Four Perspectives
At the top of the menu, under “Focus,” you can filter posts by four perspectives: Lexis, Polis, Typos, Methodos. These aren’t strict categories that every post is sorted into exactly once — they’re four recurring ways I approach a text. A post can carry several of them at once, and some carry none. Most posts are a mixture anyway: a close textual analysis often slides unnoticed into a historical question, and an observation about patterns almost automatically calls for methodological self-scrutiny.
Lexis is the heart of this blog.
This is where the actual work happens. I analyze specific aspects of Euripides’ dramas — individual scenes, characters, or concepts. Dramaturgical details and other readings are also examined here in psychoanalytic light. Usually a specific aspect and a psychoanalytic concept are set side by side, to identify possible points of intersection. Always detailed, always close to the text — to guard against over-psychologizing. When I’m writing in this mode, it produces the core that everything else builds on.
Polis is the historical dimension.
I’m a historian. That means I can’t simply offer a psychoanalytic reading without asking: what does this have to do with 5th-century Athens?
In this mode, I connect the results of close analysis to historical reality. Do the anxieties of the polis surface in the tragedies? Do the same psychological patterns exist in the society, or in the historiography? Does 5th-century Athens show similar dynamics?
Not every analysis has this dimension — some plays give more direct access to the historical reality than others. Where possible, I try to establish that connection. Euripides was part of Athenian society — that has to be taken into account.
Typos is the search for patterns.
Do certain conflicts and constellations repeat across different dramas, or is each tragedy unique in this respect? That’s the core of my first research question. When I identify similar constellations or dynamics across different dramas, I describe them in this mode. It’s comparative — it draws connections and looks for what repeats: the psychological system underlying the dramas. The myth itself is examined here too. Figures like Cassandra or Heracles don’t exist only in Euripides. How does he handle the inherited myth?
Methodos is the control instance.
Here the psychoanalytic approach itself becomes the object of scrutiny. Critical questions get asked:
Where are its limits? Where am I over-interpreting?
Am I projecting a modern category onto an ancient text without differentiating?
How can the psychoanalytic approach itself be critically questioned?
This mode is also the place for everything that doesn’t fit neatly under Lexis, Polis, or Typos: methodological reflections, digressions, marginal notes.
For more on the background and motivation behind this blog, see the About page.