Euripides' Revolution under Cover : : An Essay / / Pietro Pucci.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Complete eBook-Package 2016
• VerfasserIn: Pucci, Pietro,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2016]; ©2016
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Series: Cornell Studies in Classical Philology ; 65
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (246 p.)

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Euripides’s Poetic Game and Law of Composition -- 2. Anthropomorphism -- 3. The Protection of the Self and the Role of Sophia -- 4. Some Connotations of Sophia -- 5. Polyneices’s Truth -- 6. Hecuba’s Rhetoric -- 7. Eros in Euripides’s Poetics: Sex as the Cause of the Trojan War -- 8. The Lewd Gaze of the Eye -- 9. The Power of Love: Who Is Aphrodite? -- 10. Phaedra -- 11. Hermione: The Andromache -- 12. Female Victims of War: The Troades -- 13. The Survival in Poetry -- 14. Figures of Metalepsis: The Invention of “Literature” -- 15. The Failure of Politics in Euripides’s Poetics: Politics in the Suppliant Women -- 16. Political Philosophy: A Universal Program of Peace and Progress -- 17. How to Deliberate a War -- 18. Democracy and Monarchy -- 19. The Battle -- 20. The Rescue of the Corpses -- 21. Return to Arms -- 22. The Polis’s Loss of Control and Authority -- 23. The Bacchants’ Gospel and the Greek City -- 24. Pentheus and Teiresias -- 25. Dionysus’s Revenge: First Round -- 26. Revenge Prepares Its Murderous Weapon -- 27. Initiation and Sacrifice -- 28. Victory and Defeat -- 29. Euripides’s Poetry -- Bibliography -- Subject Index -- Index Locorum