Euripides’ Hypsipyle: emotions and female agency
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25145/j.fortunat.2026.43.02Keywords:
Euripide’s Hypsipyle, emotions and egency, gender studiesAbstract
This article examines Euripides’ fragmentary tragedy Hypsipyle through the lens of emotions and female agency. Drawing on a theoretical framework that understands emotions as socially regulated practices, the study analyzes specific emotional sequences–suffering, fear, anger, gratitude, and joy–that structure the protagonist’s dramatic trajectory.
The analysis argues that Hypsipyle exercises a situated and relational form of agency through the ethical management of emotions. Rather than transgressing social norms, her actions operate within them, using emotional practices as tools for deliberation, mediation, and reciprocity in contexts of vulnerability. Emotions thus emerge not as private states, but as relational acts with concrete social effects. Furthermore, the tragedy offers an uncommon reparative resolution, in which joy arises from just and shared social practices. Methodologically, the article suggests that tracing emotional arcs provides a productive approach to fragmentary tragedy, and for a reassessment of female agency in Greek tragedy.
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