Euripides

We start with a theatre, and two moments of astonishing gender transgression. One happened in a theatre on a hillside in the center of Athens on a spring day in late March of 431 BCE. The second happened there sixteen years later, in March of 415 BCE. Both took place as the audience watched tragedies by the poet Euripides. These plays were about gendered oppression, sexual pain, rape, slavery and the horrors of war.

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

Euripides’ Hecuba is originally performed in the ancient theatre of Dionysus around 425 BC, during the Peloponnesian war. The moral and political corruption of the Athenian society at the time is strikingly reflected onto the ethos of Hecuba’s chaotic dramatic world. Euripides’ relocation of the events concluding the Trojan War from Troy to Thrace is counted among the most bold and successful Euripidean mythic innovations of the specific play. Thrace, a place charged with heavily negative associations in his contemporary Greek consciousness, functions as the most suitable context within which to set Hecuba’s drama and onto which to project Euripides’ problematization on the grim consequences of war onto the human identity. What is more, Euripides’ use of his actors’ skeue (costume and accoutrements) and hypocrisis
(gesture, movement) further promotes that theme as central in the play.
The Cypriot director Magdalena Zira chooses to restage Euripides’ play for a modern performance at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Experimental Theatre Wing, in 2006. Her principal aim is to use Euripides’ play as a  political allegory for the contemporary war in Iraq. Her own directing gestures configuring the opsis of her adaptation are the key subject matter of the analysis. By focusing on the mechanics of dramatic space, the actors’ skeue, and hypocrisis, the analysis exemplifies the ways in
which the different opseis of Hecuba function as a mirror of the socio-political context of each performance and as vehicles of the strong political message of their creator (ancient and modern respectively). In the process, another fundamental feature of the ancient (and particularly Euripidean) theatre and of its modern reception is reaffirmed: its innate nature as political praxis.

ABSTRACT: This article considers how the erotics of the real, of Bataille, might contribute to the ethics of the real, of Lacan, and also to the genealogy of morals disclosed by Nietzsche. Combining Bataille’s anthropological understanding of a taboo-transgression correlation with Lacan’s analytic episteme of the real, symbolic, and imaginary, I trace a recessive loss of the erotic function of being through the Platonic, Christian, and Modern Science epochs that Nietzsche’s revaluations of the Good also centre on. What emerges is the possibility that like Bataille, figuratively speaking, the brothels of Paris should become our churches again.

This article offers a new interpretation of Athenian tragedy, in which the poets competed for their audience's favour by constructing stories in which the protagonists suffer and die because they act within a world which lacks the institutional compensations of which fifth-century Athenians were so proud. Far from being a subversive or apolitical art form (the most popular current poles of scholarly interpretation), Athenian tragedy was heavily and positively involved in its contemporary social and political discourse.

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  Ο Διόνυσος, υιός του θεού Δία και της θνητής Σεμέλης —θεός κι ο ίδιος απ' τη σύλληψη και τη γέννησή του— καταφθάνει στην πόλη των Θηβών απ' την Ασία, συνοδευόμενος από τις «Βάκχες», τις ακολούθους του. Αυτές, ενδεδυμένες με δέρματα ελαφιών («νεβρίδες») και κρατώντας στα χέρια τους θύρσο (κοντάρι τυλιγμένο με κισσό, σύμβολο και φορέα της θεϊκής δύναμης του Διονύσου), βιώνουν την έκσταση που τους προκαλεί η μέθεξη στα ιερά μυστήρια του θεού, ενόσω βρίσκονται σε κατάσταση ένθεης μανίας —έχοντας απελευθερώσει τον νου τους απ' τα δεσμά και τους κανόνες των εγκοσμίων, και έχοντας συνενωθεί σ' ένα σώμα και σε μια ψυχή, η οποία πάλλεται στον ρυθμό των τυμπάνων και δονείται απ' το γλυκό κελάηδημα των φρυγικών αυλών. Σκοπός του θεού είναι να μυήσει τη Θήβα, πόλη της καταγωγής του, πρώτη ανάμεσα σ' όλη την Ελλάδα στη νέα αυτή ελευθεριάζουσα λατρεία.

