IRONY AND THE REJECTION OF IMAGINED ALTERNATIVES IN EURIPIDES’ ALCESTIS

Abstract

Euripides’ Alcestis employs irony and what I will call discrepant mythic subtexts to create narrative tension in the production of a play whose outcome is announced from the outset. Euripides uses these devices to involve his audience in the process of considering and rejecting imagined alternatives to the play’s announced outcome. Euripides introduces variant outcomes by dramatizing a verbal altercation between Apollo and Thanatos. Further, the drama includes several references to myths of unsuccessful or incomplete rescue from death along with the theme of death’s inescapability. These instances engage the audience by inviting us to consider and reject imagined alternatives to the play’s known conclusion. Finally, the sophisticated dramatic irony used by Heracles in the exodos serves as a formal, rhetorical iteration of Euripides’ technique of inviting consideration and rejection of imagined alternatives.