This thesis explores the form, meaning and development of the escapist theme in Euripides' tragedies. The dramatist's corpus reveals an intense preoccupation with escapism and exhibits it in a wide range of escape wishes and escape choral odes. Most of these, because they fail of their objective, point to the inability of the tragic hero to escape his or her fate as determined by the dark forces of tragedy. Escapism intensifies the well-known Euripidean element of pathos, but in some of the plays its use becomes quite sophisticated evoking irony, ambiguity and paradox. In this way, it sheds light upon the tragic event from a different perspective. In the end, however, the Euripidean oeuvre betrays a strong affirmation of reality in spite of its escapist tendencies. Euripides' innovative use of escapism is, in fact, an ingenious modification and adaptation of older poetic, and as this thesis argues, ritual forms. Finally, the pervasive presence of escapism in Euripides is not irrelevant to the wider political and social atmosphere of late fifth-century Athens.

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Thesis (B.A.)--Haverford College, Dept. of English, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.