Companion to the Punic WarsEdited by Dexter Hoyos
A Companion to AugustineEdited by Mark Vessey
A Companion to Marcus AureliusEdited by Marcel van Ackeren
A Companion to Ancient Greek GovernmentEdited by Hans Beck
A Companion to the Neronian AgeEdited by Emma Buckley and Martin T. Dinter
A Companion to Greek Democracy and the Roman RepublicEdited by Dean Hammer
A Companion to LivyEdited by Bernard Mineo
A Companion to Ancient ThraceEdited by Julia Valeva, Emil Nankov, and Denver Graninger
A Companion to Roman ItalyEdited by Alison E. Cooley
A Companion to the EtruscansEdited by Sinclair Bell and Alexandra A. Carpino
A Companion to the Flavian Age of Imperial RomeEdited by Andrew Zissos
A Companion to Science, Technology, and Medicine in Ancient Greece and RomeEdited by Georgia L. Irby
A Companion to EuripidesEdited by Laura K. McClure
Literature and Culture
Published
A Companion to Classical ReceptionsEdited by Lorna Hardwick and Christopher Stray
A Companion to Greek and Roman HistoriographyEdited by John Marincola
A Companion to CatullusEdited by Marilyn B. Skinner
A Companion to Roman ReligionEdited by Jörg Rüpke
A Companion to Greek ReligionEdited by Daniel Ogden
A Companion to the Classical TraditionEdited by Craig W. Kallendorf
A Companion to Roman RhetoricEdited by William Dominik and Jon Hall
A Companion to Greek RhetoricEdited by Ian Worthington
A Companion to Ancient EpicEdited by John Miles Foley
A Companion to Greek TragedyEdited by Justina Gregory
A Companion to Latin LiteratureEdited by Stephen Harrison
A Companion to Greek and Roman Political ThoughtEdited by Ryan K. Balot
A Companion to OvidEdited by Peter E. Knox
A Companion to the Ancient Greek LanguageEdited by Egbert Bakker
A Companion to Hellenistic LiteratureEdited by Martine Cuypers and James J. Clauss
A Companion to Vergil’s Aeneid and its TraditionEdited by Joseph Farrell and Michael C. J. Putnam
A Companion to HoraceEdited by Gregson Davis
A Companion to Families in the Greek and Roman WorldsEdited by Beryl Rawson
A Companion to Greek MythologyEdited by Ken Dowden and Niall Livingstone
A Companion to the Latin LanguageEdited by James Clackson
A Companion to TacitusEdited by Victoria Emma Pagán
A Companion to Women in the Ancient WorldEdited by Sharon L. James and Sheila Dillon
A Companion to SophoclesEdited by Kirk Ormand
A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near EastEdited by Daniel Potts
A Companion to Roman Love ElegyEdited by Barbara K. Gold
A Companion to Greek ArtEdited by Tyler Jo Smith and Dimitris Plantzos
A Companion to Persius and JuvenalEdited by Susanna Braund and Josiah Osgood
A Companion to the Archaeology of the Roman RepublicEdited by Jane DeRose Evans
A Companion to TerenceEdited by Antony Augoustakis and Ariana Traill
A Companion to Roman ArchitectureEdited by Roger B. Ulrich and Caroline K. Quenemoen
A Companion to Sport and Spectacle in Greek and Roman AntiquityEdited by Paul Christesen and Donald G. Kyle
A Companion to PlutarchEdited by Mark Beck
A Companion to Greek and Roman SexualitiesEdited by Thomas K. Hubbard
A Companion to the Ancient NovelEdited by Edmund P. Cueva and Shannon N. Byrne
A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient MediterraneanEdited by Jeremy McInerney
A Companion to Ancient Egyptian ArtEdited by Melinda Hartwig
A Companion to the Archaeology of Religion in the Ancient WorldEdited by Rubina Raja and Jörg Rüpke
A Companion to Food in the Ancient WorldEdited by John Wilkins and Robin Nadeau
A Companion to Ancient EducationEdited by W. Martin Bloomer
A Companion to Ancient AestheticsEdited by Pierre Destrée and Penelope Murray
A Companion to Roman ArtEdited by Barbara Borg
A Companion to Greek LiteratureEdited by Martin Hose and David Schenker
A Companion to Josephus in his WorldEdited by Honora Howell Chapman and Zuleika Rodgers
A Companion to Greek ArchitectureEdited by Margaret M. Miles
A COMPANION TO EURIPIDES
Edited by
Laura K. McClure
This edition first published 2017© 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Registered OfficeJohn Wiley & Sons, Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK
Editorial Offices350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148‐5020, USA9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UKThe Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK
For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley‐blackwell.
The right of Laura K. McClure to be identified as the author of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.
Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services and neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.
Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data
Name: McClure, Laura, 1959– editor.Title: A companion to Euripides / edited by Laura K. McClure.Description: Chichester, West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.Identifiers: LCCN 2016024717| ISBN 9781119257509 (Cloth) | ISBN 9781119257516 (ePDF) ISBN 9781119257523 (epub)Subjects: LCSH: Euripides–Criticism and interpretation.Classification: LCC PA3978 .C73 2017 | DDC 882/.01–dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016024717
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover image: The Anger of Achilles, 1819 (oil on canvas), David, Jacques Louis (1748–1825)/Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, USA/Bridgeman Images.
Notes on Contributors
Elton Barker is a Reader in Classical Studies at The Open University. He is author of the book, Entering the Agōn: Dissent and Authority in Homer, Historiography and Tragedy (2009), and has published widely on tragic politics, epic rivalry, and digital approaches to rethinking ancient geography.
Deborah Boedeker is Professor Emerita of Classics at Brown University. In addition to monographs and articles on Euripidean tragedy, Greek epic, Greek religion, archaic poetry (lyric, elegiac, and iambic), and Herodotus, she has edited a number of collected volumes, including Herodotus and the Invention of History (1987); Democracy, Empire and the Arts (1995, with Kurt Raaflaub); and The New Simonides: Contexts of Praise and Desire (2001, with David Sider).
Christopher Collard was Professor of Classics at Swansea University and now lives in Oxford. His books include editions of Euripides' Supplices (1975, 1984) and Hecuba (1991); an annotated translation of Aeschylus (2 vols., 2002, 2007); a volume of his selected papers (2007); collaboratively, five volumes of fragmentary texts, four of Euripides (1995–2008) and one of satyric drama (2013). His most recent contribution is a commentary on Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis with James Morwood (Aris and Phillips, 2017).
Armand D’Angour is Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Jesus College Oxford and Associate Professor of Classics at Oxford University. He has published widely on the subject of ancient Greek music, and is author of The Greeks and the New: Novelty in Ancient Greek Imagination and Experience (2011).
Markus Dubischar is Associate Professor of Classics at Lafayette College. He is the author of Die Agonszenen bei Euripides: Untersuchungen zu ausgewählten Dramen (2001) and of Auxiliartexte: Studien zur Praxis und Theorie einer Textfunktion im antiken literarischen Feld, Habilitation, LMU Munich (2007). He has also published numerous articles and book chapters on Greek tragedy, the transmission of knowledge in antiquity, and the history of Classical scholarship.
Anne Duncan is Associate Professor in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. She is the author of Performance and Identity in the Classical World (2006) and articles on Greek and Roman performance issues. She is currently at work on two projects: a monograph called Command Performance: Tyranny and Theater in the Ancient World, and a textbook on Roman spectacle, under contract with Cambridge University Press.
Francis M. Dunn is Professor of Classics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He writes on Greek literature, especially tragedy, and his books include Present Shock in Late Fifth‐Century Greece (2007) and Tragedy’s End: Closure and Innovation in Euripidean Drama (1996).
Mary Ebbott is Professor of Classics at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. She is the author of Imagining Illegitimacy in Classical Greek Literature (2003) and co‐author (with Casey Dué) of Iliad 10 and the Poetics of Ambush (2010), as well as co‐editor of the Homer Multitext project (www.homermultitext.org).
Judith Fletcher is Professor of History and Ancient Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. She has published numerous articles, book chapters, and reviews on Greek poetry and drama. She is the author of Performing Oaths in Classical Greek Drama (2012), and co‐editor of Horkos: The Oath in Greek Society (2007) and Virginity Revisited: Configurations of the Unpossessed Body (2007).
John Gibert is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is the author of Change of Mind in Greek Tragedy (1995), co‐author (with C. Collard and M.J. Cropp) of Euripides: Selected Fragmentary Plays II (2004), and has written articles, chapters, and reviews on Greek drama, religion, and philosophy. His current project is an edition with commentary of Euripides’ Ion for the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics.
Barbara Goff is Professor of Classics at the University of Reading. Her interests include Greek tragedy and its reception, classics in the postcolonial context, and women in the ancient world. Her most recent book is Your Secret Language: Classics in the British Colonies of West Africa (2013). She is also the author of Euripides: Trojan Women (2009) and co‐author, with Dr. Michael Simpson of the Department of English and Comparative Literature, Goldsmiths, University of London, of Crossroads in the Black Aegean: Oedipus, Antigone and Dramas of the African Diaspora (2007).
Owen E. Goslin was educated at the University of Chicago and the University of California, Los Angeles. He has taught at UCLA, Wellesley College, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He writes on various aspects of Greek poetry, and is currently working on a study of pity and supplication in Euripides for publication as a book.
Emma M. Griffiths is Lecturer in Classics at the University of Manchester. Her research interests are in myth and drama, with current work in progress on Menander, and the role of children in Greek tragedy.
Jennifer Clark Kosak is an Associate Professor of Classics at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. She is the author of Heroic Measures: Hippocratic Medicine in the Making of Euripidean Tragedy (2004) and various articles on both Greek tragedy and Greek medicine. Her current research projects include an examination of masculinity and illness Greek literature and an investigation into the role of metaphor in Greek medical ideas.
