Euripides and the Tragic Tradition asks all the right questions. It forces us to confront the many contradictions in Euripides' work, demonstrates the differences between the literary assumptions of Sophocles and Euripides, and challenges us to respond to Euripidean drama with sophistication and sensitivity. --Francis M. Dunn, Scholia.
Tragic Workings in Euripides? Drama' offers a substantially new theory and method for understanding Attic tragedy. Starting from anthropological insights, and drawing on Aristotle?s theory of the specific ?tragic? reactions of ?shock and horror? as well as his propositions on the ?tragic? violation of fundamental social values, Des Bouvrie argues that the participating community in fifth-century Greece, for instance at the Dionysia, the Athenian dramatic festival, assembled as a collective body engaging in a program of ?prescribed sentiments.? She identifies this program as a ?tragic process? that mobilized the audience into revitalizing their institutional order, the unquestionable values sustaining the oikos and preserving the polis.00Des Bouvrie?s novel, not to say revolutionary, and explicitly ?anthropological? approach, consists in focusing primarily on the ?tragic workings? of Attic tragedy. While Euripides is singled out ? with astute readings of Heracleidae, Andromache, Hecuba, Heracles, The Trojan Women, Iphigenia in Tauris and Iphigenia at Aulis on offer - the author?s earlier work on other Greek tragedians suggests that these features were operating in the genre as such. For students and scholars interested in ancient Greek tragedy, this volume constitutes a remarkable contribution. It will significantly further studies of the tragic genre as well as stimulate new debate.
This book contains essays by international experts on Sophocles, asking why he matters, and why he is still read and performed today. His seven surviving tragedies are discussed from a variety of perspectives. A picture emerges of Sophocles' place at the foundations of the tragic tradition and in its perpetual refashioning and renewal.
The Music of Tragedy offers a new approach to the study of classical Greek theater by examining the use of musical language, imagery, and performance in the late work of Euripides. Naomi Weiss demonstrates that Euripides’ allusions to music-making are not just metatheatrical flourishes or gestures towards musical and religious practices external to the drama but closely interwoven with the dramatic plot. Situating Euripides’ experimentation with the dramaturgical effects of mousike within a broader cultural context, she shows how much of his novelty lies in his reinvention of traditional lyric styles and motifs for the tragic stage. If we wish to understand better the trajectories of this most important ancient art form, The Music of Tragedy argues, we must pay closer attention to the role played by both music and text.
This generous selection of published essays by the distinguished classicist Charles Segal represents over twenty years of critical inquiry into the questions of what Greek tragedy is and what it means for modern-day readers. Taken together, the essays reflect profound changes in the study of Greek tragedy in the United States during this period-in particular, the increasing emphasis on myth, psychoanalytic interpretation, structuralism, and semiotics.
In this valuable book, Hanna M. Roisman provides a uniquely comprehensive look at Euripides' Hippolytus. Roisman begins with an examination of the ancient preference for the implicit style, and suggests a possible reading of Euripides' first treatment of the myth which would account for the Athenian audience's reservations about his Hippolytus Veiled. She proceeds to analyze significant scenes in the play, including Hippolytus' prayer to Artemis, Phaedra's delirium, Phaedra's "confession" speech, and the interactions between Theseus and Hippolytus. Concluding with a discussion of the meaning of the tragic in Hippolytus, Roisman questions the applicability in this case of the idea of the tragic flaw. Nothing Is as It Seems includes extensive comparisons of Euripides' play with the Phaedra of Seneca. This is a very important book for students and scholars of Greek tragedy, literature, and rhetoric.
This book provides an accessible introduction for students and anyone interested in increasing their enjoyment of Greek tragic plays. Whether readers are studying Greek culture, performing a Greek tragedy, or simply interested in reading a Greek play, this book will help them to understand and enjoy this challenging and rewarding genre. An Introduction to Greek Tragedy provides background information, helps readers appreciate, enjoy and engage with the plays themselves, and gives them an idea of the important questions in current scholarship on tragedy. Ruth Scodel seeks to dispel misleading assumptions about tragedy, stressing how open the plays are to different interpretations and reactions. In addition to general background, the book also includes chapters on specific plays, both the most familiar titles and some lesser-known plays - Persians, Helen and Orestes - in order to convey the variety that the tragedies offer readers.
"The book argues that rediscovered ancient Greek plays exerted a powerful and uncharted influence on sixteenth-century England's dramatic landscape, not only in academic and aristocratic settings, but also at the heart of the developing commercial theaters."--Introduction, p. 2.
