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Graduation Term
Spring 2026
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Department of English: Writing
Committee Chair
Ray Levy
Committee Member
Gabriel Gudding
Abstract
This creative thesis is a section of a novel-in-progress whose plot is loosely based on the Hippolytus of Euripides. In most rewritings of the myth, the titular Hippolytus is not given the kind of dynamic interiority that would enable him to evaluate and change his own beliefs. This creative thesis reimagines the interiority of a Hippolytus character by bringing him into confrontation with his own solipsistic beliefs, to test if he can be brought any closer to empathy with his tragic counterpart, Phaedra, and thus to redemption. The preceding critical chapter examines another adaptation of the Hippolytus myth, Phaedra’s Love by Sarah Kane, through philosopher Rae Langton’s theoretical framework of sexual solipsism. It is argued that the main tension dramatized in Kane’s depiction of rape in Phaedra’s Love is not the ethical tension of sexual morality/immorality or the forensic distinction of consent/non-consent, but a tension between reciprocal love and sexual solipsism.
Access Type
Thesis-ISU Access Only
Recommended Citation
Terfruchte, Greta, "The Wife and the Hunter: Interiority in the Hippolytus Myth" (2026). Theses and Dissertations. 2270.
https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/etd/2270