Tragedy's end: closure and innovation in Euripidean drama

Abstract

Francis Dunn explores the novel gestures that close the dramas of Euripides, showing how these deny access to an authoritative reading of the plays, reinforce innovations in plot and structure, and open up tragedy to comic, parodic, and narrative impulses. The author provides the first large-scale study of closure in classical literature, and includes readings of plot, ending, and generic innovation in Hyppolytus, Trojan women, Hercules, and the late plays Helen, Orestes, and Phoenician Women.