Phaedra lusts after Hippolytus, her stepson. But lust appears in other guises throughout the narrative, sometimes more subtly. The Phaedrus was presumably composed around 370 BCE, about the same time as Plato's Republic and Symposium. The drama in Phaedra occurs in two distinct locations – the palace in Athens, and the woods bordering the city. Phaedra is the daughter of King Minos of Crete and Pasiphaë, a daughter of Apollo who was cursed to love a bull and produce the Minotaur. The Chorus notes, in one of the play’s most intriguing passages, that the gods target those mortals of whom they can feel jealous. Not affiliated with Harvard College. In particular, Jean Racine’s well-regarded 17th Century “Phèdre” owes at least as much to Seneca’s play as to Euripides’ earlier version. © 2020 eNotes.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Civilization corrupts, as Hippolytus himself argues in a speech to the wet-nurse; the “primal age” was a time of peace, and with the rise of the city has come warfare and crime. Oenone dies.
There, in a mazelike labyrinth at Knossos, lives the Minotaur, the creature born from Queen Pasiphaë’s coupling with a white bull that the sea god Poseidon gave to her husband, King Minos. His wife, Phaedra, is not entirely sympathetically portrayed, but she does seem to be a victim of her own emotions, and Seneca even goes so far as to imply that her tormented feelings and confusion may stem in part from Theseus’ harshness as a husband. She tells Oenone, “When you shall know / My crime, my death will follow none the less, / But with the added stain of guilt.” Thus, Phaedra is in conflict with herself as well as forces outside of herself. *Troezen (TREE-zun). It is doubly ironic, then, that Hippolytus’ bloody death should come not by way of the city, not by way of manmade weapons, but by way of frenzied horses, a monstrous bull, and the merciless forest terrain. A messenger relates to Theseus how a sea monster (sent by Theseus’ father Nepture in answer to his prayer) had emerged from the windswept sea and pursued Hippolytus’ horses, and how the young man had been caught up in the reins and torn limb from limb. Now we know what the theme is going to be: Phaedra's conflict between conscience and an overpowering, sinful passion. Theseus' queen, Phaedra, fell in love with Hippolytus. Phaedra literature essays are academic essays for citation. First, Euripides has Phaedra dying before Hippolytus' death, while Racine allows his protagonist to live to see her stepson's death.

Phaedra tries to seduce her stepson, Hippolytus (son of Theseus and the Amazon Hippolyta). King Theseus' first wife was Antiope, the queen of the Amazons. Much of the power of the play stems from the tension between the high emotionality, violence and passion of its storyline, and the eloquent discourse through which Seneca (a famed orator, rhetorician and Stoic philosopher) communicates the narrative. The Question and Answer section for Phaedra is a great (Critical Guide to Settings and Places in Literature). Phaedra, lusting after her stepson, wishes to join him in this sylvan paradise, where, free from society's restrictions and far away from prying eyes, she hopes to pursue an illicit sexual relationship. For example, Seneca used the Chorus not merely as a rhetorical tool or a character of its own but as a de facto method of organization; his plays often depict five discrete events or turns of the plot, each separated from the other by a lengthy Chorus interjection. In addition to Euripides, though, Seneca alludes to and re-writes the Roman poets Vergil and Ovid, particularly the former’s “Georgics” and the latter’s “Heriodes”, and the whole is filtered through the lens of Seneca’s own Stoic philosophy. The poor and “humble” rarely feel the gods’ wrath; instead, it is those in power who fall prey to the heavens. Phaedra literature essays are academic essays for citation. Even when he is absent, he is with her, occupying her every thought. Phaedra lusts after Hippolytus, her stepson. LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Hippolytus, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work. Near the end of Euripides' Hippolytus, the title character is in the throes of death. If anything, it is her nurse who receives the brunt of the play’s blame, for it is she, despite her age and perceived wisdom, who first hatches the plan to accuse Hippolytus of raping his stepmother. It tells the story of the incestuous love of the Greek mythological character Phaedra for her husband’s son, Hippolytus. Phaedra has various themes, many of which are common in other tragedies. At the play’s close, Phaedra condemns him for his “harshness” – the same harshness that led him, we learn, to kill his former wife, Antiope, Hippolytus’ mother. Theseus is left without a wife or a son. Theseus succumbs to a passion far more destructive than Phaedra’s – the passion for revenge, the desire to kill. Nature v. Civilization. The same story is told in Seneca's Latin play, Phaedra, and, before that, in Euripides' Greek play, Hippolytus. The major themes of the play include lust (Phaedra’s lust for Hippolytus is the engine that drives the tragedy, and the Chorus expounds on examples of lust throughout history); women (Phaedra may be considered an heir to the tradition of scheming, wicked women in Greek mythology, such as Medea, although she is undeniably presented as an empathetic character, more victim than victimizer, and if anything it is her nurse who receives the brunt of the play’s blame); nature versus civilization (Hippolytus argues that civilization corrupts, and he hankers for the “primal age” of peace, before the rise of the city, warfare and crime); hunting (although the play starts with Hippolytus setting out on a hunt, it soon becomes apparent that he is being hunted by Phaedra, and that Phaedra herself is a target of Cupid’s arrows); and beauty (Hippolytus’ beauty is the initial catalyst of the play, and the Chorus ominously alludes to beauty’s fragility and the caprice of time). Theseus killed the Minotaur with the help of Princess Ariadne, then married her sister Phaedra. One thing is certain: Phaedra herself consciously and willfully seals her doom when she goes along with Oenone’s scheme to accuse Hippolytus of accosting her. Phaedra begins with a man setting out to hunt, and proceeds to examine various ways in which the notion of hunting might manifest itself within the walls of a city. Did Hippolytus and Phaedra make physical relationship? Seneca’s reliance on description of melodramatic action is one of his most serious weaknesses as a playwright, and it lends considerable support to the idea that he intended his plays to be read rather than acted. Phaedra’s lust for Hippolytus is the play’s catalyst, the engine that drives the tragedy. Seneca’s Phaedra was modeled on Euripides’ Hippolytus, which told roughly the same story. Theseus deeply regrets the death of his son and gives him the honour of a proper burial, although he deliberately refuses this same honour to Phaedra (a dire sentence in Roman culture). “Phaedra” is filled with stirring monologues, clever pieces of rhetoric and characters who wield language as a weapon. Pursued. What savage Sinis, what Procrustes, has scattered thy members so, or what Cretan bull, fierce, two-formed monster, filling the labyrinth of Daedalus with his huge bellowings, has torn thee asunder with his horns? .......Blaming Venus, or fate, is a way for Phaedra to call herself a child of misfortune who, through no fault of her own, has been cursed with tormenting passion.
Seneca cuts the goddesses from the cast, and shifts both the title and the focus of the play from Hippolytus to Phaedra herself.

He has been involved in a chariot accident that resulted in him being hurled out of the chariot car, tangled in... eNotes.com will help you with any book or any question. "Phaedra Study Guide".


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