Anna A. Lamari is a Lecturer in Ancient Greek Literature at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She is the author of Narrative, Intertext, and Space in Euripides’ Phoenissae (2010) and editor of Reperformances of Drama in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries BC: Authors and Contexts (2015). She is currently working on a monograph on reperformances of tragedy in the classical period.
Vayos Liapis is Professor of Theatre Studies at the Open University of Cyprus. His latest book is A Commentary on Rhesus Attributed to Euripides (2012), and he is currently co‐editing Greek Tragedy after the Fifth Century and Adapting Greek Tragedy (both under contract with Cambridge University Press).
C.W. Marshall is Professor of Greek at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. His most recent book is The Structure and Performance of Euripides' Helen (2014).
Donald J. Mastronarde is Melpomene Professsor (Emeritus) of Classical Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Contact and Discontinuity: Some Conventions of Speech and Action on the Greek Tragic Stage (1979), The Art of Euripides: Dramatic Technique and Social Context (2010), and of the editions with commentaries Euripides. Phoenissae (1994) and Euripides. Medea (2002).
Laura K. McClure is Professor of Classics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She works in the areas of Greek drama, women and gender in the ancient world, and classical reception. Her books include Spoken Like a Woman: Speech and Gender in Athenian Drama (1999) and Courtesans at Table: Gender and Greek Literary Culture in Athenaeus (2003).
Melissa Mueller is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the author of Objects as Actors: Props and the Poetics of Performance in Greek Tragedy (2016) and articles on tragedy and Homer.
Sheila Murnaghan is the Allen Memorial Professor of Greek at the University of Pennsylvania. She works in the areas of Greek poetry, especially epic and drama; gender in classical culture; and classical reception. She is the author of Disguise and Recognition in the Odyssey (2nd edition 2011), and the co‐editor of Women and Slaves in Greco‐Roman Culture: Differential Equations (2001) and Odyssean Identities in Modern Cultures: The Journey Home (2014).
Patrick O’Sullivan is a graduate of Melbourne and Cambridge Universities and is Senior Lecturer at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, NZ. He has published on many aspects of Greek literature and cultural history and he is the co‐author of Euripides' Cyclops and Major Fragments of Greek Satyric Drama (with Chris Collard, Oxford, 2013).
Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz is Professor of Comparative Literature at Hamilton College. Her research and teaching center on ancient Greek tragedy, modern versions of the ancient plays, as well as nineteenth‐ and twentieth‐century fiction. She has written two books (Anxiety Veiled, 1993, and Greek Tragedy, 2008) and edited many others (most recently From Abortion to Pederasty: Addressing Difficult Topics in the Classics Classroom, 2014, and Sex in Antiquity, 2015). Her new research is on the subject of the friends Orestes and Pylades, and their relationship to the women of the House of Atreus.
Laurialan Reitzammer is Associate Professor of Classics at University of Colorado, Boulder. She is the author of The Athenian Adonia in Context: The Adonis Festival as Cultural Practice (2016) and has written articles for Journal of Hellenic Studies and Classical Antiquity.
Hanna M. Roisman is Arnold Bernhard Professor in Arts and Humanities at Colby College. In addition to articles and book chapters, she has published Loyalty in Early Greek Epic and Tragedy (1984), Nothing Is As It Seems: The Tragedy of the Implicit in Euripides’ Hippolytus (1999), Sophocles: Philoctetes (2005); and Sophocles: Electra (2008). She is editor of the Encyclopedia of Greek Tragedy (2014), and co‐author with F. Ahl of The Odyssey Re‐Formed (1996), and with C.A.E Luschnig of Euripides: Alcestis (commentary 2003), and Euripides: Electra (commentary 2010).
David Kawalko Roselli is Associate Professor of Classics/Ancient Studies at Scripps College (Claremont, CA); he is also affiliated with the Humanities Major. Roselli is the author of Theater of the People: Spectators and Society in Ancient Athens (2011) and has published articles on ancient tragedy and comedy, the economics of the theater, and the connections between drama and material culture. Currently Roselli is completing a book on some contradictions between class and politics in late fifth‐century tragic performance.
Ruth Scodel, educated at UC Berkeley and Harvard, is D.R. Shackleton Bailey Collegiate Professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Michigan. Her books include Credible Impossibilities: Conventions and Strategies of Verisimilitude in Homer and Greek Tragedy (1999), Listening to Homer (2002), Epic Facework: Self‐presentation and Social Interaction in Homer (2008 with Anja Bettenworth), Whither Quo Vadis? Sienkiewicz's Novel in Film and Television, and An Introduction to Greek Tragedy (2010).
Christopher Star is Associate Professor of Classics at Middlebury College. His publications include The Empire of the Self: Self‐Command and Political Speech in Seneca and Petronius (2012), and Seneca (2017), an introduction to his life, works, and reception.
