Dionysus Dendrites

Trees in Euripides’ Bacchae

Datos Bibliográficos

ID21722326
AutoresEmma Bentley (Durham University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2025
Volumen29
Número2
Páginas141-154
Fecha de publicación2025-04-03
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaGreen Letters (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1468-8417 • E-ISSN: 2168-1414
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14688417.2025.2516235
OpenAlexW4411097147
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas22

This article reads Euripides’ Bacchae as a play about the relationships, dependencies, and antagonisms between trees, humans, and the gods. On Mount Cithaeron, where much of the narrated action unfolds, trees embody the ambivalence of Dionysus and act as both participants and victims of his conflict with Pentheus. Their significance extends beyond narrative action as Euripides draws upon real human-arboreal relations within and around the Attic landscape, in religious and theatrical rituals, and in mythic and poetic traditions. Bacchae’s most striking instance of arboreal violence, the uprooting of a towering fir, exemplifies the complexity of these entanglements, both real and imagined. While human and divine desires to control the landscape necessitate ecological violence, the forest is also a point of continuity between mythic and contemporary time, and survives even when the Theban state is thrown into disarray

Art · Literature · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Philosophy