  Με το τελευταίο του έργο, τις «Βάκχες», ο Ευριπίδης εισάγει «καινά δαιμόνια» στη γνωσιολογία της αττικής Τραγωδίας αλλά και στη δομή της θεατρικής της πράξης, προσπαθώντας ταυτοχρόνως να τα εισαγάγει και στον τρόπο αντίληψης και σκέψης των θεατών· περισσότερο, ίσως, για να τους προειδοποιήσει, παρά για να τους μεταρρυθμίσει γνωσιολογικώς. Οι «Βάκχες» αποτελούν ίσως περισσότερο μια πολιτισμική κραυγή αγωνίας και μια ποιητική διαμαρτυρία απέναντι στο διαφαινόμενο τέλος της ίδιας της αττικής Τραγωδίας, της αθηναϊκής δημοκρατίας και του κλασικού ελληνισμού, και λιγότερο ένα αμιγώς διδακτικό περιεχόμενο με σκοπό τη νοητική αυτοβελτίωση εκάστου εκ των θεατών. Ο Ευριπίδης νεωτερίζει, ανασκευάζοντας τους μηχανισμούς προσληψιμότητας (και, εν μέρει, και αισθητικής) της αρχαίας αττικής Τραγωδίας· την «καταργεί» ως διακριτό είδος ποιητικής και θεατρικής δημιουργίας και την «ενταφιάζει» (ίσως προσδοκώντας μια πιθανή επαναγέννεσή της στο μέλλον, με τρόπο παρόμοιο με τη διπλή γένεση του Διονύσου, του δημιουργού του θεάτρου), λίγο μόλις καιρό πριν κι ο ίδιος πεθάνει με τρόπο παρόμοιο με αυτόν του πρωταγωνιστή του δράματος.

  Tο βιβλίο περιλαμβάνει το αρχικό (μερικώς ανακατασκευασμένο) αρχαίο κείμενο των "Βακχών", σε έμμετρη μετάφραση στα νέα ελληνικά. Η μετάφραση συνοδεύεται από τον σχολιασμό ενός επιλεγμένου αριθμού στίχων και από έναν εκτενή Πρόλογο —στον οποίο αναλύονται οι «Βάκχες» και το περιεχόμενό τους, συμπεριλαμβανομένης μιας σύνθετης ερμηνευτικής θέωρησης της τραγωδίας.

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  The god Dionysus —son of Zeus and of the mortal woman Semele— arrives in the city of Thebes from Asia, impersonating a mortal and accompanied by the "Bacchae", his female followers. The latter, clad in deer skins and holding in their hands the "thyrsus" (a wooden staff wrapped in ivy, the symbol and the carrier of the divine power of Dionysus), experience the ecstasy by participating in the sacred mysteries of the god Dionysus, while being at the same time in a state of divine madness —after having freed their mind from the worldly bonds and rules, united in one body and one soul; their body pulsating in the rhythm of the drums, and vibrating to the sweet warbling of the Phrygian flutes. The purpose of Dionysus is to initiate Thebes, his natal city, first among all of Greece, in his new liberating cult.

  In his last work, the "Bacchae", Euripides introduces novelties in the epistemology of the Attic Tragedy as well as in the structure of its theatrical representation; at the same time, he tries to introduce these novelties in the way of perception and thinking of the spectators (perhaps, more in an effort to warn them, rather than to reform their mindset). The "Bacchae" can be considered more as a cultural cry of agony as well as a poetic protest against the looming end of the Attic Tragedy itself, the end of the Athenian democracy and the end of the classical Hellenism, and less as a purely didactic content which aims at the intellectual self-improvement of the spectators. Euripides brutally modernizes and reconstructs the mechanisms of the theatrical receptivity (and, in part, of the aesthetics) of the ancient Attic Tragedy; he "abolishes" it as a distinct kind of poetic and theatrical creation, and "buries" it (perhaps anticipating its possible rebirth in the future, in a manner similar to the double birth of Dionysus, the creator of the theater), shortly before he himself dies, in a manner similar to that of the protagonist of the drama.

