Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations and reference system
- 1 Approaching Euripides
- 2 Problems of genre
- 3 Dramatic structures: variety and unity
- 4 The chorus
- 5 The gods
- 6 Rhetoric and character
- 7 Women
- 8 Euripidean males and the limits of autonomy
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index of names and topics
- Index of passages cited
Conclusion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations and reference system
- 1 Approaching Euripides
- 2 Problems of genre
- 3 Dramatic structures: variety and unity
- 4 The chorus
- 5 The gods
- 6 Rhetoric and character
- 7 Women
- 8 Euripidean males and the limits of autonomy
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index of names and topics
- Index of passages cited
Summary
Since it has been one of the major aims of the preceding chapters to argue for the great variety of Euripides' oeuvre and of his techniques, for the divergent and shifting positions represented within the dramatic world of each play and the associated split or shifting judgments made by an interpreting viewer, and for the indeterminacy and uncertainty (aporia) frequently induced by the plays, it is slightly antithetical to present final conclusions. Nevertheless, some sort of coda is desirable for such a long enterprise, and it may suitably begin with the point made in the preface, that this book gathers together some topics that struck the author as important and challenging, but does not aim to be exhaustive or definitive. Among the topics omitted, Euripides' treatment of the mythographic tradition is surely a fascinating one, both in individual details and in general, but the huge gaps in the evidence make it both difficult and highly speculative to develop any arguments. Just as we have extant an infinitesimal portion of the fifth-century tragedies and dithyrambs in which Euripides and his audience regularly heard a very wide range of mythological stories repeated or modified, so too the earlier sources of myth (non-Homeric epic, archaic choral poetry, the oral traditions that each community had in connection with its local cults and festivals and its foundation and genealogies) can no longer be recovered adequately.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Art of EuripidesDramatic Technique and Social Context, pp. 307 - 312Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010