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Miasma, Mimesis, and Scapegoating in Euripides' "Hippolytus"
Mitchell-Boyask, Robin
Mitchell-Boyask, Robin
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Journal article
Date
1991-04
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Greek and Roman Classics
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https://doi.org/10.2307/25010943
Abstract
Euripides, as Rene Girard observes of Shakespeare, "in the portrayal of certain characters seems to oscillate between two opposite, really incompatible poles. On the one hand he makes these characters quite distinctive, especially as 'villains'; on the other hand he shows these same characters behaving and thinking exactly like their antagonists."1 Thus in the Hippolytus, quite different characters come to act like their opponents in the course of the play's action. The young virgin Hippolytus comes to sound and act like the mature, sexually experienced Phaedra; Phaedra like Hippolytus; and Theseus like Hippolytus. Even Artemis resembles her opposite, Aphrodite, at the play's end. Furthermore, all characters seek eventually to revenge themselves reciprocally on one another, and in this reciprocity arises the play's disaster. I shall attempt to show how these two processes unfold in Euripides' Hippolytus.
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Citation
Mitchell, Robin N. "Miasma, Mimesis, and Scapegoating in Euripides' 'Hippolytus.'" Classical Antiquity 10, iss. 1 (1991): 97-122. https://doi.org/10.2307/25010943
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University of California Press
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Classical Antiquity, Vol. 10, Iss. 1
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