Female characters Euripides

Helléniste remarquable, Jean Racine se distingue de tous ses contemporains, et de Corneille en particulier, par le retour incessant à la tragédie grecque. C'est en traduisant Aristote, en annotant les pièces athéniennes et en adaptant Euripide sur scène, qu'il retrouve le secret du « héros tragique », ni tout à fait coupable ni tout à fait innocent. En bousculant les codes dramaturgiques de l'époque, Racine fera de sa découverte le symbole d'une « révolution » dans l'art de fabriquer des tragédies. L'ouvrage se propose de reconstruire l'évolution de cette « révolution racinienne », en explorant son origine grecque et ses manifestations les plus explicites, à savoir les quatre pièces inspirées d'Euripide : La Thébaïde, Andromaque, Iphigénie et Phèdre. La lecture croisée de l'ensemble des sources permet de décoder le palimpseste racinien en laissant émerger le rôle crucial joué par le texte euripidéen sous-jacent. Pourtant, en véritable caméléon, Jean Racine n'hésitera pas à sacrifier son souffleur athénien et sa propre révolution sur l'autel du succès.
http://www.droz.org/france/fr/6509-9782600057974.html

Courtney J. P. Friesen explores shifting boundaries of ancient religions by way of the reception of a popular tragedy, Euripides’ Bacchae . As a play staging political crises provoked by the arrival of the “foreign” god Dionysus and his ecstatic cult, audiences and readers found resonances with their own cultural moments. This dramatic deity became emblematic of exuberant and liberating spirituality and, at the same time, a symbol of imperial conquest. Thus, readings of the Bacchae frequently foreground conflicts between religious autonomy and political authority, and between ethnic diversity and social cohesion. This cross-disciplinary study traces appropriations and evocations of this drama ranging from the fifth century BCE through Byzantium not only among “pagans” but also Jews and Christians. Writers variously articulated their religious visions over against Dionysus, often while paradoxically adopting the god’s language and symbols. Consequently, imitation and emulation are at times indistinguishable from polemics and subversion.

Nel contesto del pensiero greco antico, la transizione fra età arcaica e classica (VI-V sec. a.C.) fu un momento di notevole importanza per l'inizio di un'approfondita riflessione sulla follia, soprattutto alla luce di una sua concettualizzazione come "disturbo mentale". Le "Baccanti" di Euripide possono fornire numerose chiavi di lettura per intendere l'approccio greco alla follia da un punto di vista non solo terapeutico, ma anche culturale, sociale e religioso.

Contemporary scholars usually associate actors’ song with extremely heightened emotion. Solo songs in tragedy, and especially in Euripides, are frequently attributed to female characters. In this article I examine three instances where a female character (Medea, Phaedra and Hermione) who sings is juxtaposed with another female character, a Nurse, who speaks or chants. Nurses attempt to restrain the songs of their mistresses and, usually, encourage them to articulate their thoughts in a more rational way. The excessive emotions, unrealistic fears and uncontrolled desires expressed by song are perceived by the Nurses as a threat to the lives of their mistresses. These emotions also pose a serious threat to the survival of the oikos. Nurses encourage these singing females to be more rational and attempt to save their lives, that is, they serve a consolatory function within the play; nevertheless, in this tragic environment both self-absorbed singing and dialogue lead to disaster.

Ανοικτό Πανεπιστήμιο Κύπρου / Σχολή Ανθρωπιστικών και Κοινωνικών Επιστημών. Μεταπτυχιακό Πρόγραμμα Σπουδών: “Ελληνική Γλώσσα και Λογοτεχνία”. Θεματική Ενότητα: ΕΓΛ 51: «Θεωρητικές Προσεγγίσεις στην Αρχαία Ελληνική Λογοτεχνία». Τμήμα Αθήνας (ATH1). Διδάσκουσα – Συντονίστρια ΕΓΛ 51 (ATH1): Ζαχαρούλα Πετράκη.
Εργασία 1η – Τίτλος: «Επισήμανση καίριων υφολογικών στοιχείων και σχολιασμός της λειτουργίας τους στο Δεύτερο Επεισόδιο της “Μήδειας” του Ευριπίδη (στ. 446 – 626)».

Open University of Cyprus / Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. M.A. Program in Greek Linguistics and Literature. Module EGL 51: «Theoretical Approaches in Ancient Greek Literature». Athens’ Section (ATH1). Professor – Moderator EGL 51 (ATH1): Zacharoula Petraki.
Paper 1 – Title: «Basic elements of style and commentaries about their function in the Second Episode of Euripides’ “Medea” (446–626)».

This essay challenges dominant interpretations of Foucault’s lectures on parrhesia as affirming an ethical, non-political conception of truth-telling. I read the lectures instead as depicting truth-telling as an always political predicament: of havingto appear distant from power (to achieve credibility), while also having to partake insome sense of political power (to render one’s truth significant). Read in this way, Foucault’s lectures help us to understand and address the disputed politicality of truth-telling – over who counts as a truth-teller, and what counts as the truth – that his ethical interpreters tend to neglect. Yet the essay also shows that Foucault’s depiction of thepredicament of truth-tellers is problematically gendered: focused on the masculine problem of moving in and out of the public sphere, rather than on the experience of the dispossessed, who are excluded from political power altogether. The essay mobilizes an alternative reading of one of Foucault’s key texts – Euripides’ Ion – to draw out an alternative, more democratic model of the predicament of truth-telling: of having to constitute power that can lend significant to truth-telling, while speaking from a position of powerlessness.