  This book includes the original (partially reconstructed) ancient text of the "Bacchae", translated side-by-side in modern greek, in verse. The translation is accompanied by commentary on a selected number of verses, and by an extensive Prologue (both in modern greek) —in which the "Bacchae" and its contents are analyzed, including a composite interpretive view of the tragedy.

Tosco, Alessandro, “‘To repay grace is no madness’: fathers sacrificing sons in Chinese dramas of the Yuan Dynasty”, in Italian Association for Chinese Studies. Selected Papers 3, edited by E. Giunipero & C. Piccinini, Cafoscarina, Venezia, 2020, pp. 168-182. ISBN: 9788875434755.

El texto es un espacio de encuentro donde lectores, discursos y formaciones simbólicas confluyen en la producción de sentidos. Desde este punto de vista, toda lectura o escritura puede ser entendida como traducción. Considerar la inserción de un determinado motivo en un cuerpo poético no sólo plantea problemas en el nivel de las prioridades, de las fuentes y de la originalidad, sino que abre un espacio donde las coincidencias formales se resignifican y pueden ser interpretadas, no ya como influencias subsidiarias o proyecciones, sino como un diálogo intercultural propiciado por la crítica. En este trabajo, se analizan las prácticas rituales y la imaginería del motivo de la danza frenética de la montaña en Bacantes de Eurípides y en “Las súplicas de la doncella” de Yasunari Kawabata, a partir de los presupuestos teórico-metodológicos de la Transtextualidad y de la Literatura Comparada. Dentro de esta propuesta, la noción operativa de traducción sirve como herramienta que dota de inteligibilidad al abordaje, y permite superar el mero recuento de semejanzas y diferencias propio de los análisis descriptivos y distribucionales.

The Trojan Women is the tragedy of change. Troy has fallen, and women wait to be taken to Greece as slaves. The Trojan women have to adapt to this new situation and exhibit their resilience to their sudden change of status. In her words, Hecuba has to peacefully endure her change of fortune (line 101). The Trojan queen is the only character who literally remains in her place throughout the play, while others come and go. She remains still on stage, although she is being struck by blow after blow.
Hecuba, in the face of distress, chooses to adapt and accept her faith. The heroine often emphasizes her difficulty to move which coincides with her inability to dance (lines 98-99, 112-119, 138-139, 149-152, 191-192, 466-468, 506-509). She has only a brief change of heart at the end of the play when she makes a series of sudden movements and attempts to enter the pyre that burns Troy (lines 1271-1283). Hecuba’s resistance to change is considered a sign of temporary madness (line 1284). Her restraint -that goes hand in hand with her limited movements- is further emphasized when contrasted with Cassandra’s frantic choreia that expresses her emotional state (lines 308-340).
It is not a coincidence that in the descriptions of the choral activity of the resilient Hecuba, the kinetic element of her choreia is almost absent. As other scholars have noticed, the kinetic element of choreia that has great potential to express excessive emotions, to excite, and emotionally involve the audience.  In this paper, I suggest that Hecuba is represented in the Trojan Women as a person who tries to successfully adapt to change.  I examine how and to what extent her ‘immobility’ is an expression of her inner world and a manifestation of her successful struggle to face a series of unwanted changes.

