Human sacrifice, a spirited heroine, a quest ending in a
hairsbreadth escape, the touching reunion of long-lost siblings,
and exquisite poetry-these features have historically made
Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris one of the most influential of Greek
tragedies. Yet, despite its influence and popularity in the ancient
world, the play remains curiously under-investigated in both
mainstream cultural studies and more specialized scholarship. With
Adventures with Iphigenia in Tauris, Edith Hall provides a
much-needed cultural history of this play, giving as much weight to
the impact of the play on subsequent Greek and Roman art and
literature as on its manifestations since the discovery of the sole
surviving medieval manuscript in the 1500s. The book argues that
the reception of the play is bound up with its spectacular setting
on the southern coast of the Crimean peninsula in what is now the
Ukraine, a territory where world history has often been made.
However, it also shows that the play's tragicomic tenor and escape
plot have had a tangible influence on popular culture, from
romantic fiction to Hollywood action films. The thirteen chapters
illustrate how reactions to the play have evolved from the ancient
admiration of Aristotle and Ovid, the Christian responses of Milton
and Catherine the Great, the anthropological ritualists and
theatrical Modernists including James Frazer and Isadora Duncan, to
recent feminist and postcolonial dramatists from Mexico to
Australia. Individual chapters are devoted to the most significant
adaptations of the tragedy, Gluck's opera Iphigenie en Tauride and
Goethe's verse drama Iphigenie auf Tauris. Richly illustrated and
accessibly written, with all texts translated into English,
Adventures with Iphigenia in Tauris argues elegantly for a
reappraisal of this Euripidean masterpiece.
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