Euripidean Tragedy: Power, Passion, and Punishment

Euripides was the 5th-century BCE tragedian most beloved by the Athenians, yet they rebuffed him again and again.

He was invited to compete for the annual prize for tragedy on more than 20 occasions but won the prize a mere handful of times.

His plays challenge one conventional Athenian belief after another: the innate superiority of Greeks over non-Greeks, the innate superiority of men over women, the justice of the gods, the fairness of divine punishment.

In this course, we will read and discuss three unforgettable Euripidean tragedies: Medea , Hippolytus , and the Bacchae .

Profound—and confounding—interpretive issues will inundate us at every stage.

Does Euripides actually want us to sympathize with a mother who kills her sons? Is there any way to explain why the innocent Hippolytus is so mercilessly wiped out? How can we worship Dionysus, the god of tragedy, after we see his pitiless vengeance against Pentheus? We will try to experience the action and staging of these transforming dramas as closely as possible to the ways in which they were experienced in the Athenian Theater of Dionysus in the last third of the 5th century BCE.