Metapoetry In Euripides

A detailed study of the self-conscious narrative devices within Euripidean drama and how these are interwoven with issues of thematic importance, social, theological, or political. Torrance argues that Euripides employed a complex system of metapoetic strategies in order to draw the audience's attention to the novelty of his compositions.

Metapoetry in Euripides is the first detailed study of the self-conscious literary devices applied within Euripidean drama and how these are interwoven with issues of thematic importance, whether social, theological, or political. In the volume, Torrance argues that Euripides employed a complex system of metapoetic strategies in order to draw the audience's attention to the novelty of his compositions. The metapoetic strategies discussed include intertextual allusions to earlier poetic texts (especially to Homer, Aeschylus and Sophocles) which are often developed around unusual and memorable language or imagery, deployment of recognizable trigger words referring to plot construction, novelties or secondary status, and self-conscious references to fiction implied through allusion to writing. Torrance also looks at and compares metapoetic techniques used in tragedy, satyr-drama, and old comedy to demonstrate that the Greek tragedians commonly exploited metapoetic strategies, and that metapoetry is more pervasive in Euripides than in the other tragedians. While Euripides shares some metapoetic techniques with old comedy, these remain implicit in his tragedies (but not in his satyr-dramas).

Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides are often described as the greatest tragedians of the ancient world. Of these three pivotal founders of modern drama, Euripides is characterized as the interloper and the innovator: the man who put tragic verse into the mouths of slaves, women and the socially inferior in order to address vital social issues such as sex, class and gender relations. It is perhaps little wonder that his work should find such resonance in the modern day. In this concise introduction, Isabelle Torrance engages with the thematic, cultural and scholarly difficulties that surround his plays to demonstrate why Euripides remains a figure of perennial relevance. Addressing here issues of social context, performance theory, fifth-century philosophy and religion, textual criticism and reception, the author presents an astute and attractively-written guide to the Euripidean corpus – from the widely read and celebrated Medea to the lesser-known and deeply ambiguous Alcestis.

Ion is one of Euripides' most appealing and inventive plays. With its story of an anonymous temple slave discovered to be the son of Apollo and Creusa, an Athenian princess, it is a rare example of Athenian myth dramatized for the Athenian stage. It explores the Delphic Oracle and Greek piety; the Athenian ideology of autochthony and empire; and the tragic suffering and longing of the mythical foundling and his mother, whose experiences are represented uniquely in surviving Greek literature. The plot anticipates later Greek comedy, while the recognition scene builds on a tradition founded by Homer's Odyssey and Aeschylus' Oresteia. The introduction sets out the main issues in interpretation and discusses the play's contexts in myth, religion, law, politics, and society. By attending to language, style, meter, and dramatic technique, this edition with its detailed commentary makes Ion accessible to students, scholars, and readers of Greek at all levels.

Euripides and the Boundaries of the Human presents the first single-volume reading in nearly fifty years of all of Euripides’ surviving plays. Rather than examining one or a handful of dramas in monograph or article form, Mark Ringer insists on the thematic and stylistic parallels that unite a diverse canon of works. Euripides is often referred to as the most modern of the three Ancient Greek tragedians, but in what way can the work of this fifth-century B.C. artist be claimed as modern? The multi-layered presentation of character is new within the context of Athenian Tragedy. The plays also reveal equal concern with the preservation and re-vitalization of tradition, especially with respect to the portrayal of the Olympian gods. Euripidean drama upholds tradition just as vigorously as it posits a new kind of realism in character portrayal in the Ancient Theatre. Euripidean drama fuses what was old with what was new in order to revitalize and perpetuate the art of tragedy. This book will be of interest to professionals and students in the fields of classics, Greek drama in translation or in the original Greek, theater studies, comparative literature, tragedy, and religion.

This new introduction to Euripides' fascinating interpretation of the story of Electra and her brother Orestes emphasizes its theatricality, showing how captivating the play remains to this day. Electra poses many challenges for those drawn to Greek tragedy – students, scholars, actors, directors, stage designers, readers and audiences. Rush Rehm addresses the most important questions about the play: its shift in tone between tragedy and humour; why Euripides arranged the plot as he did; issues of class and gender; the credibility of the gods and heroes, and the power of the myths that keep their stories alive. A series of concise and engaging chapters explore the functions of the characters and chorus, and how their roles change over the course of the play; the language and imagery that affects the audience's response to the events on stage; the themes at work in the tragedy, and how Euripides forges them into a coherent theatrical experience; the later reception of the play, and how an array of writers, directors and filmmakers have interpreted the original. Euripides' Electra has much to say to us in our contemporary world. This thorough, richly informed introduction challenges our understanding of what Greek tragedy was and what it can offer modern theatre, perhaps its most valuable legacy.

Explores Euripides' use of monody, or solo actor's song, to express emotion and develop character in his late tragedies.