AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY GIFTS OF HUMILIATION: CHARIS AND TRAGIC EXPERIENCE IN ALCESTIS

Charis is always what bears charis. (Soph. Aj. 522) Not for many does charis breed charis. (Anaxandrides fr. 69 PCG II) A gift that does nothing to enhance solidarity is a contradiction. —Mary Douglas on Marcel Mauss WHETHER OR NOT in the spring of 438 B.C.E. Euripides anticipated that his festival audience would find his production of Alcestis to be a thought–provoking pro–satyr play, its twentieth–century “readerly au-diences ” most certainly have. The play has prompted a steady stream of critical studies on a broad range of themes and issues. The trends in the most recent century’s approaches to Alcestis are not necessarily tidy, but one critic has summarized them as having three movements: inter-est prior to World War I in the play’s lighter, comic elements; emphasis on Euripides ’ use of folktale elements, beginning in the 1920s; and ex-ploration of the play’s more sinister elements since World War II.1 My analysis here references this scholarly tradition in the service of an ethical–sociological reading focused on the issue of “charis, ” a theme interwoven in the play’s complex narrative levels of irony and fairy tale, tragedy and satyr drama, and dark and light characterization. I argue that it is possible to view Alcestis ’ offer to die for Admetus as a kind of gift, a gift that in turn effectively devalues the kinds of gifts Ad