Book contents
- Ancient Theatre and Performance Culture around the Black Sea
- Frontispiece
- Ancient Theatre and Performance Culture around the Black Sea
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Map
- Part I Approaches
- Part II Places
- Part III Plays
- 11 Space, Place and the Metallurgical Imagination of the Prometheus Trilogy
- 12 Fragmentary Greek Tragedies Set in the Black Sea
- 13 Black Sea Back Story: Euripides’ Medea
- 14 Dare to Believe: Wonder, Trust and the Limitations of Human Cognition in Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris
- 15 Visualising Euripides’ Tauric Temple of the Maiden Goddess
- Part IV Performative Presences
- Epilogue: Dancing around the Black Sea: Xenophon, Pseudo-Scymnus and Lucian’s Bacchants
- References
- Black Sea Index
14 - Dare to Believe: Wonder, Trust and the Limitations of Human Cognition in Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris
from Part III - Plays
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 November 2019
- Ancient Theatre and Performance Culture around the Black Sea
- Frontispiece
- Ancient Theatre and Performance Culture around the Black Sea
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Map
- Part I Approaches
- Part II Places
- Part III Plays
- 11 Space, Place and the Metallurgical Imagination of the Prometheus Trilogy
- 12 Fragmentary Greek Tragedies Set in the Black Sea
- 13 Black Sea Back Story: Euripides’ Medea
- 14 Dare to Believe: Wonder, Trust and the Limitations of Human Cognition in Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris
- 15 Visualising Euripides’ Tauric Temple of the Maiden Goddess
- Part IV Performative Presences
- Epilogue: Dancing around the Black Sea: Xenophon, Pseudo-Scymnus and Lucian’s Bacchants
- References
- Black Sea Index
Summary
Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris is a tragedy marked by ‘complexities of … mood, tone and design’. It ends happily, comprehensively so, but that very happiness, and above all the way it is brought about, brings with it a nagging question. Should we allow ourselves to be swept along by the wondrous coincidences and benign divine interventions, or is there a disconcerting sense of too-good-to-be-true that should put us on our guard and leave us quizzical more than cheered after the denouement? The play has been read, alternatively, as an escapist fantasy of wish-fulfilment and as a nihilistic exploration of the world’s epistemological opaqueness, both readings supported by forceful arguments, and there are many defensible positions in between.
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- Information
- Ancient Theatre and Performance Culture Around the Black Sea , pp. 289 - 304Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019