Zacharia, Ekaterini; (1997) A thematic commentary on Euripide's Ion. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

In this thesis I interpret Euripides' Ion by integrating literary, religious, political, and psychological approaches, and by applying certain modern theories of drama emphasising communication, performance, and the role of the audience. I argue that Euripides exploits the moral ambivalence of divine rape to focus a cluster of problematic contradictions and ambiguities in his audience's attitude to divinity and myth. This issue structures the play's key antitheses: myth/reason, divine/mortal, female/male, religion/politics, force/persuasion, speech/silence, innocence/experience, Delphi/Athens, tragedy/comedy. Chapter One deals with structures of time and space and the construction of plot. It uses the distinction between the 'theatrical world' and the 'dramatic world' to explore the different modes of explanation applied to the same events by characters on the stage and by spectators in the theatre. Chapter Two analyses the figures of Ion and Kreousa in terms of the Athenian myth of autochthony. Both characters experience a transition during the play, Ion from adolescence to adulthood, from Delphi to Athens, from private to public, from lack of identity to double parenthood, and Kreousa from hatred of Apollo to piety, from barrenness to motherhood, from fixation upon the past to hopes for the future. Ion's successful resolution of the fundamental tensions of the autochthony myth heals Kreousa and permits Athens to found colonies. Chapter Three considers multi-faceted Apollo in the Ion, the ambiguity of divine favour and the equivocality of oracular responses. Euripides skilfully presents the god from different perspectives and with differing degrees of understanding in what is finally an anthropocentric play, where human emotions overrule the god's plan. Chapter Four suggests that the interweaving of tragic and comic elements in the play does not lessen its seriousness and concludes that the play cannot be labelled as anything but a tragedy.

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