Ian C. Storey is Emeritus Professor at Trent University in Ontario. He is author of A Guide to Ancient Greek Drama(2014, 2nd ed., with Arlene Allan), Eupolis: Poet of Old Comedy (2003), Euripides’ Suppliant Women (2008), and Fragments of Old Comedy (Loeb, 3 volumes, 2011).
Laura Swift is Lecturer in Classical Studies at the Open University. She is the author of Greek Tragedy: Themes and Contexts (2016), The Hidden Chorus: Echoes of Genre in Tragic Lyric (2010), Euripides’ Ion (2008), and the co‐editor of Greek Iambus and Elegy: New Approaches (2016). She is currently completing a commentary on the archaic poet Archilochus for Oxford University Press.
Isabelle Torrance is Associate Professor and Research Fellow at the Aarhus Institute for Advanced Studies in Denmark. She is author of Aeschylus: Seven Against Thebes (2007), Metapoetry in Euripides (2013) and co‐author (with Alan Sommerstein) of Oaths and Swearing in Ancient Greece (2014). She has also published numerous articles on Greek tragedy and its reception.
Daniel Turkeltaub is Assistant Professor of Classics at Santa Clara University. He has authored several articles on Homeric language, divine–human interactions, characterization, and humor. These include “The Syntax and Semantics of Homeric Glowing Eyes” (AJP 2005), “Perceiving Iliadic Gods” (HSCP 2008), “Penelope’s ‘Stout Hand’ and Odyssean Humor” (JHS 2014), and “Penelope’s Lion, θυμός‐Destroying Pain, and θυμoλέων Husband” (CJ 2015). He is currently juggling projects concerning mythic allusion and metapoetics in the Iliad and Euripides’ Hecuba.
Eirene Visvardi is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at Wesleyan University. Her work on drama, historiography, and collective emotion includes Emotion in Action: Thucydides and the Tragic Chorus (2015).
Nancy Worman is the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Classics at Barnard College and Columbia University. She is the author of articles and books on style and the body in Greek literature and culture, including Abusive Mouths in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 2008) and Landscape and the Spaces of Metaphor in Ancient Literary Theory and Criticism (Cambridge, 2015). She is currently working on a new project on “tragic bodies,” which explores the aesthetics and politics of embodiment in Greek tragedy and beyond.
Matthew Wright is Professor of Classics at the University of Exeter. He has published widely on Euripides and Greek drama, and his books include The Lost Plays of Greek Tragedy (2016), The Comedian as Critic (2012), Euripides: Orestes (2008), and Euripides’ Escape‐Tragedies (2005).
Acknowledgments
This volume has been several years in the making. Due to unforeseen circumstances, the original editor had to step down before his work could be finished. Several years after the original submission date, Haze Humbert, acquisitions editor at Wiley‐Blackwell, persuaded me to see the project through to completion. Profound thanks are owed first of all to the other thirty‐four contributors to the companion. They exhibited remarkable patience and good cheer despite the protracted publication schedule. I am grateful for their willingness to revisit, revise, and update essays written well over five years ago. Special thanks are owed to Hanna Roisman and Anna Lamari for agreeing to contribute excellent chapters on Electra and Phoenician Women at a very late stage, and to Armand D’Angour and Ian Storey for recommending them. As ever, Haze Humbert and everyone at Blackwell have been a delight to work with. Thanks also to Sweta Ravikumar and Sakthivel Kandaswamy for deftly overseeing the final production process. Finally, Robin Mitchell‐Boyask is to be thanked for his work in assembling an outstanding cast of contributors. Without his vision, this book would never have come to light.
Madison, WisconsinFebruary, 2016
List of Abbreviations
This list of abbreviations follows the conventions of the Oxford Classical Dictionary (third edition). They are used throughout the volume when referring to Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and their plays. These and a few other abbreviations of commonly cited works are below.
Aesch.
Aeschylus
Ag
.
Agamemnon
Cho
.
Choephori
or
Libation Bearers
Eum
.
Eumenides
DFA
3
A.W. Pickard‐Cambridge, rev. J. Gould and D.M. Lewis,
Dramatic Festivals of Athens
, 3rd ed. (1988)
Eur.
Euripides
Alc
.
Alcestis
Andr
.
Andromache
Bacch
.
Bacchae
Cyc
.
Cyclops
El
.
Electra
Erech
.
Erechtheus
Hec
.
Hecuba
Hel
.
Helen
Heracl
.
Heraclidae
or
Children of Heracles
HF
Hercules Furens
or
Madness of Heracles
Hipp
.
Hippolytus
IA
Iphigenia in Aulis
IT
Iphigenia in Tauris
Ion
Ion
Med
.
Medea
Or
.
Orestes
Phoen
.
Phoenissae
or
Phoenician Women
Rhes
.
Rhesus
Supp
.
Supplices
or
Suppliant Women
Tro
.
Troades
or
Trojan Women
FGrH
F. Jacoby,
Fragmente der griechischen Historiker
(1923–)
IG
Inscriptiones Graecae
(1873–)
Kannicht
Kannicht, R. (2004),
Fragmenta Tragicorum Graecorum
, vol. V: Euripides. Göttingen.
