Euripides and the Poetics of Nostalgia by Gary S. Meltzer

Euripides and the Poetics of Nostalgia by Gary S. Meltzer

By Gary S. Meltzer

Branded through critics from Aristophanes to Nietzsche as sophistic, iconoclastic, and sensationalistic, Euripides has lengthy been held accountable for the loss of life of Greek tragedy. regardless of this acceptance, his drama has a essentially conservative personality. It conveys nostalgia for an idealized age that also revered the gods and standard codes of behavior. utilizing deconstructionist and feminist thought, this e-book investigates the subject matter of the misplaced voice of fact and justice in 4 Euripidean tragedies. The performs' volatile mixture of eager for a transcendent voice of fact and skeptical research not just epitomizes the discursive perform of Euripides' period but additionally speaks to our postmodern . The booklet sheds new gentle at the resource of the playwright's tragic energy and enduring attraction, revealing the excellent relevance of his works for our personal day.

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54–5. , pp. 94–9. , pp. 114–17. Yunis, Written Texts and the Rise of Literate Culture, p. 4. Allan, “Euripides and the Sophists,” p. 146. , Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 26 INTRODUCTION stability provided by the mythological worldview. In the new world, intellectuals could use the self-conscious study of logic and rhetoric to overturn the authority of the old gods and justify their own immoral behavior. This critique of tradition only became possible through the development of a new metaphysics, one that challenged the old mythic assumptions by viewing language solely as a human construct and rhetoric as a subject that could be taught.

The supposed truthfulness and straightness of the Muses’ voice in these references must be qualified by the claim they make earlier “to speak many falsehoods that resemble the truth” (Theogony 27; my translation). As Pratt points out, the longer passage from which this quotation is drawn (Theogony 22–35) is “riddled with notorious interpretive problems” (see Lying and Poetry, p. 107, n. 12, for a partial bibliography). For Pratt, Hesiod’s description of the double-edged nature of the Muses’ speech “suggests a riddle that reveals .

Who then of those were the chief men and the lords of the Danaans? I could not tell over the multitude of them nor name them, not if I had ten tongues and ten mouths, not if I had a voice never to be broken and a heart of bronze within me, not unless the Muses of Olympia, daughters of Zeus of the aegis, remembered all those who came beneath Ilion. I will tell the lords of the ships and the ships’ numbers. 484–93)5 The miraculous qualities of divine (or divinely inspired) speech to capture reality stand in vivid contrast to the inadequacy of human speech.

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