Rewriting Hippolytus: Hybridity, Posthumanism, and Social Politics in Marina Carr's Phaedra Backwards

This article sheds light on Irish playwright Marina Carr's 2011 Phaedra Backwards, which premiered at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, as a particularly dense and multidirectional twenty-first century retelling of the Hippolytus myth. The centrality of the Minotaur in the drama, the role of t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inArethusa Vol. 55; no. 3; pp. 229 - 244
Main Author Torrance, Isabelle
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 01.09.2022
Subjects
Aeschylus (522-456 BC)
Animals
Carr, Marina (1964- )
Classical literature
Euripides (c 485-406 BC)
Greek literature
Human subjects
Humanism
Irish literature
Mythical creatures
Mythology
Posthumanism
Theater
Tragedies
Online AccessGet full text
ISSN0004-0975
1080-6504
1080-6504
DOI10.1353/are.2022.0009

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Summary:This article sheds light on Irish playwright Marina Carr's 2011 Phaedra Backwards, which premiered at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, as a particularly dense and multidirectional twenty-first century retelling of the Hippolytus myth. The centrality of the Minotaur in the drama, the role of technology in his creation, the place of nature in human life, and certain surprising motifs, such as the eating of daffodils, are examined through the lens of posthumanism to show how Carr's play invites reflection on nonconformism in society and on human damage to the natural world.
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ISSN:0004-0975
1080-6504
1080-6504
DOI:10.1353/are.2022.0009