K‐A
R. Kassel and C. Austin,
Poetae Comici Graeci
, vol. 1 (1983), 2 (1991)
LIMC
Lexicon Iconigraphicum Mythologiae Classicae
(1981–)
PMG
D.L. Page,
Poetae Melici Graecae
(1962)
P.Oxy
Oxyrhynchus Papyri
(1898–)
Soph.
Sophocles
Aj
.
Ajax
Ant
.
Antigone
El
.
Electra
OC
Oedipus Coloneus
OT
Oedipus Tyrannus
Phil
.
Philoctetes
Trach
.
Trachiniae
or
Women of Trachis
TrGF
B. Snell, R. Kannicht, S. Radt (eds.)
Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta
, 4 vols. (1971–85), vol. 1
2
(1986)
PART IText, Author, and Tradition
CHAPTER 1Introduction
Laura K. McClure
Euripides has enjoyed a resurgence of interest in recent years, thanks to important publications on multiple fronts. The long‐awaited fifth volume of Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (Kannicht (2004)) makes available an updated and expanded version of the complete fragments of the poet, replacing an outmoded nineteenth‐century edition. The Loeb Classical Library recently added an eighth volume to its Euripides’ series, rendering for the first time an extensive collection of the fragments into English translation. A spate of commentaries on the plays and fragments have also appeared in the last two decades, introducing the poet’s work to a new generation of students of ancient Greek, including Medea (Mastronarde (2002)), Phoenissae (Mastronarde (2004)), Phaethon (Diggle (2004)), Alcestis (Parker (2007)), Helen (Allan (2010)) and Rhesus (Liapis (2012)). The recent publication of The Art of Euripides (Mastronarde (2010)), the first scholarly treatment of Euripides’ oeuvre to appear in almost three decades, offers a commendable overview of critical approaches to the poet and nuanced analyses of critical issues such as genre, dramatic structure, the Chorus, religion, rhetoric, gender, and reception across all of the extant plays. Collections of essays, such as Oxford Readings in Euripides (Mossman (2003)), have contributed contemporary perspectives on the poet’s work to the ongoing critical dialogue. And vibrant new translations of the plays continue to appear in rapid succession. Experimental translations such as Grief Lessons (Carson (2008)), which consists of evocative renderings of Heracles, Hecuba, Hippolytus, and Alcestis, convey the excitement of Euripides’ poetry while translations specifically geared for performance, such as Medea (Rayor (2013)), have helped to bring his plays to modern audiences. The Complete Euripides (Burian and Shapiro (2010–2011)) offers the general public contemporary critical introductions and notes to earlier translations of the plays. Even Grene and Lattimore’s iconic Complete Greek Tragedies series, without a doubt the most widely circulated twentieth‐century translations of the plays in English, has been recently revamped for today’s classroom (Griffith and Most (2013)). This flurry of scholarly and creative activity attests to the poet’s enduring relevance to the modern world.
This volume is the product of much of this recent work. Many of the essays draw on the texts, commentaries, and scholarship addressed above, as well as the vibrant scholarly dialogue on the poet engendered by conference papers and journal articles over the last two decades. Like the other companions in the Blackwell series, this one is intended for several audiences, from general readers, students and teachers, to the academic specialist. The companion as a genre has the advantage of bringing together a large number and variety of scholars at various stages of their careers all working on a single subject from a wide variety of perspectives. As a result, specific issues and themes begin to emerge across the chapters as central to our understanding of the poet and his meaning for our time. The individual chapters also operate on multiple levels. First, they offer summaries of important scholarship and methodologies, synopses of individual plays and the myths from which they borrow their plots, and conclude with suggestions for additional reading. Second, they do more than simply look backwards. Instead, they aim to develop original and provocative interpretations of the plays that in turn promise to open up future paths of inquiry. Finally, the individual chapters taken together contribute to a much larger conversation about the place of Euripides in our reception of the classical past and his value in articulating pressing contemporary concerns.
1 Euripides
Euripides' first play, Daughters of Pelias, a story from the Medea myth, was produced in 455 BCE at the annual theatrical festival of the City Dionysia just three years after Aeschylus’ acclaimed Oresteia, and thirteen years after Sophocles' first play in 468 BCE. Euripides was to compete against the latter poet for almost a half century. His last play, Bacchae, was produced just after his death in 407/6. Thus by the beginning of his career, the tragic genre had already reached a mature form and a stable foundation from which to experiment. His death, in turn, marked the end of this amazing period of literary history. Little is known of his life and much of the biographical information is unreliable as is so often the case with ancient authors (Scodel, chapter 3). Ancient scholars attributed 92 tragedies of which only 17 are extant (excluding the satyr play, Cyclops, and the play probably erroneously attributed to him, Rhesus). Fully 70 plays never reached the medieval manuscript tradition. But that is far more than for any other tragedian, thanks to the “happy accident” of the alphabetic plays (Mastronarde, chapter 2). (For comparison, only six authentic tragedies of Aeschylus and seven of Sophocles survive.) Despite 24 productions at the dramatic festivals, Euripides won only four first prizes, far fewer than his tragic colleagues.
