Transcript Thriller Romp or Sophistic Critique?

Thriller Romp or Sophistic
Critique?
Euripides’ Ion and Tragic Variations
Agenda
• Discussion
• Ion as “Happy Tragedy”? Tragedy as Ideal Type
• Euripides’ Ion
• Introduction to Play
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Discussion
Ion as “Happy Tragedy”? Tragedy as Ideal
Type
Discussion Prompt Distilled…
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Tragic patterns
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blood guilt (almost)
tragic cycle
• Cecropids, Erechtheids,
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Plus Happy ending
Equals…
etc.
• reversal
• recognition
• pathei mathos??
• etc.
What?
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Discussion
•
•
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still a tragedy
• sub-group: happy-ending
•
tragedies
ending lets Apollo off the
hook
• it’s kind of like politics
• Xuthus
• band-aid the problem (the
•
paratragic
• humor
instr’s comment: reversal of
some tragic patters
• dramatic misidentification
• maybe suffering through
wire season three)
damage control mode
• instr’s comment: quasi-tragic
in terms of…
knowledge? (you don’t WANT
to know!)
• plus knowledge just in time??
(double intervention at end)
• athenian tragic drama as
interrogating contemporary
society, politics
• see “ion’s doubts” slide, end
of presentation
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Ideal Type
Deliberately simplified definition/description.
- To help relate recurring phenomena –
(What do we learn from comparisons?)
- To be applied with attention to nuance -
Euripides’ Ion
Introduction to Play
Physical Setting, Ideological Backdrop
Delphi, Apollo’s Temple
Athens Acropolis
Analysis
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Prologue
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Hermes (backstory, 104)
Ion, monody (107)
Parodos
•
Chorus of Creusa’s house
slaves, Ion (110)
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Episode 1
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Ion, Creusa (113)
Creusa, Xuthus (& Ion, 118)
Ion’s soliloquy (119)
Stasimon 1
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Come, Athena! Children. Cave
of Pan (120)
Episode 2
•
Ion, Xuthus (happy
reunion,121)
Stasimon 2
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To tell or not to tell (128)
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Episode 3
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Creusa, Old Man (129)
Creusa’s lament (astrophic
monody, 134)
Creusa, Old Man (136)
Stasimon 3
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Murder, slanders of women
(141)
Episode 4
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Messenger scene (botched
murder, 142)
Choral Ode
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Astrophic frenzy (147)
Exodos
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Creusa, Leader (147)
Ion, Creusa (148)
Pythia, Ion (150)
Athena dea ex machina (158)
“Ah, what we women endure
when the gods go sinning! /
Indeed, to whom shall we plead
our cause / when our own
masters are our ruin?” (Creusa,
113)
Apollo Belvedere, Vatican Museums
Ion Sophist’s Thwarted Doubts
• “There cannot be an oracle against the god of
•
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oracles” (p. 117)
To Apollo: “You have the power, so follow
virtue” (p. 119)
“Is the god genuine or are his oracles a
fraud?” (p. 158)
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