Tragedy's End: Closure and Innovation in Euripidean Drama

Oxford University Press USA (1996)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Euripides is a notoriously problematic and controversial playwright whose innovations, according to Nietzsche, brought Greek tragedy to an early death. Francis Dunn here argues that the infamous and artificial endings in Euripides deny the viewer access to a stable or authoritative reading of the play, while innovations in plot and ending opened tragedy up to a medley of comic, parodic, and narrative impulses. Part One explores the dramatic and metadramatic uses of novel closing gestures, such as aetiology, closing prophecy, exit lines of the chorus, and deus ex machina. Part Two shows how experimentation in plot and ending reinforce one another in Hippolytus, Trojan Women, and Heracles. Part Three argues that in three late plays, Helen, Orestes, and Phoenician Women, Euripides devises radically new and untragic ways of representing and understanding human experience. Tragedy's End is the first comprehensive study of closure in classical tragedy, and will be of interest to students and scholars of classical literature, drama, and comparative literature.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,593

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Nature, Reason and Philia in Euripidean Drama.John Arthur Vella - 2004 - Dissertation, University of California, San Diego
Ästhetik der Tragödie von Aristoteles bis Schiller.H. Wagner - 1990 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 52 (2):357-357.
Plato's Affair with Tragedy.Alister Cameron - 1978 - University of Cincinnati.
Euripides the Idealist.R. B. Appleton - 1918 - The Classical Review 32 (5-6):89-92.

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-02-03

Downloads
12 (#929,405)

6 months
5 (#246,492)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?