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.
Author(s): Pietro Pucci
Series: Cornell Studies in Classical Philology 65
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Year: 2016
Language: English
Pages: 246
City: Ithaca
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
