The title [Greek characters] was conferred on Euripides by an age which had forgotten the 'ancient quarrel' between poetry and philosophy - a difference which has been strongly reaffirmed in our own age. In undertaking to show the influence of pre-Socratic philosophy on Euripides, I hope also to show how much or how little sense there is in bestowing the name 'philosopher' upon a poet. At an early stage, the separate spheres of poetry and philosophy are not clearly defined. Drama in any case involves notions of character and action that are essentially philosophical. Euripides' psychology is based not only on the work of his predecessors in drama and on his own observation of human nature, but also (directly or indirectly) upon the speculations of the physical philosophers. He also owes much to the sophists and to religious and medical writers. His theology is bound up with his psychology, inconsistencies being due to a dramatic method which is in effect an early dialectic, comparable to the Socratic [greek characters] and with a direct bearing upon Aristotle's theory of [greek characters]. The first two chapters, interaction between Drama and philosophy (1) and (2), are introductory; the first deals with the evolution, through drama, of the notion of psychological determinism; the second traces the development by the pre-Socratics of certain concepts and ideas which have significance for drama as well as for philosophy. This is followed by an exegesis of five major tragedies, Medea, Hippolytus, Hecuba, Heracles and Bacchae, with shorter reference to the Troades and plays featuring Apollo. The concluding chapter attempts to classify and describe the general tendency of the thought which is to be grasped intuitively through the antilogies of the dramatic presentation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:703689 |
| Date | January 1951 |
| Creators | Glanville, Irene |
| Publisher | Royal Holloway, University of London |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://repository.royalholloway.ac.uk/items/d4a04b9b-1ef4-47e5-9379-2e533197f8c7/1/ |
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