Euripides and the Poetics of Sorrow

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.

ISBN 082231360X   Pages 328 ISBN13 9780822313601 (What's this?)   Volumes 001 Publisher Duke University Press   Weight (grammes) 676 Imprint Duke University Press   Published in North Carolina Format Hardback   Height (mm) 230 Publication date 15 Jun 1993   Width (mm) 155 Library of Congress PA3978.S5   Spine width (mm) 25 DEWEY 882.01   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Professional / Scholarly, General DEWEY edition DC20

		Preface
1		Introduction		3
2		Euripides' Muse of Sorrows and the Artifice of Tragic Pleasure		13
		Alcestis
3		Cold Delight: Art, Death, and Transgression of Genre		37
4		Female Death and Male Tears		51
5		Admetus' Divided House: Spatial Dichotomies and Gender Roles		73
		Hippolytus
6		Language, Signs, and Gender		89
7		Theater, Ritual, and Commemoration		110
8		Confusion and Concealment: Vision, Hope, and Tragic Knowledge		136
		Hecuba
9		Golden Armor and Servile Robes: Heroism and Metamorphosis		157
10		Violence and the Other: Greek, Female, and Barbarian		170
11		Law and Universals		191
12		The Problem of the Gods		214
13		Conclusion: Euripides' Songs of Sorrow		227
		Notes		237
		Bibliography		283
		Index		303

"The essays are uniformly first rate; they advance the understanding of the plays in detail and in overall perspective; and they address deep, complex questions with a critical sophistication that, for this age, shows itself to be remarkably lucid and sane. I was delighted to learn new things about plays I knew very well, and to reexamine them in a new light."--Kenneth J. Reckford, University of North Carolina

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