More than any other ancient author, Euripides has suffered from distortions of literary criticism, biography, and anecdote. Indeed, a full account of his reception would more than fill one book (for good introductions, see Mastronarde (2010) 1–28; Michelini (1987) 3–51). Since antiquity, Euripidean tragedy has occasioned controversy. The comic poet Aristophanes, in plays such as Acharnians (425), Women of the Thesmophoria (411), and Frogs (405), portrays the poet as debasing the tragic genre and corrupting the morals of his spectators through his innovative lyrics, clever rhetoric, and penchant for sensationalist myth. Aristotle in his Poetics takes this criticism a step further, enumerating his dramaturgical defects, such as faulty characterization, irrelevant Choruses, piecemeal plots, and contrived endings, while at the same time upholding Sophocles as the tragic model. The Hellenistic scholars largely reiterated these flaws in their scholia on the plays and so it passed on.
Despite his negative critical reception, Euripides’ popularity rapidly eclipsed that of the other two tragedians after his death. His plays were regularly staged both at Athens and abroad as Greek drama rapidly expanded its audience throughout the Mediterranean in the fourth century. In addition, there were virtuoso performances of excerpts from the plays accompanied by new musical forms and dance. Fragments from both fourth‐century tragedy and Middle Comedy show the imprint of Euripides’ language and style, while the plot devices of New Comedy, such as recognition, rape, and exposure, and structural elements such as the prologue, clearly attest to the poet’s profound influence on later drama. By the Roman period, familiarity with Euripides served as the mark of the educated class. Roman rhetorical models, such as those of Quintilian, found Euripides more useful than Sophocles for students of oratory while incidents and speeches from his plays provided material for rhetorical exercises.
Ancient sources such as Aristotle, Quintilian, and the scholia influenced modern reception of Euripides, beginning in the sixteenth century. German romanticism propagated a form of classicism that sought aesthetic perfection in both literature and art. According to the Schlegel brothers, tragedy evolved from a primitive stage in Aeschylus and reached its ideal in Sophocles, only to decline in the hands of Euripides. This view followed Aristotle’s original criticisms and subsequently found an even more vitriolic outlet in Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy (1872), which identified the poet with a dying and decadent art form. Early twentieth century critical appraisals tended to follow suit, somewhat understandably, since the anomalies of Euripides’ technique—his lack of dramatic unity, fondness for rhetoric, political allusions, genre experimentation, mythic innovation, and problematic characters, namely, unmanly heroes and insubordinate women—set him apart from the other tragedians. Early stylistic and formal studies of Euripides represented a turning point in his reception. By elucidating aspects of language, dialogue, and dramatic structure, they moved the focus away from dramaturgical defects to an appreciation of his form and mastery of the complexities of tragic conventions.
2 New Approaches
In the last fifty years, there has been an important critical shift in scholarship on Euripides. Stylistic and formalist studies yielded to explorations of symbolic meanings and systems within the plays, informed by structuralist and semiotic theories. A second popular approach has broadly evolved from historicizing methods and concerns influenced by Marxist, feminist, cultural, and religious studies. These approaches have allowed new and enhanced attention to questions of politics, gender, and sexuality, and the construction of personal and social identity (Mastronarde (2010) 14–15). Deconstructionist readings have also helped to show how Euripides’ plays continually resist interpretation, exhibiting an openness of form, structure, and meaning that invites, indeed compels, ancient spectators and modern readers alike to determine their own perspectives on the play’s characters and actions. As evidenced in the following chapters, these new methodologies and concerns have profoundly affected the ways we view Euripides’ oeuvre and our construction of classical antiquity itself.
3 This Volume
The book is divided into seven sections. Parts I and V–VII cover a broad range of topics central to our understanding of Euripides. Parts II–IV consist of a series of individual chapters dedicated to the treatment of a single play, organized in chronological order (to the extent it can be determined). Part I, “Text, Author, and Tradition,” provides an overview of both historical and technical issues: who was Euripides and how has his work come down to us? How did his tragedy resemble and differ from that of the other two tragic poets? Mastronarde (Chapter 2) traces the history of the transmission of Euripides’ plays, from its original composition on papyrus scrolls to Hellenistic and Byzantine copies and finally to modern editions. Scodel (Chapter 3) surveys the evidence for the poet’s life as gleaned from the mostly unreliable ancient biographies and anecdotes, which describe him as a woman‐hating son of a vegetable‐selling mother, a painter‐turned poet who died torn apart by wild dogs. Gibert (Chapter 4) addresses the place of the poet in the Greek dramatic tradition as one of continuity and innovation that extended the range of meanings and interpretation of the tragic genre.
