Tragedy's End: Closure and Innovation in Euripidean Drama
Euripides is a notoriously problematic and controversial playwright whose innovations, according to Nietzsche, brought Greek tragedy to an early death. Dunn here argues that the infamous and artificial endings in Euripides deny the viewer access to a stable or authoritative reading of the play, while innovations in plot and ending opened tragedy up to a medley of comic, parodic, and narrative impulses. Part One explores the dramatic and metadramatic uses of novel closing gestures, such as aetiology, closing prophecy, exit lines of the chorus, and deus ex machina. Part Two shows how experimentation in plot and ending reinforce one another in Hippolytus, Trojan Women, and Heracles. Part Three argues that in three late plays, Helen, Orestes, and Phoenician Women, Euripides devises radically new and untragic ways of representing and understanding human experience. Tragedy's End is the first comprehensive study of closure in classical literature, and will be of interest to a range of students and scholars.
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Tragedy's End: Closure and Innovation in Euripidean Drama
Euripides is a notoriously problematic and controversial playwright whose innovations, according to Nietzsche, brought Greek tragedy to an early death. Dunn here argues that the infamous and artificial endings in Euripides deny the viewer access to a stable or authoritative reading of the play, while innovations in plot and ending opened tragedy up to a medley of comic, parodic, and narrative impulses. Part One explores the dramatic and metadramatic uses of novel closing gestures, such as aetiology, closing prophecy, exit lines of the chorus, and deus ex machina. Part Two shows how experimentation in plot and ending reinforce one another in Hippolytus, Trojan Women, and Heracles. Part Three argues that in three late plays, Helen, Orestes, and Phoenician Women, Euripides devises radically new and untragic ways of representing and understanding human experience. Tragedy's End is the first comprehensive study of closure in classical literature, and will be of interest to a range of students and scholars.
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Tragedy's End: Closure and Innovation in Euripidean Drama

Tragedy's End: Closure and Innovation in Euripidean Drama

by Francis M. Dunn
Tragedy's End: Closure and Innovation in Euripidean Drama

Tragedy's End: Closure and Innovation in Euripidean Drama

by Francis M. Dunn

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Overview

Euripides is a notoriously problematic and controversial playwright whose innovations, according to Nietzsche, brought Greek tragedy to an early death. Dunn here argues that the infamous and artificial endings in Euripides deny the viewer access to a stable or authoritative reading of the play, while innovations in plot and ending opened tragedy up to a medley of comic, parodic, and narrative impulses. Part One explores the dramatic and metadramatic uses of novel closing gestures, such as aetiology, closing prophecy, exit lines of the chorus, and deus ex machina. Part Two shows how experimentation in plot and ending reinforce one another in Hippolytus, Trojan Women, and Heracles. Part Three argues that in three late plays, Helen, Orestes, and Phoenician Women, Euripides devises radically new and untragic ways of representing and understanding human experience. Tragedy's End is the first comprehensive study of closure in classical literature, and will be of interest to a range of students and scholars.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780195344776
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication date: 07/25/1996
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Lexile: 1470L (what's this?)
File size: 5 MB

About the Author

University of California, Santa Barbara

Table of Contents

1Introduction3
IClosing Gestures
2Curtain: The End of Performance13
3Machine: Authorizing an End26
4Vestige: Traces of the Past45
5Postscript: Outside the Frame64
IIThe End Refigured
6Repetition: Hippolytus87
7Reversal: Trojan Women101
8Erasure: Heracles115
IIIThe Ends of Tragedy
9Helen and Romance133
10Orestes and Tragicomedy158
11Phoenician Women and Narrative180
Notes203
Works Cited233
Index of Euripidean Passages245
General Index249
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