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Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Print Price: $412.50

Format:
Hardback
276 pp.
138 mm x 216 mm

ISBN-13:
9780199249565

Publication date:
October 2002

Imprint: OUP UK


Gender and the City in Euripides' Political Plays

Daniel Mendelsohn

This book is the first book-length study of Euripides' so-called 'political plays (Children of Herakles and Suppliant Women) to appear in half a century. Still disdained as the anomalously patriotic or propagandistic' works of a playwright elsewhere famous for his subversive, ironic artistic ethos, the two works in question, notorious for their uncomfortable juxtaposition of political speeches and scenes of extreme feminine emotion, continue to be dismissed by scholars of tragedy as artistic failures unworthy of the author of Medea, Hippolytus, and Bacchae. The present study makes use of recent insights into classical Greek conceptions of gender (in real life and on stage) and Athenian notions of civic identity to demonstrate that the political plays are, in fact, intellectually subtle and structurally coherent exercises in political theorizing - works that use complex interactions between female and male characters to explore the advantages, and costs, of being a member of the polis.

Readership : Classical scholars of Greek literature (especially tragedy) and history, drama / theatre studies specialists, anthropologists, and scholars working in gender studies

Reviews

  • `...this is a well-supported investigation.'
    Journal of Hellenic Studies
  • `...an engaging study that successfully reappraises two largely and unfairly disparaged dramas.'
    The Classical Review
  • `Mendelsohn's demonstration of the influence of the Eleusinian setting of Supplices throughout its course is revelatory.'
    The Classical Review

1. Introduction: Gender, Politics, Interpretation
2. Children of Herakles: Territories of the Other
3. Suppliant Women: Regulations of the Feminine
4. Conclusion

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Daniel Mendelsohn, a writer and critic living in New York, is a Lecturer in the Department of Classics at Princeton University

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Special Features

  • The only book-length study devoted to these works since Guenther Zuntz's The Political Plays of Euripides (1955)
  • Re-evaluates the plays in the light of contemporary critical discussion of Athenian concepts of gender and the organization of, and tensions within, the city-state
  • Shows that the two neglected political plays are structurally coherent and wholly consonant with the 'ironic' Euripidean tone familiar from other, more popular works