Author: WHITMAN, C.H.,
Title: Euripides and the Full Circle of Myth.
Description: Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1974. VII,152p. Cloth wrps. In a four-part essay Cedric Whitman analyzes the three 'romances', 'Iphigeneia in Tauris', 'Helen', and 'Ion', placing them in the poet's work as a whole. The keynote is myth, not as a collection of outmoded stories to be rejected or rationalized by the 'philosopher of the stage', but as a fulfilling pattern of personal redemption, never completed in the other extant plays. In this reading, the controversial gods of Euripides are seen as characters in a greater scheme, the myth, rather than as parodies of religion or objects of atheistical satire. The theme of purity, or spiritual wholeness, wrought into the poetic texture, appears as a recurrent symbol of what redemption means to the struggling protagonists. This is an elegant piece of criticism, both in its conception and in its style. (Publisher's information).

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