Abstract
In 1981, the Spanish playwright Luis Riaza published the play Medea es un buen chico (Medea is a Good Boy). In it, two male actors perform the main roles of Medea and the Nurse, who comment, with references to other fictional love stories, on the relationship between Medea and Jason. When Jason fails to arrive, the fiction is dismantled, revealing Medea’s identity as Jason’s rejected homosexual lover. Medea es un buen chico mixes elements of performativity, meta-theatricality, and myth in order to explore the limits of gender, sexuality, and the perceived social roles and norms they entail. This article explores how Riaza theatrically reflects on the social performativity of gender through the tragic character and story of Medea, her performance and subversion of her own gendered self, and her eventual rejection and social displacement.

'U Ciclopu di Pirandello è la riduzione in dialetto siciliano del dramma satiresco di Euripide. Tra le cosiddette opere minori, 'U Ciclopu non è solo una traduzione di servizio, ma un'opera pirandelliana a tutti gli effetti. Nell'articolo si esamina, attraverso la collazione con i modelli (il testo di Euripide è mediato dall'italiano di Romagnoli), in che modo Pirandello intervenga sullo statuto paratragico del dramma satiresco, portandolo nei fatti, attraverso alcune sapienti scelte linguistiche, ad un registro totalmente farsesco.

In the 5th century b. C., there is in Athens a distance between political speeches, like the funeral oration, and the tragic discourse, but that difference has been effaced in the last decades in many critical works on tragedy. The episode of Cassandra in Euripides Troades is a good example to show quite the opposite: the use of the ideology of the polis by a tragedy to make clear the otherness of the tragic discourse. Cassandra moves between an attempt to build a consistent speech about the eternal glory of Troy and the performance of her own marriage, which links her to the vicissitudes of her family and her own story as a prophetess.
Na Atenas do século V a. C., há uma distância entre os discursos políticos, como a oração fúnebre, e o discurso trágico, mas essa diferença foi borrada em muitos dos últimos trabalhos críticos sobre a tragédia ática. O episódio de Cassandra em Troianas de Eurípides é um exemplo eloqüente do oposto, ou seja, a utilização, pela tragédia, da ideologia da polis para explicitar a sua alteridade. Cassandra movimenta-se entre uma tentativa de construir um discurso consistente sobre a fama imorredoura de Tróia e a performance de seu próprio casamento, o qual a vincula às vicissitudes de sua família e à sua própria história como profetisa.

Recent times use to bring up studies in the Ancient Greek Literature lacking any philological content, inasmuch as no attention is paid to the problems of the transmission and edition of the extant texts. That is to say, it seems that many young scholars feel uncomfortable infront of the Greek text and as a constant strategy they avoid dealing with grammatical, critical and ecdotical problems 1. Therefore, it is not uncommon that many of the most recent editions are not such, but incomplete commentaries often addressed to a specific audience, whose interest points either to social, especially gender problems, or to literary matters raised in an apparently comparative way, for instance about the questions of orality vs. literacy, postcolonialist creation, and so on. This review will present a counterexample that should become a model instead of an exception. The series Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries has been largely enriched with this edition, of course not by chance. Its author, Marco Fantuzzi, has devoted to this project part of his last thirty years of research, and the result corresponds to this major goal, given the exhaustive programme accomplished and the rigorous methodological patterns applied. His edition appears after five significant contributions by Diggle, Zanetto, Jouan, Kovacs and Fries 2 , with their fresh views on the

Estos bellos relatos nos enseñan cómo concibieron los griegos las relaciones de la Humanidad con su entorno, con el cielo y la tierra, el sol y los mares, la belleza y la inteligencia, el miedo y el amor. Algunos nos resultarán fantásticos y distantes; otros, cercanos y familiares. Pero todos nos ayudarán a comprendernos en esa historia común en la que estamos integrados: la humanidad llamada Occidente. También, a perder el miedo a lo desconocido, que queda transformado en belleza y conocimiento de nosotros a través de la fabulación. Tanto los mayores como los niños (los mejores fabuladores) aprenderemos, de la mano de Alicia Esteban y Mercedes Aguirre y acompañados de los preciosos dibujos de Siro López, a contarnos nuestros propios y maravillosos cuentos a partir de las preguntas más hondas.

