Robert Emmet Meagher
Robert Emmet Meagher is professor of humanities at Hampshire College. He received a BA from the University of Notre Dame and an MA from the University of Chicago. Meagher has won critical acclaim from actors, directors, and scholars who have commissioned, read and performed his translations of ancient Greek plays in the United States, Great Britain, and Ireland. Meagher has taught literature, drama, epic, comparative religion, theology, and philosophy as a visiting professor, a guest lecturer, and a full-time professor. Meagher is the translator of Euripides: Bakkhai (Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 1995), Euripides: Hekabe (Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 1995), Aeschylus: Seven Against Thebes (Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 1996), Euripides: Iphigenia at Aulis and Iphigenia in Tauris (Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 1993), and Euripides: Helen (University of Massachusetts Press, 1986); Meagher is the author of The Essential Euripides: Dancing in Dark Times (Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 2002), The Meaning of Helen: In Search of an Ancient Icon (Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 2001), Mortal Vision: The Wisdom of Euripides (St. Martin's Press, 1989), and Helen: Myth, Legend, and the Culture of Misogyny (Continuum Pub., 1995).
Books by Robert Emmet Meagher
Aeschylus: Seven Against Thebes
- 3375
- 978-0-86516-337-9
Seven Against Thebes captured first prize for its playwright in its premier performance at the 467 BC Athenian drama festival. A veteran soldier who lost a brother in combat, Aeschylus vividly evokes the tangible terror, the scent of slaughter and the complete rout of the body and spirit that are the awful spoils of war. From the heart of the battle to the heart of the city, the cost of bloodshed is devastating and inescapable.
Euripides: Bakkhai
- 2859
- 978-0-86516-285-3
Eurpides' Bakkhai presents the inner conflict between the untamed, irrational side of man, represented by the god Dionysos, and the rational side, represented by the god Apollo. Dionysos, whose mortal mother Semele was impregnated, then incinerated by Zeus, returns to his home city of Thebes to reveal himself and to claim his rightful dominion. This ancient Greek play also foreshadows the New Testament treatment of Christ, especialy his interchange with Pilate. Originally commissioned for a London theater group, Robert Emmet Meagher's translation made its American debut at the Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, MO.
Euripides: Hekabe
- 3308
- 978-0-86516-330-0
Euripides' Hekabe presents a spectacle of suffering, rage, and revenge that offers compelling witness to the courage and solidarity of those who suffer the most from violence. Meagher's brilliant translation is accessible yet does not diminsh the powerful impact of this extraordinary and timeless play.
Euripides: Iphigenia at Aulis and Iphigenia in Tauris
- 2662
- 978-0-86516-266-2
The story of Iphigenia's sacrifice and her legendary rescue is a story for our time as much as any other. Meagher's insightful introduction and splendid translation illuminate this tale as never before, showing that the past is not past and that the darkest and brightest truths never change.
The Essential Euripides: Dancing in Dark Times
- 5130
- 978-0-86516-513-7
This monograph and selective anthology serve to introduce the most immediately accessible and compelling playwright of the ancient Greek theater. The only volume of its kind available, it provides a rich selection of core plays and a substantial introduction to the full scope of the Euripidean corpus.
The Meaning of Helen: In Search of an Ancient Icon
- 5106
- 978-0-86516-510-6
Helen's face launched a thousand ships, to say nothing of countless books, dramas, poems, paintings, and operas. She is arguably the most notorious woman in Western culture. What makes her so engaging, so consequential? Like an ancient wall layered with millennia of graffiti, Helen preserves the human record. Her story and our story are not to be plied apart. She is woman as we have idealized, worshipped, slandered, celebrated, constructed and deconstructed her. Helen, for better or for worse, in all her metamorphoses, represents the complex, intact fossil record of woman in Western culture. The story of Helen is the story of woman.
