{Greek Literature [continued (8)] [– Tragedy [continued (5)]: Euripides]}[8th February 1991]

[Redbook8:242][19910208:1520h]{Greek Literature [continued (8)] [– Tragedy [continued (5)]: Euripides]}[8th February 1991]

:1520

[continued]

‘Euripedes,* last of the three great tragic poets, belonged to a different world.** When he came to manhood, traditional beliefs were scrutinized in the light of what was claimed by Sophist philosophers, not always unjustifiably, to be reason;*** and this was a test to which much of Greek religion was highly vulnerable. The whole structure of society and its values was called into question. This movement of largely destructive**** criticism was clearly not uncongenial to Euripides. But as a dramatic poet he was bound to draw his material from myths, which, for him, had to a large extent lost their meaning. He adapted them to make room for contemporary problems, which were his real interest. Many of his plays suffer from a certain internal disharmony,# yet his sensibilities#* and his moments of psychological insight#** bring him far closer than most Greek writers to modern taste. There are studies, wonderfully sympathetic, of wholly unsympathetic activities in the Medea and Hippolytus; a vivid presentation of the beauty and horror of religious ecstasy#*** in the Bacchant[e]s; in the Electra, a reduction to absurdity of the values of a myth that justifies matricide; in Helen and Iphenegenia among the Taurians, melodrama with a faint flavour of romance.#****

##

*[circa480-circa406bce]

**[from the previous two – see last two previous entries]

***m~

****←G~→

#G~ff?

#*G~ff

#**R~

#***G~-R~?

#****R~

##[ibid [Encyclopaedia Britannica 20:] 401-402]

[& See [Redbook8:254][19910214:1610e]{Classical Greek Dramatists [continued (5)] [– Euripides]]}[14th February 1991]]

[continued]

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