A twice-born God. Reimagining the myth in Euripides’ Bacchae
The paper examines the myth of Dionysus's double birth as a hidden semantic axis of the Bacchae, starting from the hypothesis that the importance of this narrative goes beyond the poetic context in which it is found and that it represents an important step in the reimagining of the con...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Institute of Ethnography, SASA, Belgrade
2023-01-01
|
| Series: | Glasnik Etnografskog Instituta SANU |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://doiserbia.nb.rs/img/doi/0350-0861/2023/0350-08612301021P.pdf |
| Summary: | The paper examines the myth of Dionysus's double birth as a hidden semantic
axis of the Bacchae, starting from the hypothesis that the importance of
this narrative goes beyond the poetic context in which it is found and that
it represents an important step in the reimagining of the concept of myth,
which occurs at the height of the polis culture. Having come to Thebes to
prove his divine nature and Zeus’ paternity, Dionysus, in the incipit,
before saying his name, defines himself as “the child of Zeus”, while in the
final epiphany he defines himself as “divine offspring”. Neither the divine
nature of Dionysus, nor the fatherhood of Zeus in the tragedy are proven
explicitly, but only implicitly - through the ability of the young god to
dissect the human mind, reason, rational will, thus confirming and
strengthening the sphere of the irrational, to which the myth remains firmly
attached. The paper aims at proving the hypothesis that this attachment of
the myth to the sphere of the non-rational is the Euripides’ decisive
contribution to the transformation of the concept of myth. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 0350-0861 2334-8259 |