The Reception and Performance of Euripides' Herakles: Reasoning Madness

by Kathleen Riley

Euripides' Herakles, which tells the story of the hero's sudden descent into filicidal madness, is one of the least familiar and least performed plays in the Greek tragic canon. Kathleen Riley's study is the first to examine the reception and performance history of Euripides' Herakles from the fifth century BC to AD 2006. Riley demonstrates that, in spite of its infrequent staging, the Herakles has always surfaced in historically charged circumstances - Nero's Rome, Shakespeare's England, Freud's Vienna, Cold War and post-9/11 America - and as had an impact on the history of ideas.

Hardcover

First published April 24, 2008

Reviews

[Jess Grayson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting and useful! Specifically liked the points on Herakles' change at the end of the play to a radical reinterpretation of heroism.