This article examines the place of tragic poetry within the early history and development of ancient literary criticism. It concentrates on Euripides, both because his works contain many more literary-critical reflections than those of the other tragedians and because he has been thought to possess an unusually 'critical' outlook. Euripidean characters and choruses talk about such matters as poetic skill and inspiration, the social function of poetry, contexts for performance, literary and rhetorical culture, and novelty as an implied criterion for (...) judging literary excellence. It is argued that the implied view of literature which emerges from Euripidean tragedy is both coherent and conventional. As a critic, Euripides, far from being a radical or aggressively modern figure (as he is often portrayed), is in fact distinctly conservative, looking back in every respect to the earlier Greek poetic tradition. (shrink)

Interpretations of Euripides’Heraclesoften focus on Theseus’ and Heracles’ cooperative social values in the final scene as a culmination of themes ofphilia. I argue that the relationship Theseus forges competes with Heracles’ attachment to his household,oikos, which is the central social relationship Euripides describes. The drama consistently develops Heracles as his household's leader by inviting the audience to compare Heracles with interim caretakers Megara and Amphitryon, and later through the protagonist's performance of emotional attachment before and after his madness. The closing (...) scene continues to reveal the value and vulnerability of household attachment by accentuating Heracles’ exclusion from the identity of human family member. This trajectory suggests a painful misalignment between Heracles’ experience in theoikosand the public position Theseus offers at Athens: of a semi-divine hero receiving public cult and honours. Euripides emphasizes this tension to distinguish the experience ofoikos-membership. (shrink)

In this article, I analyze the role of Heracles' famous body in the representation of madness and its aftermath in Euripides' Heracles. Unlike studies of Trachiniae, interpretations of Heracles have neglected the hero's body in Euripides. This reading examines the eruption of that body midway through the tragedy as a part of Heracles that is daemonic and strange, but also integral to his identity. Central to my reading is the figure of the symptom, through which madness materializes onstage. Symptoms were (...) contested sites of interpretation in the late fifth century, supporting both conventional narratives about human suffering and new stories advanced by contemporary medicine and ethics. In exploring the imaginative possibilities of these new stories, I do not privilege a “secular” over a “divine” reading. Rather I aim to offer a model of interaction between medicine and tragedy that sees the cross-breeding of worldviews as productive of innovative drama. (shrink)

Lines 380–7 have been much discussed, sometimes in isolation, without due regard for context in speech, scene, and play; and sometimes with regard primarily to the history of ideas, or of Greek moral values. Phaidra states that virtue may be subverted, despite knowledge, by pleasure, of which αὶδώς—dual, harmless and harmful—is an instance. A notorious problem of interpretation centres on the related questions of how αὶδώς, shame can be listed among ήδοναί, pleasures; and of what is meant by dual αὶδώς. (...) The interpretation here advanced is bold, but in essence simple: in this context, αὶδώς is a euphemistic metonymy for ἔρως, which is harmless and pleasurable in its proper place, but potentially troublesome or painful. (shrink)