By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Helen is not the most famous of Euripides’ plays, but it is one of the most curious – and it deserves close analysis and study. The play was first performed in 412 BC at that year’s City Dionysia.
Euripides
A Short Analysis of Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Iphigenia at Aulis (the title is sometimes rendered as Iphigenia in Aulis) has been criticised for its melodrama, but its portrayal of the central character’s decision to agree to renounce her life for the ‘greater good’, and Agamemnon’s ambivalence about sacrificing his own daughter, make it a curious and satisfying play which repays close analysis and discussion.
Five Fascinating Facts about Euripides
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Have all the nations of the world since his time created a dramatist worthy to hand him his slippers?’ Such was Goethe’s assessment of Euripides. Even Shakespeare, it would seem, wasn’t worthy of such a slipper-carrying honour where Euripides was concerned. Here are five curious facts about the life and work of one of the great tragedians of antiquity.
1. Of the eighty or so plays Euripides is thought to have written, only eighteen have survived.
Among the titles that we have lost – probably forever – are Aegeus, Antigone, Autolycus, Danae, Hippolytus Veiled, Ixion, Oedipus, Sciron, Theseus, and Thyestes.