La proposition consiste à rechercher les catégories indiquées dans le cadre de conditions déterminées d’énonciation. Il s’agit de réfléchir autour de la notion d’agent en considérant deux figures singulières : le héros tragique et le citoyen démocratique, dont les caractères nous conduisent à la situation de l’Athènes du Ve siècle. En conséquence, le problème de la volonté et la constitution d’une notion d’agent responsable seront analysés à partir de l’intersection entre le domaine du discours tragique et le domaine de l’activité politique. Dans la conjonction de ces deux domaines, le problème crucial réside en la décision comme un processus subjectif. Notre idée centrale est que la figure du héros tragique évoque, avec ambiguïté, une antithèse politique mais aussi une métaphore du citoyen démocratique. Le héros tragique est une antithèse du citoyen démocratique parce que celui-ci prend uniquement des décisions comme partie d’une organisation collective, tandis que celui-là se présente en général sous une forme tyrannique. Mais le héros tragique est aussi métaphore du citoyen démocratique dans la mesure dans laquelle le processus subjectif réalisé par le héros opère comme recours de pensée des facteurs impliqués dans la prise de décision des citoyens réunis dans l’assemblée athénienne.

Eurípides, entre os três tragediógrafos canônicos da Grécia clássica, é aquele de quem a Antiguidade nos legou maior quantidade de material biográfico. Percorrendo esse material, nota-se a persistente caracterização do poeta como misógino (μισογύνης). A palavra figura em dois dos textos biográficos mais importantes em torno do poeta (a Vida anônima anexada aos manuscritos medievais de sua obra e o verbete do Suda), e sua “aversão às mulheres” é aludida direta ou indiretamente em todas as Vidas que chegaram aos nossos dias. Este artigo apresentará essas ocorrências e buscará analisá-las à luz da comédia de Aristófanes, propondo uma articulação entre as paradoxais recepções da obra do poeta na Antiguidade e na modernidade, quando será construída a imagem de um Eurípides “feminista”.

2019-"Euripides en el espejo: la imagen de Eurípides ὁ γνωμολογικώτατος fuera de Eurípides" Desde los inicios de la literatura griega las reflexiones generales o gnomai tienen una posición privilegiada, sobre todo en los géneros que reproducen, en mayor o menor medida, el lenguaje hablado; pero no únicamente en estos, ya que también aparecen utilizadas en autores como Safo, Teognis, Píndaro, entre otros, e incluso en autores de prosa como Tucídides, Aquiles Tacio, etc.

Ancient greek tragedy notoriously provided director Luchino Visconti and his screenwriters with invaluable inspiration while they were writing "Vaghe stelle dell'Orsa..." ("Sandra"). Working on unpublished documents and collating six different versions of the screenplay, this essay aims to establish when and in which ways the three versions of the Atridis’s myth by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides exactly influenced Visconti’s project and how they contributed to its basic ambiguity. At the same time, it shows the relevance of others suggestions of the antiquity, and in particular that of Etruscans inspired by Gabriele D’Annunzio’s novel "Forse che sì forse che no".

Una lettura del saggio di De Sanctis sulla Fedra di Racine, contro Wilhelm Schlegel, fra Hegel e Blanchot / A Reading of De Sanctis's Essay on Racine's Phèdre, against Wilhelm Schlegel, between Hegel and Blanchot / Une lecture de l'essai de De Sanctis sur la Phèdre de RAcine: Contre Wilhelm Schlegel, entre Hegel et Blanchot

Elena così come ce la racconta Euripide è senza dubbio un dramma non facile, non solo perché si confronta con uno dei miti più conosciuti della classicità, ma anche perché approfondisce un filone secondario del mito. È una tragedia anomala: non vi sono morti imminenti o delitti di sangue da vendicare, per non parlare del lieto fine che vede i protagonisti tornare felici e contenti a Sparta. Tuttavia attraverso un’attenta analisi e leggendo il testo fra le righe, possiamo ben ravvederci da giudizi affrettati e toccare con mano l’altra faccia della medaglia: la vacuità dell’agire umano. Esistono forse sentimenti più tragici?

