Greek Tragedy Assignment | Online Homework Help

In 17th century France, Jean Racine adapts Euripides’ Hippolytus for his own age; he names it Phedre and focuses on the contest between passion and reason. Racine’s conception of tragedy reflects his own culture and society; for him, it is about the inevitability of catastrophe when passion is repressed in order to suit normative behavior. Passion is an unstoppable force; attempt to bottle it up, and you will explode.

We can certainly see some of that in Euripides’ original play, but I mention Racine’s version as a point of departure rather than a direct parallel. Racine’s play can be reduced (somewhat) to the unwinnable contest between passion and reason, and we can certainly see those forces in Euripides’ play, but while Racine is thinking mostly about how this battle takes place within the individual, Euripides is thinking about myth, politics, religion, society, government, family, and language. He is still concerned with what threatens the polis more than the what matters to an individual. This may seem like a subtle distinction, but remember that we are the inheritors of the Enlightenment (the period that contextualizes Racine’s work); we take for granted the ideas that separate the individual from the community. We believe that what we feel matters–that we as individuals matter–largely because of the philosophical and social movements of that age. So, it is easy to read Racine into Euripides. And, I would argue, that’s a fair play; Euripides’ play is open enough to allow for that sort of interpretation. But we would be remiss if we didn’t look for what else exist in his play. And for that, we have to remember the polis.

Unlike Aeschylus, who is offering revised myth to accommodate the novelty of Athenian democracy, Euripides is far more critical of both myth and democracy. If Aeschylus is worried about threats to the polis, Euripides knows that the polis is its own greatest threat. And that includes all the working pieces–myth, politics, language, morality … What you think will save you is powerful, but that means that it has the power to destroy as often if not more than to save.

Wole Soyinka recognized in Euripides the existence of an unbridled Dionysian power (especially in Bacchae), and he took it to be revolutionary power. We’ll come back to this in the coming weeks, but it’s worth considering here as well even though the god in question is Aphrodite rather than Dionysus.

With those vague thoughts in mind, let’s consider the Chorus. The Chorus here is made up of young married women. Why? How does that affect the framing of Aphrodite’s revenge, Hippolytus’ devotion to Artemis, the Nurse’s attempt to fix the situation, Phaedra’s suffering …?

Consider who the Chorus is, what they do, and what they represent. Also consider the difference between hunting and sex (or marriage).

Consider that horses often feature as metaphors for the soul. Plato said that the Reason was like an old trained horse, and Passion was a young, strong horse; the trick to training the soul was getting the old horse to guide the young one. Hippolytus is called a “rider of stallions,” and the manner of his death is a fitting reversal of his best strength.

Discuss.