Global InformationMessene Redeemed information
| Author | F. L. Lucas |
|---|---|
| Genre | poetry; verse drama |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Publication date | October 1940 |
F. L. Lucas's Messene Redeemed (1940) is a verse drama or long poem (some 900 lines), based on Pausanias, about the struggle for independence of ancient Messene against Sparta. As well as narrating Messenian history from earliest times to the defeat of Sparta at Leuctra (371 BC) and the return of the exiles, it dramatizes two episodes in play-form: one from the First Messenian War (c.743 – 724 BC) – the "honour killing" of his daughter Laodice by Aristodemus at Ithome,[1] and one from the end of the Second (c.685 – 668 BC) – the last hours of Eira.[2]
Some reviewers treated the work as a play (it contains stage-directions), though the author called it a poem.[3][4] The two dramatized episodes are not labelled 'scenes' or 'acts', but alternate with the linking narration, spoken by an Old Reciter and a Young. The play begins with an Induction set in the 'present' (369 BC), but like The Taming of the Shrew, does not return to it at the end.
- ^ Pausanias, Description of Greece, IV:ix-xii
- ^ Pausanias, Description of Greece, IV: xx-xxi
- ^ Lucas, F. L., Journal Under the Terror, 1938 (London, 1939), p. 176
- ^ Author's blurb on dust jacket, Messene Redeemed