The Nurse’s Tale: Other Worlds and Parallel Worlds in the Exposition of Euripides’ "Hypsipyle"

Abstract

This article analyses Euripides’ mythopoetics in what survives of the first quarter of his fragmentary "Hypsipyle": prologue, parodos, and first episode. It examines Euripides’ innovation in joining two myths (the Seven Against Thebes and the story of Hypsipyle and the Argonauts) into one, and the representation of Hypsipyle herself. In her private moments, the thoughts that preoccupy her mind are focused on other-places and other-times, in vivid contrast to the natur- alistically presented world of the present where, as a slave, she must interact with men. Euripides uses the language of serving (θεραπεύειν) and doing a ‘favour’ (χάρις), as well as the word ἐρῆμος (‘lonely,’ ‘deserted’) ..