The three sections on individual plays are divided into earlier (438 to 416 BCE) and later (415 to 405 BCE) periods. Several leitmotifs recur in the discussions of individual plays that resonate with the broad overviews of form, structure, content, and reception addressed in the final chapters of the companion. One important strand of criticism addresses Euripides’ treatment of the emotions. Visvardi (Chapter 5), for example, explores how the poet deploys the contradictory emotions of pity and desire in Alcestis, linking them to the tragic and satiric genres to create a hybrid genre that plays with new possibilities of feeling. Ebott (Chapter 8) similarly takes up the portrayal of human emotions in Hippolytus, arguing that sympathy counteracts the destructive passions of Phaedra by bringing about the reconciliation of father and son. Marshall (Chapter 13) argues that Heracles constructs a new form of heroism, rejecting the gods in favor of a new emphasis on compassion.
Another prominent issue in this section is the interplay between the theater and Athenian political ideology. Goslin (Chapter 7) exposes the uneasy relationship between power and political idealism in Euripides’ unsettling play, Children of Heracles, while Turkeltaub (Chapter 10) draws a parallel between the war atrocities portrayed in Hecuba and contemporary anxieties about abuses of power and the possibility of objective morality in wartime. McClure (Chapter 11) grapples with the question of why Euripides’ assigns such a prominent role to mothers in his expression of political orthodoxy in Suppliant Women. Moving beyond politics, Swift (Chapter 6) addresses the challenge of Euripidean characterization in her analysis of his most complex and ambiguous character, Medea, whose portrayal continues to divide modern readers and audiences alike. Storey (Chapter 9) rescues Andromache from critical obscurity by elucidating how a repeated motif, that of a distressed character rescued unexpectedly, and theme, broken unions, link together the play’s three distinct movements. Roisman in turn (Chapter 12) considers the multiple ways that Electra destabilizes received mythic tradition, accepted social roles, and gender hierarchies.
A new emphasis on literary self‐consciousness, as expressed by intertextual allusion, mythic variation, and metatheatrical reference, emerges in discussions of some of the later plays included in Part III. Boedeker (Chapter 17) shows how in Euripides’ Helen unfulfilled expectations, dramaturgical anomalies, and the inversion of familiar tragic patterns create a pervasive atmosphere of uncertainty, thereby underscoring the limitations of human knowledge. Barker (Chapter 19) considers how Orestes participates in a double discourse by creating a disjunction between the events enacted onstage and mythic tradition, bringing into conflict the heroic and the contemporary. In Iphigeneia inAulis, the poet similarly confronts the problem of creating a new story within the confines of the mythic tradition and in the process lays bare the ways it call attention to the poet’s literary artifice (Torrance, Chapter 20).
Religion is also a critical focus in the later plays thanks to the prominence of gods, priestesses, and cultic aetiologies. Kosak (Chapter 15) explores the ambiguity of divine salvation in Iphigenia in Tauris as elusive, morally fraught, and impermanent. Griffiths (Chapter 16) addresses similar questions of divine morality in Ion and suggests how references to food and feasting might help counteract psychological suffering.
As in the early plays, there is a similar engagement with female characters and Choruses. Rabinowitz investigates how Trojan Women (Chapter 14) reinforces gender norms, arguing against its status as a feminist anti‐war tract, a view implicit in many modern performances. Reitzammer (Chapter 21) also focuses on Euripides’ representation of women in her discussion of Bacchae. She argues that the play problematizes the forms and meanings of Dionysus’ worship, and more generally, foreign cults at Athens, particularly their effect on women.
The fourth section, “Satyr, Spurious, and Fragmentary Plays,” serves as a kind of catch‐all for plays that depart in some significant way from the extant corpus. O’Sullivan (Chapter 22) considers the paradoxical characterization of the satyrs in Cyclops, the only complete surviving satyr play from antiquity, as encompassing a range of often contradictory identities, by turns playful, ironical, and even pathetic. Liapis’ reading of Rhesus (Chapter 23) convincingly argues that the play was not composed by Euripides but rather points to “a derivative concoction of a later innovator,” probably composed in the fourth century BCE. Collard (Chapter 24) examines the extant fragments, tracing their transmission from antiquity to the modern period and the outlining the process of reconstruction.
Part V, “Form, Structure, and Performance,” investigates core issues across a range of texts. Dubischar (Chapter 25) surveys the formal structures and narrative patterns common to Euripidean tragedy, arguing that the two must be seen as closely inter‐related. Roselli (Chapter 26) argues that Euripides’ tragic form must be considered in the context of performance and social change. In his view, the openness of his dramatic structure and its material effects on performance contributed to his rising popularity at the end of the fifth century. Focusing on another important aspect of tragic form, Murnaghan (Chapter 27) shows how divergent Euripidean Choruses could be, and the depth of the poet's engagement with choral form as a link to non‐dramatic poetic traditions and the origins of drama. Another aspect of form closely related to performance is the poet’s use of music, since productions of Greek tragedy were more akin to modern opera than theater. D’Angour (Chapter 28) examines both metrical and melodic aspects of Euripides’ tragedy, and the relation of melody to word‐pitches. Aristophanes’ parodies of Euripides’ musical style provides valuable insight into the only direct evidence we have of his melodic practice, a musical papyrus that preserves seven lines of choral song from Euripides’ Orestes accompanied by instrumental and vocal notation.
