French Literature Reviews - 2026
Ajda Latifses, La Muse trompeuse. Dramaturgie de la ruse dans les tragédies d’Euripide
Theatre and Performance
Review published in Acta Fabula (October 2025, vol. 26, no. 9): “Dramaturgy and Duplicity: Re-reading Euripides through the Lens of Cunning”, by Maïwenn L’Haridon-Moreau.
“The idea is ingenious and entirely in your style: when it comes to the use of tricks, the cake is ours!” It is with these words that the Kinsman, in Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae, greets the invention of Euripides' latest stratagem, highlighting at the same time the central role of cunning in the poet's dramaturgy.
Building upon this Aristophanic insight, and following two introductory chapters dedicated to the Euripidean vocabulary of cunning and the typology of its agents, this study explores the dramatic fruitfulness of the deceptive plot in Euripides' tragedies, tracing its integration into the overall intrigue and its development into standard scenes of planning, deception, and revelation.
Ranging from life-saving expedients to deadly traps, Euripidean cunning emerges as a privileged theatrical medium for exploring the ambiguities of speech and visibility. By staging the machinations of his clever heroes, the poet engages with the intellectual debates of Sophistic Athens. At the same time, he offers a reinterpretation of traditional tragic anthropology, in which the ingenious deceiver and the blind dupe appear as two sides of the same coin of humanity.
Table of Contents:
Part I. Cunning as a Quality and Mode of Action: From Words to Drama
Chapter I
The Lexical and Semantic Field of Cunning in Euripides: Words, Representations, Values
Chapter II
Chapter III
Part II. The Deceptive Plot: Discourse and Spectacle
Chapter IV
Conceiving Cunning: Scenes of Planning
Chapter V
Cunning in Action: Scenes of Deception
Chapter VI
Results and Revelation of Cunning: Concluding Scenes
Chapter VII
Divine Cunning and the Metamorphoses of the Deceptive Plot: The Bacchae General Conclusion
Appendix
Composition of the Deceptive Plot in the Tragedies Studied: Summary Table. Bibliography —
A former student of the École Normale Supérieure, holder of the agrégation in Classics and a PhD in Greek Language and Literature, Ajda Latifses teaches in CPGE at the Lycée Henri IV.
The tragedies of Euripides occupy a distinctive place within classical Athenian drama, frequently engaging with the shifting intellectual currents and rhetorical innovations associated with the Sophistic movement of the fifth century BCE. Classical scholarship has long recognized how Athenian theater served as a public forum for debating civic values, shifting ethical frameworks, and the complex relationship between language, deception, and truth. By examining the structural mechanisms of the deceptive plot, studies of classical dramaturgy often highlight how tragic playwrights utilized theatrical space and staged machinations to question traditional modes of perception and human agency within the dramatic universe.
Readers interested in classical Greek theater, ancient dramaturgy, and the tragedies of Euripides may find this volume relevant to their pursuits. As noted in the review, this study explores the dramatic fruitfulness of the deceptive plot in Euripides' tragedies, following introductory chapters dedicated to the Euripidean vocabulary of cunning and the typology of its agents. The work traces the integration of cunning into the overall intrigue, emerging as a privileged theatrical medium for exploring the ambiguities of speech and visibility.