Analysis of Robinson Jeffers’strategies in recreating Medea. The drama, “freely adapted from Euripides”, was written on demand of the actress Judith Andersen, and was first performed at the National Theatre in New York during the 1947/8 season. Jeffers' modus operandi has several points of contact with the so-called 'artistic translations' by Latin tragedians from the third century B.C, all the more that two parallel circumstances appear to us:  the “discovery” of the Attic masterpieces (repositories of centuries-old literary tradition, from Homer on) made by a culturally young, open-minded audience (the public of ancient Rome and the public on Broadway, "an intelligent but not learned audience", as Jeffers wrote); the fact that both Ennius and Jeffers were (although in a different way) “poetae docti”, with a deep knowledge of the language and cultural underground of their hypotexts, and therefore they were able to act as competent mediators between Euripides and a non-specialist public. Moreover, like ancient Latin dramatists, Jeffers practises the so-called contaminatio-technique (with interpolations from Seneca, Homer, and lyric poetry of Archaic period).

Hecuba (Hekabe), once considered one of Euripides’ most successful tragedies – iure principem locum tenet, ‘it deservedly holds the pride of place’, according to its Renaissance editor – was relegated to the margins of literary attention by the scathing judgments of Romantic critics, who found fault with – among other things – its bipartite structure. It did not make its comeback until the 20th century, when it was identified as an ‘absolute tragedy’, possibly the darkest of the preserved Euripidean plays. Contemporary scholarship notes that the action of Hecuba is subtly welded together by the heroine’s search for justice, while the world around her neglects the basic postulates of Greek ethics, ordered by the reciprocity principle – concepts such as ξενία, ‘hospitality shown to a guest’, αἰδώς, a difficult term to translate, denoting ‘shame’, ‘reverence’, or ‘awe’, χάρις, ‘gratitude’ or ‘favour’, and ἱκετεία, ‘supplication’. Realising that nobody will help her obtain justice, Hecuba decides to find it on her own, taking brutal revenge on the ‘head-for-an-eye’ principle. While still acceptable by Athenian standards, this revenge finally makes the former Trojan queen more callous even than her tormentors: having lost all she had, she loses herself as well.

Thanks to the 4th century Athenian orator Lycurgus a relatively long passage from Euripides' lost Erechtheus is known to us. It's a patriotic speech of Praxithea the queen who is willing to sacrifice her daughter for the rescue of the city. The bewildering argumentation of Praxithea, which resembles strongly the funerary orations, has led scholars either to interpret it as a demonstration of exemplary patriotism, or to view it as an ironic mockery of Athenian imperialist propaganda. I argue that neither of these interpretations reckons sufficiently with two important aspects of the play: the denouement of the plot and the circumstances of the performance. By way of analyzing these two points I suggest that Euripides' message is neither straightforward nor ironic. Rather, the presentation of a radically patriotic woman on the stage makes the audience reflect on their attitude towards their city and see their role as citizens problematic.

The focus on this paper is the presentation of the Spanish Jesuit Manuel Lassala Sangermán as
a neoclassical dramatist and author of melodrama in the context of Italian settecento. My paper
presents and provides a brief analysis of one of his five scene liriche: Andromaca. Furthermore,
I shall examine its classical and contemporary sources.

ALMOST ALL THE TEXTS THAT HAVE reached us from ancient Greece were created not for solitary reading but for performance. In other words, they were envisaged as communications between a speaker and audience, in a concrete setting, framed by the conventions of a particular genre. In many cases, this external or performative context of utterance is complemented by an inner or dramatic context—the fictitious situation in which imaginary persons are speaking, listening, and so on. In this article, I want to look at the difference both these contexts make, individually and together, to our interpretation of the argument that I call the divine defense: the claim that one is not responsible for one’s actions if they were caused by a god. I shall focus on the three principal occasions when this argument is used to exonerate Helen of Troy. In Euripides’ Trojan Women, Helen herself blames Aphrodite for her own elopement (940–41, 948–50). Her speech is routinely labelled “sophistic,” in part because a similar argument is made on her behalf by the bona fide sophist Gorgias, in his Encomium of Helen. Yet the argument is not “sophistic” as such. It appears in its essentials as early as Homer, when Priam reassures Helen that he blames the gods, not her, for causing the Trojan War (Il. 3.164–65). Despite differences in verbal expression and detail, the logical content of these three iterations of the argument is basically the same: Helen is not guilty because her elopement was caused by the gods, or more specifically, by Aphrodite. The gods were, of course, heavily involved in Helen’s elopement. Zeus begot her specifically to make men fight over her beauty and, at the Judgment of Paris, Aphrodite offered “marriage to Helen” as a bribe. Yet our sources agree that she left her husband willingly, driven by her own desire. In such cases, divine influence on human behavior does not normally remove human responsibility. Thanks to the overwhelming power of Aphrodite and her son Eros, sexual misdeeds put considerable pressure on this fundamental outlook (often called

Includes: “Eurípides: Autor y personae”, by F. Javier Campos Daroca (pp. I-XII) ; PART I: PERSONAS. “Eurípides músico. ‘Antíope’ y la reescritura de los mitos musicales”, by Juan Luis López Cruces (pp. 3-37); “Eurípides crítico social”, by Lucía Romero Mariscal (pp. 39-83); “KRATÔN NOMOS: La ley en el pensamiento de Eurípides”, by Mariano Nava Contreras (pp. 85-104); “Eurípides, reportero de guerra”, by Carmen Isabel Leal Soares (pp. 105-131); “Eurípides misógino”, by María de Fátima Sousa Silva (pp. 133-190); “Eurípides ‘physiológos’ ”, by Lorenzo Miletti (pp. 191- 218); PART 2: VIDAS. “Vida y Vidas de Eurípides”, by F. Javier Campos Daroca (pp. 221-252; “Traducción de las Vidas de Eurípides”, by F. Javier Campos Daroca, Lucía P Romero Mariscal and F. Javier García González (pp. 253-291).