Part VI turns from formal matters to address Euripides’ engagement with contemporary intellectual, religious, and social issues. Dunn (Chapter 29) explores the ways in which Euripides might have contributed to the intellectual ferment of the late fifth century, including the spread of literacy, the development of specialized skills, such as rhetoric, and progressive new ideas about knowledge, culture, and human agency. Wright (Chapter 30) expands on the poet’s adaptation of myth found in the discussions of individual plays, showing how the poet exploits ambiguities and inconsistencies by contradicting his own earlier treatments of myth. This mythic self‐consciousness, in which characters seem aware that they are characters in a myth, aligns the poet with the philosophical tradition. Fletcher (Chapter 31) explores the varieties of religious experience depicted in Euripides, from representations of the gods, to instances of impiety, ritual practices—some spurious or perverted—and priestesses. Religious activities add a touch of realism while also shaping the dramatic action. Mueller (Chapter 32) traces the history of scholarship on women and gender in Euripides, and the critical methodologies they deploy, and then considers specific female characters in context, including heroic wives, vengeful mothers, female conspiracies, and how they create morally complicated situations with no clear answers.
The final portion of the volume considers the reception of Euripides’ plays, a topic that has attracted much scholarly attention in the past decade. This volume includes just four perspectives on how later authors and artists responded to the poet, starting with the comic poet, Aristophanes, and continuing up to the modern era. Worman (Chapter 33) looks at how the comic poet’s mockery of Euripides, especially his use of gendered innuendo, targets particular styles of speech associated with the sophists as polished and pliable. This portrait in turn initiates a set of literary‐critical conventions that draw on the body’s metynomies. Duncan (Chapter 34) examines the popularity of Euripides in the fourth century when his plays were regularly performed both at Athens and abroad, with a particular following in southern Italy, due to his plot elements featuring exotic locations, mad scenes, and controversial heroines. Star (Chapter 35) in turn explores how Seneca detaches Euripidean drama from its original civic and religious contexts and transforms it into a means of confronting the anxieties of the Roman Empire. Seneca’s engagement with Euripides’ Phoenician Women, Madness of Heracles, Trojan Women, Hippolytus, and Medea, was instrumental for the transmission of these plays into the Renaissance. Finally, Goff (Chapter 36) examines the meanings of Euripides for the modern era, focusing on contemporary productions both in the US and the UK. She shows how the so‐called problems in Euripidean dramaturgy gradually come to be viewed as strengths due not only to ideological shifts but also to a new turn toward performance. In this realm, the plays have attracted avant‐garde productions and theatrical practices that form an important part of our understanding of modernity.
4 Conclusion
The Euripides that emerges from these pages is the product of centuries of textual transmission, critical reception, and interpretation. Each culture and period brings to his work new concerns and finds new meanings relevant to their time. Whereas audiences and readers in the early twentieth century, influenced by the burgeoning field of psychology, found in the poet an emotional depth unparalleled by the other tragedians, so today Euripides speaks to our deepening anxieties about a deteriorating global political landscape and profound engagement with questions of personal and social identity. Each generation of readers remakes the poet according to their own time. As a poet “vital to how we understand the classical and its relevance within the twentieth century” (Goff, Chapter 36), Euripides continually compels us to reflect on our own engagement with the classical world.
WORKS CITED
Allan, W. (2010),
Euripides
: Helen. Cambridge.
Burian, P. and A. Shapiro (2010–2011),
The Complete Euripides
. 5 volumes. Oxford.
Carson, A. (2008),
Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides
. New York.
Collard, C. and M. Cropp (2001),
Euripides, Volume VIII: Oedipus, Chrysippus, and other Fragments
. Loeb Classical Library. Boston.
Diggle, J. (2004),
Euripides
: Phaethon. Cambridge.
Grene, D. and R. Lattimore (2013),
The Complete Greek
Tragedies, third edition. 9 volumes with revised or new translations, along with new introductions and textual notes to each play by M. Griffith and G. Most. Chicago.
Kannicht, R. (2004),
Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, Volume V: Euripides
. Göttingen.
Liapis, V. (2012),
A Commentary on the
Rhesus
attributed to Euripides
. Oxford.
Mastronarde, D. (2002),
Euripides
: Medea. Cambridge.
Mastronarde, D. (2004),
Euripides
: Phoenissae. Cambridge.
Mastronarde, D. (2010),
The Art of Euripides: Dramatic Technique and Social Context
. Cambridge.
Michelini, A. (1987),
Euripides and the Tragic Tradition
. Madison, WI.
Mossman, J. (ed.) (2003),
Oxford Readings in Euripides
. Oxford.
Parker, L.P.E. (2007),
Euripides
: Alcestis. Cambridge.
Rayor, D. (2013),
Euripides: A New Translation
. Cambridge.
