Euripides’ Revolution under Cover: An Essay

Description

In this provocative book, Pietro Pucci explores what he sees as Euripides's revolutionary literary art. While scholars have long pointed to subversive elements in Euripides’s plays, Pucci goes a step further in identifying a Euripidean program of enlightened thought enacted through carefully wrought textual strategies. The driving force behind this program is Euripides’s desire to subvert the traditional anthropomorphic view of the Greek gods—a belief system that in his view strips human beings of their independence and ability to act wisely and justly. Instead of fatuous religious beliefs, Athenians need the wisdom and the strength to navigate the challenges and difficulties of life.Throughout his lifetime, Euripides found himself the target of intense criticism and ridicule. He was accused of promoting new ideas that were considered destructive. Like his contemporary, Socrates, he was considered a corrupting influence. No wonder, then, that Euripides had to carry out his revolution "under cover." Pucci lays out the various ways the playwright skillfully inserted his philosophical principles into the text through innovative strategies of plot development, language and composition, and production techniques that subverted the traditionally staged anthropomorphic gods. Frontmatter......Page 1 Contents......Page 5 Acknowledgments......Page 7 1. Euripides’s Poetic Game and Law of Composition......Page 11 2. Anthropomorphism......Page 14 3. The Protection of the Self and the Role of Sophia......Page 24 4. Some Connotations of Sophia......Page 30 5. Polyneices’s Truth......Page 40 6. Hecuba’s Rhetoric......Page 42 7. Eros in Euripides’s Poetics: Sex as the Cause of the Trojan War......Page 44 8. The Lewd Gaze of the Eye......Page 53 9. The Power of Love: Who Is Aphrodite?......Page 56 10. Phaedra......Page 59 11. Hermione: The Andromache......Page 71 12. Female Victims of War: The Troades......Page 81 13. The Survival in Poetry......Page 89 14. Figures of Metalepsis: The Invention of “Literature”......Page 92 15. The Failure of Politics in Euripides’s Poetics: Politics in the Suppliant Women......Page 105 16. Political Philosophy: A Universal Program of Peace and Progress......Page 113 17. How to Deliberate a War......Page 122 18. Democracy and Monarchy......Page 131 19. The Battle......Page 135 20. The Rescue of the Corpses......Page 138 21. Return to Arms......Page 148 22. The Polis’s Loss of Control and Authority......Page 152 23. The Bacchants’ Gospel and the Greek City......Page 164 24. Pentheus and Teiresias......Page 168 25. Dionysus’s Revenge: First Round......Page 173 26. Revenge Prepares Its Murderous Weapon......Page 179 27. Initiation and Sacrifice......Page 186 28. Victory and Defeat......Page 195 29. Euripides’s Poetry......Page 201 Bibliography......Page 215 Subject Index......Page 227 Index Locorum......Page 235