From akriman@kronecker.helios.nd.edu Sun Feb 28 14:42:47 1999 Received: from mxu1.u.washington.edu (mxu1.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.1+UW98.09/8.9.2+UW99.01) with ESMTP id OAA33956 for ; Sun, 28 Feb 1999 14:42:46 -0800 Received: from darwin.helios.nd.edu (darwin.helios.nd.edu [129.74.250.114]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.02/8.9.3+UW99.01) with ESMTP id OAA06184 for ; Sun, 28 Feb 1999 14:42:45 -0800 Received: from kronecker.helios.nd.edu (akriman@kronecker.helios.nd.edu [129.74.222.5]) by darwin.helios.nd.edu (8.9.2/8.9.2) with ESMTP id RAA19212 for ; Sun, 28 Feb 1999 17:42:43 -0500 (EST) From: Alfred M Kriman Received: (from akriman@localhost) by kronecker.helios.nd.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id RAA01311 for classics@u.washington.edu; Sun, 28 Feb 1999 17:42:43 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 28 Feb 1999 17:42:43 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199902282242.RAA01311@kronecker.helios.nd.edu> To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: "hot" Euripides David Lupher concludes: > There you have it. Depending on whether you are Democritean or > Heraclitan, I leave you to laugh or weep. Depending on whether you are Freudian or Durkheimian, you may regard this as an excellent experiment in abnormal psychology or sociology. Case in point: > Sometimes, however, the postings seem to be more or less genuine > attempts to get a point clarified. Here, for instance, is a > posting that appeared under the title "nomo [sic] vs. physis": > "Is it thought that euripides was more in line with thinking of > the classical or hellenistic period?" Hmm. Tough one. That was a posting from (attend:) ===> Ernie Clasing on December 13, 1998, who also asked > .. And what do you think the true thesis of The Bacchae? There was eventually a follow-up to this posting from an older and more erudite ===> ernst clasing on February 08, 1999 > You're obviously confused and missing about 100 years. the bacchae > were adorers of Dionysisus, around 400 bc + or - Point to Freud, perhaps. Someone posting as _Alcestis_ writes the subject head > I Need to know what Alcestis is about!!! This has possibilities. > The Euripides site is part of a lavish virtual community known > as the Jolly Roger, which was created by Elliott McGucken, a > physics professor at Elon College in Burlington, N.C. The > aspiring writer built a richly detailed maze of discussion > boards and chat rooms devoted to classic works of Western > literature. McGucken envisioned the site purely as a gathering > place for literature lovers, not corner-cutting college kids, ``Jolly Roger'' was an inauspicious choice of name. Forgive me for sounding too sanguine, but _some_ of the discussion may look more like cheating than it is. The tendency to parrot instructors' assignments verbatim implies (perhaps correctly) that they are not personally interested in the questions they pose, and suggests that they are trying to get someone else to do their work, but there's also stuff like > My questions regarding The Bacchae revolve mainly around the issue of > ambiguous gender roles. I find it interesting that Dionysus is disguised > as an effeminate priest and is "born twice" -- once through his father. > Pentheus also dresses up as a woman and is dismembered by Agave and other > women, all of whom would have been played by men in the time of Euripides. > If anyone has any ideas they would like to toss my way, any suggestions, > comments, or even disagreements, let me know! The most heartening fact, though, is that this ugliness is small -- the area has had all of 154 postings since Columbus Day 1997, many of them apparently inadvertent blank follow-ups. More traffic than the Thucydides mailing list, but still pretty light. Hopefully, AMK. .