HUMA 1105 Lecture Notes - Lecture 25: Primal Force, Miasma Theory, Rein
12 Apr 2017
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Document Summary
Idea of order and purity, something is off in the household. Impurity is phaedra"s lust for hippo, technically they aren"t related so they are not incest. The greeks as we know in their dramas especially had this idea of miasma, the stain, the pollution, it can travel down through generation, can stain a house, stain a family. Phaedra is being a good wife, she is theseus" wife, bares his children and seems to have not behaved badly at all, nevertheless she is still associated with this pollution. Theseus is a problematic figure, his relationship with hippolyta is surrounded with ambiguity, they were enemies at war, aspect of sexual violence there. Theseus is a monster slayer, he used ariadne and then abandoned her. He thinks about himself and forgets the others, self absorption caused devastation. He is absent from the beginning of the play. He is at delphi consulting an oracle, we never know why.
