Gender and the City in Euripides' Political Plays [Hardcover]

The first full-length study ofChildren of HeraklesandSuppliant Womento appear in fifty years,Gender and the City in Euripides' Political Playsuses fresh insights into the Greek conception of gender and the Athenian ideology of civic identity to demonstrate at last the formal elegance and intellectual complexity of two works that are still dismissed as artistic failures within the poet's oeuvre.

1. Introduction: Gender, Politics, Interpretation
2.Children of Herakles: Territories of the Other
3.Suppliant Women: Regulations of the Feminine
4. Conclusion

[A] detailed, profound, and revealing analysis of the two 'political' plays.... These few examples are all that can be cited here of the strength of the evidence he cites to support his theses and the precision of his critical language; to appreciate the full effect, the reader must go to the book. Suffice it to say that in his sensitive analysis of these and other aspects of the two plays' structure and content he has rescued them from the critical limbo to which so many scholars had consigned them.... The somewhat abstract psychological analysis Mendelsohn proposes here may sound complex but it emerges convincingly from a close reading of the plays.... This review of his book, though selective and inadequate, is enough to establish the fact that his attempt is a brilliant success. --Bernard Knox,The New York Review of Books

Mendelsohn provides a masterful and compelling rereading of both plays and in the process not only challenges standard assessments of their value but also demonstrates the centrality of gender for structuring their political debates.... While Mendelsohn's overarching argument...ultimately persuades, his ability to bring to the surface some of the profound similarities between the two play is truly compelling. --Bryn Mawr Classical Review

This is a highly rewarding book on the interplay betwlÃ