Euripides Support of Women’s Rights Essay -- Biography Biographies Ess

Euripides Support of Womens Rights One basin just now deny that in Euripides plays women are often portrayed as weak, uncertain, and separate between what they must do and what they can bring themselves to do. Other women be to be the root of grave evils, or simply perpetrators of heinous crimes. In a day when analysis of characters and plot had yet to be invented, it is unaffixed to see why he might have been thought to be very much against women. However, when looking back with current understanding of what Euripides was doing at the time, armed with knowledge of plot devices and Socratic philosophy, this argument simply does not hold up. In fact, a very strong argument can be made to the opposite, that Euripides was in fact very much in support of womens rights, and thought they were treated unfairly. To begin to understand what Euripides was doing, it is outmatch to understand the medium of his art the Greek theater. Theater was a free-enterprise(a) art among playwrig hts, with several competitions throughout the year, the greatest of which was at the Dionysian festivals in the spring. Greek drama, tragedy in particular, had little in common with current acting productions. There was little or no suspense as to the outcome of the play most on the whole were based on Homeric tales from The Iliad and The Odyssey. The skill, therefore, was not in creating a fascinating plot, but in the crafty changes the playwright could incorporate to increase the dramatic effect. Changing the reasons for conflicts, dialogue, order of events, and sometimes even the outcome of the play were all ways to do this. With all these devices available to the fifth century playwright, what made Euripides so special that he was almost exclusiv... ...Euripides. Medea. Trans. Paul Roche. vernal York Norton, 1974. Euripides. The Bacchae. Trans. Paul Roche. refreshful York Norton, 1974. Euripides. Andromache. Trans. John McLean. New York Dial Press, 1936. Euripides. Hippoly tos. Trans. John McLean. New York Dial Press, 1936. Euripides. Trojan Women. Trans. John McLean. New York Dial Press, 1936. Euripides. Electra. Trans. John McLean. New York Dial Press, 1936. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. Trans. Clifton Fadiman. New York capital of Delaware Publications, 1995. Perseus Encyclopedia. Revised 1999. Tufts University. www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/encyclopedia?entry=Euripides. Powell, Anton, ed. Euripides, Women, and Sexuality. New York Routledge, 1990. March, Jennifer. Euripides the Mysogynist? Euripides, Women, and Sexuality. Ed. Anton Powell. New York Routledge, 1990.