Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Swift, L. A.

Titel

How to Make a Goddess Angry: Making Sense of the Demeter Ode in Euripides' Helen

Ist Teil von

• Classical philology, 2009-10, Vol.104 (4), p.418-438

Ort / Verlag

Chicago: The University of Chicago Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2009

Quelle

University of Chicago Press Journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Three quarters of the way into Helen, people come to a critical moment in the plot. People have just watched the scene where Helen and Menelaus persuade the Egyptian king Theoclymenus to give them a ship: the escape plan has been put into action, but its success is far from guaranteed. Here, Swift reassesses the meaning of Euripides' play called Helen and of Helen's role in it. She argues that the Demeter ode and the anodos drama model on which it is based tie into a broader way in which Helen is construed as Persephone: her status as a parthenaic figure. She examines parthenaic motifs and imagery throughout the play and, reinterpreting the ode in this light, she suggests an answer to the question that has caused so much confusion: how did Helen anger Demeter?