Euripides and Alcestis: Speculations, Simulations, and Stories of Love in the Athenian CultureUniversity Press of America, 1998 - 113 pages Euripides and Alcestis demonstrates the inherent presence of indeterminacy in Euripides' play, Alcestis. The author uses about eighty of the scholarly attempts to establish a determinate meaning of the play to exhibit the difficulty and lack of success in previous attempts at interpretation. She recognizes that the meaning of the play is surrounded by ambiguity and indeterminacy and provides an interpretation based on this knowledge. As an interpretation, the author focuses on Admetus' desire in relation to Alcestis' statue and his nature as a fifth century Athenian man while exposing Alcestis as a nonidentity. She also analyzes the issues of representation and spectatorship, showing that the theatrical performance is constructed in order to function as vehicles for the satisfaction of a dominant position-that of Admetus and the spectator of the performance. |
From inside the book
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Page 2
... king of Pherae , has been condemned by fate to death but Apollo , who owes a debt of gratitude to the house of Admetus for its kindly treatment of him . . . gains his respite , provided that someone else can be found willing to die in ...
... king of Pherae , has been condemned by fate to death but Apollo , who owes a debt of gratitude to the house of Admetus for its kindly treatment of him . . . gains his respite , provided that someone else can be found willing to die in ...
Page 3
... King [ Admetus ] for his generous hospitality , Apollo gets the Moirae . . . to agree that Admetus can postpone death so long as he can get someone to die in his place . After all those to whom he has turned , including his old parents ...
... King [ Admetus ] for his generous hospitality , Apollo gets the Moirae . . . to agree that Admetus can postpone death so long as he can get someone to die in his place . After all those to whom he has turned , including his old parents ...
Page 16
... king who has to accept his wife's sacrifice in order to ascertain the continuation of his family . Alcestis is paradigmatic , naive , a real woman who acts like a perfect man , uninteresting , unreal , glorious ; she is at the center of ...
... king who has to accept his wife's sacrifice in order to ascertain the continuation of his family . Alcestis is paradigmatic , naive , a real woman who acts like a perfect man , uninteresting , unreal , glorious ; she is at the center of ...
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Common terms and phrases
5th-century Athenian absence According actor Admetus Aeschylus Alcestis Alcestis of Euripides analysis Ancient Greece Apollo Apollodorus appears ariste Aristotle Arrowsmith Athens Bacchae Bassi Burnett Cambridge characters Charles Segal Chorus Collected Essays comedy Cornell University Press dead Alcestis death desire deus ex machina Dionysus elements Encomium of Helen Euripidean Euripides father female femme figure Foley Froma Zeitlin funeral Gorgias Grèce ancienne Greek Drama Greek Tragedy Hades Heracles heroic Hesiod Homer hospitality husband identity illusion imitation Interpretations of Euripides Irigaray Jacques Lacan Jean-Pierre Vernant Kott l'autre femme male marriage mask meaning Medusa mirror Mort Mortals and Immortals Myth Oxford Pandora Paris pharmakon Phelan Pheres Plato play pleasure Poetics of Deception Princeton University Press Protesilaus reality relationship role Rosenmeyer sacrifice simulacrum Sophocles spectators statue story Stranger substitute Symposium Theaetetus theatre Theatricality tragic representation tragicomedy trans translated truth Twentieth Century Interpretations veil wife William Arrowsmith woman women York Zeus