TEST1 Euripides and the Poetics of Sorrow: Art, Gender, and Commemoration in <I>Alcestis, Hippolytus</I>, and <I>Hecuba</I>

Where is the pleasure in tragedy? This question, how suffering and sorrow become the stuff of aesthetic delight, is at the center of Charles Segal's new book, which collects and expands his recent explorations of Euripides' art.
Alcestis, Hippolytus, and Hecuba, the three early plays interpreted here, are linked by common themes of violence, death, lamentation and mourning, and by their implicit definitions of male and female roles. Segal shows how these plays draw on ancient t…