The Trojan Women and Other Plays (Oxford World's Classics)

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Review ------ I imagine that everyone who teaches Greek tragedy in translation entertains a mental wish list for the ideal classroom text. . . . The volume under review, the third in a series of translations of selected plays of Euripides by the team of James Morwood and Edith Hall, comes closer to meeting these criteria than any other with which I am familiar; it is thus welcome indeed . . . This is a translation I shall definietly be ordering for my classes (Bryn Mawr Classical Review 20/09/01) Review from other book by this author 'Morwood's prose translations read smoothly and reflect current, idiomatic English speech...the impressively ample and up-to-date select bibliography, genuinely helpful explanatory notes for each play, useful discussion of Euripides' thought and style, and the concise, informative background information about the world in which Euripides lived all contribute to the value of this book' Review of Medea and Other Plays (Choice) Synopsis -------- Hecuba The Trojan Women Andromache In the three great war plays contained in this volume Euripides subjects the sufferings of Troy's survivors to a harrowing examination. The horrific brutality which both women and children undergo evokes a response of unparalleled intensity in the playwright whom Aristotle called the most tragic of the poets. Yet the new battleground of the aftermath of war is one in which the women of Troy evince an overwhelming greatness of spirit. We weep for the aged Hecuba in her name play and in The Trojan Women, yet we respond with an at times appalled admiration to her resilience amid unrelieved suffering. Andromache, the slave-concubine of her husband's killer, endures her existence in the victor's country with a Stoic nobility. Of their time yet timeless, these plays insist on the victory of the female spirit amid the horrors visited on them by the gods and men during war.