Euripides

Throughout Greek literature, the gods dictate everything; from stirring a body of water to sink a ship to transforming people into inanimate objects and sometimes animals, the gods don’t feel the need to completely destroy their humans when their behavior is not up to par with the gods expectations. The use of transformations rather than destruction becomes particularly evident in The Bacchae and The Metamorphoses. In The Metamorphoses, there are several instances in the lives of the characters…

Euripides 's Medea is an overly dramatized anti-feminist play that borders on portraying prejudices against women as outlandish comedy. To modern readers like the ones in our Gender and Sexuality class at Lick, Medea can come across as comic, but this reaction does not mean that our society is “post-sexist”; there are definitely still many people who agree with the prejudices the play presents. But although Medea can come across as stereotypical in that Medea is the overly-emotional woman and…

The Bacchae is a play written by Euripides, a greek playwright, whose works consisted mainly of tragedies that bore heavy messages on topics like war, religion and the greek gods, and the place that woman held in society (Roche, vii). Euripides was one of the last great playwrights of the Greek times, along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, who were much more popular than him in the time that he lived (Burke). Euripides’ heavy plays with large and noticeable lessons in them, were…

persuaded both judges and the audience of their innovative interpretations of the various myths, a competition that Hippolytus won in 428 BCE. In Hippolytus, Euripides uses the Hippolytus’ myth to promote Athenian identity and pride by exploring a tragic episode in the Athenian’s hero Theseus life. Theseus epitomises idealised Athenian values and Euripides as a tragedian is interested in exploring the conflicts and dilemmas of heroism (Buxton, 2010, p.72-3). In Hippolytus Theseus witnesses, the…

Euripides has very creatively designed the characters of Jason and the servants, who basically serve as informants in the play and do not have any transformative power. The Chorus has always been an integral part of any Greek Tragedy. The Chorus conveyed to…

from writing. However, the issue is that most of the writing of the time was by men, who were usually biased against women. Most of them have a very negative attitude towards them. Euripides, Xenophon, and Aristophanes wrote about women, usually portraying them as submissive, housewives with little freedom. Euripides was a play write during the 5th century. In his play Medea, Medea, after learning that Jason, her husband, is going to marry the princess of Corinth, complains to the chorus about…

conventions in different periods of theatre history, such as the conventions of the Greek, Roman, and Elizabethan eras. I will continue to discuss staging conventions by analyzing and comparing different plays to these eras including Trojan Women by Euripides, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee by William Finn, and The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare. In the Ancient Greek era some of the most prominent aspects of staging conventions…

Against the Gods: Exploring hubris and its consequences in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound and Euripides’ Hippolytus In the following Greek tragedies hubris is not merely overweening pride but behaviour or an action against – or in defiance of – the gods. With this definition of hubris in mind, an examination of Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound and Euripides’ Hippolytus will show that central characters within the plays – wittingly or unwittingly - commit acts of hubris which lead to their…

The Destruction of Pentheus In Euripides’ “The Bacchae,” Dionysus, disguised as a man, goes out to Thebes to assert his rights and gain respect from those who do not acknowledge him as a god. He encounters Pentheus, king of Thebes, still in an adolescent stage and fearful of femininity, something that Dionysus’ worship revolves around. In The Menace of Dionysus: Sex Roles and Reversals in Euripides’ Bacchae, Charles Segal explains why men were so fearful of the out of control woman and how that…

she goes on to get revenge on Jason for what he has done. She shows that women don’t have to sit back and be hurt but they should take the strength of the emotion that they feel and use it to fight back. During Medea’s revenge it is apparent that Euripides is showing supremacy to women through the little things that normally people would think as feminine and harmless by showing them as weapons. The objects are a simile for women by the way that on the outside they might seem just beautiful and…