If a play turns comic or tragic often depends how how the clash between law and desire is negotiated.
Tag Archives: Euripides
Desire vs. Law in Shakespeare, Euripides
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Bacchae, Comedy, Desire, law, Midsummer Night's Dream, tragedy, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Through Lit, We Learn Compassion
Tuesday My brother Sam, an enthusiastic Unitarian Universalist, gave me Karen Armstrong’s Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life for Christmas, and I was pleased that the author sees literature playing a major role. In today’s post I share how she draws on the ancient Greeks. Armstrong writes, “All faiths insist that compassion is the test […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Prelude", Aeschylus, compassion, Eumenides, Heracles, Homer, Iliad, Oedipus at Colonus, Oresteia, Sophocles, Tintern Abbey, William Wordsworth Comments closed
Kavanaugh-Pentheus vs. Angry Women
Euripides’s “Bacchae” gives us good insights into Kavanaugh’s alcohol consumption and his relation with women.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged alcohol, Bacchae, Brett Kavanaugh, Christine Blasey Ford, Senate Judiciary hearings, sexual assault Comments closed
Bolton’s Preventive War, Greek Style
Incoming national security advisor John Bolton favors preventive war. Euripides describes an egregious act of prevention in the killing of Hector’s child in “The Trojan Women.”
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Iran, Iraq War, John Bolton, North Korea, preventive war, Trojan Women, warfare Comments closed
Euripides’s Attack on Authoritarianism
It’s possible to read “The Bacchae” as a critique of the autocrats who hijacked Athenian democracy and were running Athens into the ground.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged authoritarianism, Bacchae, Dictators, Donald Trump, rebellion Comments closed
Handmaid’s Emmy, A Sign of Its Urgency
The Emmys signaled that “Handmaid’s Tale” is as relevant as ever as America’s misogyny deepens. So is Euripides’s “The Bacchae.”
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Bacchae, Donald Trump, Feminism, Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood, misogyny Comments closed
Anger in Ancient Greek Works
A new book looks at how the ancient Greeks approached the issue of anger in works such as “Iliad,” “Ajax,” and “Hecuba.
Calling Out Trump’s Assault on Nature
Look to Euripides’s “The Bacchae” if you want to know how a divine seer would call out Donald Trump for his assault on the environment. Teiresias says that Pentheus is “possessed by madness so perverse, no drug can cure.”
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Bacchae, Donald Trump, environmental policy, EPA Comments closed
