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The purpose of this play is to dramatize the change of government in ancient Greece from a matriarchy to a patriarchy and from rule by the Ionian to rule by the Dorian Greeks through the last years of Helen of Troy. Faced with a challenge by her husband, Menelaus, who wants his sons to rule, Helen manages through intrigue to arrange for her daughter to gain the throne. Helen herself becomes a "goddess."

Akademisk avhandling--Humanistiska fakulteten--Lund, 1979. / Bibliogr. de l'œuvre de Jean Giraudoux, p. 166. Bibliogr. p. 167-173.

In this practice-based thesis I examine how I interpreted the myth of Helen of Troy in solo and collaborative forms of playwriting. For the interpretation of Helen’s myth in solo playwriting, I wrote a script that contextualised in a contemporary world the most significant characters of Helen’s myth which are: Helen, Menelaus, Hermione, Paris, Hecuba, Priam. This first practical research project investigated how characters that were contemporary reconstructions of Menelaus, Hermione, Paris , Hecuba, Priam, Telemachus were affected by Helen as an absent figure, a figure that was not present on stage but was remembered and discussed by characters. For the interpretation of Helen’s myth in collaborative playwriting, I asked three female performers to analyse the character of Helen and then conceptualise and write their own Helen character. The performers’ analyses and rewritings of Helen inspired me to write a script whose story evolved around three Helen characters that were dead and interacted with one another in a space of death. This script formed part of my second practical research project that explored the ways of making Helen’s character present (both scripts that culminated out of my two practical research projects are included in the section of the Accompanying Material). I analyse the process of writing the scripts of the first and second practical research project through the use of Jungian archetype theory. In the first chapter of the thesis, I explore what an archetype is according to Jungian theory and then explain how this theory enables me to comment on the process of reinterpreting the myth of Helen of Troy through the writing of the two scripts. In the second chapter, which is the commentary on the first practical research project, I show how archetype theory provides a theoretical tool with which I can clarify and analyse how I reinterpreted and/or reworked the archetypal emotional energies of Menelaus, Hermione, Hecuba, Priam, Paris, Telemachus in the writing of new characters. In the third chapter, which is the commentary on the second practical research project, I investigate how the archetype theory helped me identify the key emotional experiences of the performers’ Helen characters, experiences which I organised and developed further in the writing of my own Helen characters. I conclude my thesis by arguing that my scripts cannot provide a final interpretation of Helen’s myth because they still lack a certain overarching theme or concept.

[Truncated abstract] This thesis focuses on the significance of the beauty of Helen of Troy in the Encomium of Helen written by the fourth-century philosopher Isocrates. Previous traditions, and especially epic poetry and tragedy, had assessed Helen’s beauty and either blamed or excused her for causing the Trojan War. Isocrates moved beyond this dichotomy to create a new focus on her beauty as the ultimate source of all that made Greek culture distinctive. Modern scholarship, however, has been generally unsympathetic we may almost say blind to this projected beauty. The meaning of beauty in Isocrates’ work has been overlooked by scholars in favor of its rhetorical structure. The work was criticized for its disjointed arrangement and lack of seriousness. The Helen has been interpreted as a reaction to contemporary rhetorical issues or as merely an educational manifesto. This thesis aims to identify and clarify the ideology underlying Isocrates’ construction of Helen’s beauty in his encomium. … The Helen of Isocrates is also compared with the contemporary Platonic work Phaedrus, which explores beauty as a means of arriving at pure knowledge. In this case, comparisons are drawn thematically and reveal that while the two works share similar topics and aims regarding the notions of beauty, Isocrate’s aesthetic idea is much more practically grounded and intended to be of benefit to the entire society when compared to the more idealistic and individual Platonic notion. Finally, the reasons for Isocrates’ choice of beauty as a major theme for the Helen are explored through a comparison of Helen’s beauty to that of Hellas an equation which Isocrates deems important for the fourth-century society.