The depiction of monarchy in Athenian drama has puzzled many commentators, who have argued that the figure of the ‘democratic king’ is an anachronism. Other critics have taken a historicising approach, and interpreted the presence of the democratic king in tragedy as the retrojection of debate about the quality of contemporary democratic political leaders such as Pericles into the mythical environment of tragedy.
However, I shall argue that the tragedians manipulate Athenian foundation myths to present the city’s mythical monarchs, Theseus and Erechtheus, as the focus and origin of political power, and to question the democracy’s claim to political legitimacy. The mythical king is reconfigured to query the legitimacy of the Athenian constitution and the construction of Athenian ideology.
The role of the good king in the Athenian political imaginary seems to be to represent and embody the political unity of Athens, and the city’s orderly relationship with the gods and cosmic order. Their narratives show the difficulties in maintaining this order, specifically in handling crises such as supplication by outsiders whose religious or political status is problematic; good kingship is demonstrated by making the correct responses to military, political and religious challenges to the order and unity of the city, such as the arrival of Oedipus, the Heracleidae, and the Argives. Should Euripides’ and Sophocles’ manipulations of myths be read as authorising the transfer to democracy, or undermining its claims to power?
Tragedy clearly rejects the ‘bad’ form of single-person rule, tyranny; the audience at the City Dionysia could assess potentially tyrannical rulers (such as Creon in Sophocles’ Antigone and other Theban plays) against the recognised (though contested) category of tyrant.
In contrast, the tragedians create the category of good kingship through linking monarchy to Athenian democratic political values, a sophisticated manipulation of the political imaginary. As the fifth century BCE reaches a close, and Athenian democracy falters, the values exhibited by the good king begin to match those idealised by the struggling city (for example in the public funeral speeches) as democracy’s opponents gain ascendance in Athenian political debate.

Ancient Greek tragedy addresses a myriad of themes, from questions of identity to socio-political changes and issues. The Bacchae is a perfect example of these themes, especially regarding the question of gender (self) and the differences between women and men (other). Dionysus, returning to his mother’s birthplace, wants to come “home” and be recognized and worshiped as a god. Yet, he finds resistance and denial by Pentheus, his cousin, who is also the king of Thebes. It seems that only through utter acceptance of his deity, Dionysus can actually become a God – doubt or denial remove his god-like supremacy. Thus, transforming his wrath into action, he does not only want to take revenge upon Pentheus and punish him for his disbelief, but the whole city must suffer obliteration. Disguised – or better, masked - as a mortal, he changes his identity into what he does not want to be assimilated with in order to strategically take out his enemy.

"This study gathers and interprets the earliest extant references to architects in ancient Greek philosophy, as found in select works of Plato and Aristotle.  Throughout this review, Plato and Aristotle [are] shown to consistently present architectonic agents as exemplary civic and intellectual leaders, acting in awareness of their own (and others’) limits, with knowledge of the most appropriate archē, and with a view to the most comprehensive aims—the common good. This discloses an alternative and more accurate etymology of architects: not as master-builders but as leaders and makers of beginnings (archai). The aim of this essay has been not only to rediscover the discursive beginnings for a renewed philosophy of architecture, but to suggest how these philosophical 'archai' might help present-day architects reimagine the full relevance of their still contested role."

This article discusses how the famous play "Gota d’água" (1975) by Chico Buarque makes use of Euripides' Medea in order to comment on political and societal challenges of the present. The play, including the metaphor implied by its dramatic plot, is meant to problematize the productive role of theater, and of art in general, during the Military dictatorship in Brazil.