Euripides and the Poetics of Sorrow: Art, Gender, and Commemoration in <i>Alcestis, Hippolytus</i>, and <i>Hecuba</i>Duke University Press, 19.10.1993 - 313 Seiten Where is the pleasure in tragedy? This question, how suffering and sorrow become the stuff of aesthetic delight, is at the center of Charles Segal's new book, which collects and expands his recent explorations of Euripides' art. Alcestis, Hippolytus, and Hecuba, the three early plays interpreted here, are linked by common themes of violence, death, lamentation and mourning, and by their implicit definitions of male and female roles. Segal shows how these plays draw on ancient traditions of poetic and ritual commemoration, particularly epic song, and at the same time refashion these traditions into new forms. In place of the epic muse of martial glory, Euripides, Segal argues, evokes a muse of sorrows who transforms the suffering of individuals into a "common grief for all the citizens," a community of shared feeling in the theater. Like his predecessors in tragedy, Euripides believes death, more than any other event, exposes the deepest truth of human nature. Segal examines the revealing final moments in Alcestis, Hippolytus, and Hecuba, and discusses the playwright's use of these deaths--especially those of women--to question traditional values and the familiar definitions of male heroism. Focusing on gender, the affective dimension of tragedy, and ritual mourning and commemoration, Segal develops and extends his earlier work on Greek drama. The result deepens our understanding of Euripides' art and of tragedy itself. |
Inhalt
Euripides Muse of Sorrows and the Artifice of Tragic Pleasure | 13 |
Cold Delight Art Death and the Transgression of Genre | 37 |
Female Death and Male Tears | 51 |
Admetus Divided House Spatial Dichotomies and Gender Roles | 73 |
Language Signs and Gender | 89 |
Theater Ritual and Commemoration | 110 |
Confusion and Concealment Vision Hope and Tragic Knowledge | 136 |
Golden Armor and Servile Robes Heroism and Metamorphosis | 157 |
Violence and the Other Greek Female and Barbarian | 170 |
Law and Universals | 191 |
The Problem of the Gods | 214 |
Conclusion Euripides Songs of Sorrow | 227 |
Notes | 237 |
Bibliography | 283 |
303 | |
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Euripides and the Poetics of Sorrow: Art, Gender, and Commemoration in ... Charles Segal Eingeschränkte Leseprobe - 1993 |
Häufige Begriffe und Wortgruppen
Achilles Admetus Aeschylus Agamemnon Alcestis ambiguous Antigone Aphrodite Apollo Artemis Athenian Athens audience Bacchae barbarian body burial Cassandra chorus chorus's civic Clytaemnestra commemoration concealment contrast death divine dramatic emotional epic especially Euripides father female frag funeral gender goddess gods Greek tragedy grief Hades Hecuba Helen Heracles heroic heroism hidden Hippolytus Homeric honor human Iliad Iphigeneia Iphigeneia in Tauris ironies justice lament language lines Loraux male marriage masculine Medea moral motif mourning murderous Muse myth Neoptolemus nomos Notes to Chapter Odysseus Oedipus paradoxical passage passim passion Phaedra play play's Poetics of Sorrow polis Polydorus Polymestor Polyxena prologue protagonists realm revenge ripides rites ritual role sacrifice scene Segal sexual shame song Sophocles space speech statue suffering Suppliants tears theater Theseus Thracian Thucydides tion Trachiniae traditional tragedy's tragic Trojan Women University Press Vernant violence warrior weeping woman words Zeitlin καὶ
Beliebte Passagen
Seite 7 - Horatio, what a wounded name, Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me ? If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity a while, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain. To tell my story.
Seite 7 - I but time — as this fell sergeant, death, Is strict in his arrest — O, I could tell you — But let it be. Horatio, I am dead ; Thou livest ; report me and my cause aright To the Unsatisfied.
Seite 1 - On Not Knowing Greek," in The Common Reader, First Series (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1925), 38.