Bücher von Poulheria Kyriakou

This work is the first major commentary on Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris to appear in English in more than 65 years. It offers detailed analysis of a fascinating play that scholars so far had considered mainly as a source of information about Athenian cult and viewed as a romantic adventure story with happy end. Apart from including sober assessments of textual, linguistic and metrical problems, the commentary sheds new light on the play's treatment of myth, its intricate structure, presentation of character, and place in Euripides' work. In particular it offers fresh insights into the play's relationship to the literary tradition, especially its treatment of the crimes of the Pelopids, and its presentation of the complex, ambiguous relationship of humans and gods as well as that of Greeks and barbarians. Unlike most other tragedies, Iphigenia in Tauris does not feature any villain and avoids concentrating on past crimes and their corrosive influence on the characters' present. The Taurians are not portrayed simply as savage and slow barbarians and Iphigenia, the most intelligent character, fails to transcend her limitations. Religion and cult in both myth and contemporary Athens are a mixture of traditional and invented elements and the play as a whole turns out to be an intriguing and unique experiment in Euripides' career.

Trends in Classics, a series and journal edited by Franco Montanari and Antonios Rengakos, publishes innovative, interdisciplinary work which brings to the study of Greek and Latin texts the insights and methods of related disciplines such as narratology, intertextuality, reader-response criticism, and oral poetics. Both publications seek to publish research across the full range of classical antiquity. The series Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes welcomes monographs, edited volumes, conference proceedings and collections of papers; it provides an important forum for the ongoing debate about where Classics fits in modern cultural and historical studies.a The journal Trends in Classics is published twice a year with approx. 160 pp. per issue. Each year one issue is devoted to a specific subject with articles edited by a guest editor.