Euripides and the Poetics of Sorrow: Art, Gender, and Commemoration in <i>Alcestis, Hippolytus</i>, and <i>Hecuba</i>

Predný obal
Duke University Press, 19. 10. 1993 - 313 strán (strany)
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.
 

Obsah

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
Index
303
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Strana 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.
Strana 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.
Strana 1 - On Not Knowing Greek," in The Common Reader, First Series (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1925), 38.

O tomto autorovi (1993)

Charles Segal is Professor of Greek and Latin at Harvard University. He is the author of numerous books, including Lucretius on Death and Anxiety, Orpheus: The Myth of the Poet, and Interpreting Greek Tragedy: Myth, Poetry, Text.

Bibliografické informácie