Birds, stars, and mousikē
Visions of escape in Euripidean choral odes
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10997459 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Laurialan Reitzammer (0000-0003-2519-9506, University of Colorado , Boulder, Colorado, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 67 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 32-55 |
| Publication date | 2024-01-23 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0076-0730 • E-ISSN: 2041-5370 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/bics/qbad024 |
| OpenAlex | W4406746258 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 50 |
In this essay, I discuss, as a group, moments when a Euripidean female chorus express a wish for winged travel elsewhere—the second stasimon of Iphigenia among the Taurians (1089–1152),the third stasimon of Helen (1451–1511), the second stasimon of Hippolytus (732–75), and the first stasimon of Bacchae (370–431). These choral passages offer lengthy and elaborate escape prayers that embellish the conventional wish to take wing or disappear, focusing on the idea of wings and travel as opposed to the idea of disappearing, and offering a bird’s-eye view of imagined expanses of land and sea. In Euripides’ plays, as I argue, female choruses who wish for release from their impossible circumstances offer surprisingly similar visions of escape. Again and again, they wish to return home (to an actual home or to a notional homeland) and they yearn for winged travel to places characterized by bands of maidens and female mousikê (song, dance, and music)
Art · Astronomy · Choir · Literature · Ode · Physics · Stars · Theology · Vision · Visual arts · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Philosophy
Homo necans
Measures of Wisdom
The Art of Euripides
Pity and panhellenic politics
Suffering in Silence
Labor XI
Myth and thought among the Greeks
Interpretations of Greek Mythology (Routledge Revivals)
The Symbolism of Space in Euripidean Choral Fantasy ( Hipp . 732–75, Med . 824–65, Bacch . 370–433)
The Play of Texts and Fragments
Choral Mediations in Greek Tragedy
A Commentary on Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris
Initiation in Ancient Greek Rituals and Narratives
The Iliad
Individual and Group in Euripides' Bacchae
The Daughters of Cadmus
The Imagery of Euripides. A Study in the Dramatic Use of Pictorial Language
Weaving Titans for Athena
Imagery of the Elsewhere” Two Choral Odes of Euripides
Some Problems of Text and Interpretation in the Bacchae . I
Towards Greek Tragedy. Drama, Myth, Society
Why Athens? A reappraisal of tragic politics
Early Greek Myth
Perseus, The Maiden Medusa, and the Imagery of Abduction
Greek Tragedy. A Literary Study
Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual
The Poetics of Eros in Ancient Greece
Exchange and the Maiden
Masks of Dionysus
Innovations of Antiquity
The Songs of Aristophanes
The Look of Lyric
Euripides and Tragic Theatre in the Late Fifth Century
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |