Euripides and Alcestis: Speculations, Simulations, and Stories of Love in the Athenian Culture

Euripides and Alcestis: Speculations, Simulations, and Stories of Love in the Athenian Culture

by Kiki Gounaridou
Euripides and Alcestis: Speculations, Simulations, and Stories of Love in the Athenian Culture

Euripides and Alcestis: Speculations, Simulations, and Stories of Love in the Athenian Culture

by Kiki Gounaridou

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Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780761812319
Publisher: University Press of America
Publication date: 09/03/1998
Series: Harvard Oriental Series; 52
Pages: 128
Product dimensions: 5.24(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.39(d)

About the Author

Kiki Gounaridou is Assistant Professor of Theater and Performance Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.

Table of Contents

chapter 1 Acknowledgments chapter 2 Introduction chapter 3 Notes chapter 4 What Alcestis Was: Hypothesis, Notes chapter 5 Who Admentus Was: Her Statue and Alcestis, Admentus and His Friends, The Stranger of the House, Notes chapter 6 When Heracles Visited: Love Story, Notes chapter 7 Conclusion: Notes chapter 8 Bibliography chapter 9 Index
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