Euripides& BacchaeThe purpose of this book is to investigate what it was Euripides intended to convey to the theatre-going public of his day when he wrote his most exciting and most gruesome play, the Bacchae. The meanings which are to be attached to the action of a play are woven by an audience, both during and after the performance, into a single dramatic experience, labelled in this book as 'audience response'. After some introductory chapters dealing with the history of the interpretation of the Bacchae and with the theory of audience response, the main part of the book is devoted to a detailed analysis of the action of the play (chapters 4 and 5), and to a study of Dionysus in his various apects in Athenian life and in his appearances in earlier literature and on the tragic stage. The discussion of the choruses concentrates on the choruses' repeated utterances about cleverness and wisdom, which form the core of the Dionysian propaganda of the play. The most immediate results of this new interpretation of the Bacchae are that the widely-accepted view of Pentheus as a dark puritan, a man possessed by the Dionysian qualities of his divine opponent, proves to be untenable, and that that which in the past has been rightly called the overriding theme of the play - the god's epiphany - also contains the poet's most serious and ironical discussion of divinity and of man's treatment of it. The problems of the Greek text are given full discussion, mainly in the nots and appendices. In many cases new solutions are proposed; some new problems are however added. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 27
Page 14
Sorry, this page's content is restricted.
Sorry, this page's content is restricted.
Page 18
Sorry, this page's content is restricted.
Sorry, this page's content is restricted.
Page 21
Sorry, this page's content is restricted.
Sorry, this page's content is restricted.
Page 24
Sorry, this page's content is restricted.
Sorry, this page's content is restricted.
Page 27
Sorry, this page's content is restricted.
Sorry, this page's content is restricted.
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
action Aeschylus Agave appearance aspect of meaning audience Bacchae Bacchae's bacchant bacchic Cadmus chapter character chorus Cithaeron cult Deichgräber deus ex machina Dionysiac Dionysus divine Dodds dramatic Edoni emendation epic epiphany epiphany episode Erythrae euphrosyne Euripides god's gods Greek Heracles herdsman hymn Hysiae interpretation king Lycurgus Lydian madness maenads manifestation mechanema Mnem mortal mountain myth omophagia palace miracles parodos Pasolini Pentheus perhaps peripeteia play plot poet prologue question reality referential aspect refers rhesis rites ritual Roux scene Schwinge Semele sense Sophocles sparagmos spectator stage stasimon stichomythia story nuclei stranger suggestion Teiresias theatrical Theban women Thebes theus thiasos tion tragedy tragic vengeance Verdenius Wilamowitz Willink wine Winnington-Ingram words Zeus ἀλλ ἂν γὰρ δὲ Δι Διόνυσος εἰς ἐκ ἐν ἐς καὶ μὲν μὴ ὃς οὐ οὐδ οὐκ Πε τὰ τε τὴν τὸ τὸν τοῦ τῶν ὡς
Popular passages
Page 193 - Goodwin, Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of the Greek Verb (London 1889) § 384.