Helen of Troy

Helen of Troy website

Helen: The Judgement of Paris and the Abduction (excellent images!)

Helen: Greek Mythology Link

Scapegoat or Siren?

Victim or Seductress?

 

Ancient Versions

Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey    
   
Helen and Priam on the walls in Iliad 3
   
Helen and Paris after the battle in Iliad 3
   
Helen and Menelaus in Sparta in Odyssey 3-4

Sappho’s Poem 16

Steisichorus’ Palinode

Euripides’ Trojan Women

Euripides’ Helen

Ovid's Heroides

 

Modern Adaptations and Discussions

Austin’s Helen of Troy and Her Shameless Phantom

Yeats’ Leda (1928)

Holstad's Yeats's 'Leda and the Swan': Psycho-Sexual Therapy in Action

Sara Teasdale's "Helen of Troy" (1911)

H.D.’s Helen

essay by Susan Stanford Friedman

Ellen McLaughlin's Helen

Review by Diana Wright: an intelligent, stylish play, Helen, that takes off from Euripides.  It begins as a comedy & becomes progressively more wrenching.  Helen has spent the 17 years in an Egyptian hotel, channel-surfing.  There is a maid who tells her stories -- & who does a marvellous blending of Helen-in-Egypt with Sleeping Beauty.  Io, with some cow appurtenances, makes an appearance.  Athena drops in & discusses how tiresome the war was.  Menelaus finally arrived, shell-shocked.  He is given the lines about all this suffering for a phantom & Troy is seen as Gallipoli.  The language is mostly terrific, & saturated in Homer & Aeschylus.  Much of the play has to do with the Protean quality of time & stories.  Helen is quite beautiful.
 
Helen = Donna Murphy
Maid - Marian Seldes
Io = Johanna Day
Athena = Phylicia Rashad [black Athena? -- I've seen a black Athena before, in Peter Sellars' Ajax, though there s/he was bald & in drag].
Menelaus = Denis O'Hare

The Trial of Helen

This material has been published on the web by Prof. Tom Sienkewicz for his students at Monmouth College. If you have any questions, you can contact him at toms@monm.edu.

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