Greek Tragedy

This is an engaging introduction to Greek tragedy, its history, and its reception in the contemporary world. Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz sets ancient tragedy into its original theatrical, political, and ritual context and applies modern critical approaches to understanding why tragedy continues to interest modern audiences. Presenting multiple perspectives and addressing the significant topics in the field, this comprehensive book examines tragedy′s relationship to Athenian democracy, religion, and myth. It explores how contemporary approaches to scholarship – including structuralist, psychoanalytic, and feminist theory – have changed the study and reception of Greek tragedy. Providing a thorough examination of ancient performance practices, and including detailed readings of selected plays, this text explores tragedy’s ideology and effects, illuminating the reasons why Greek tragedy continues to be a subject of consequence to the modern world.

List of Figures. Preface. Introduction. Part I Tragedy in Its Athenian Context . 1 What Was Tragedy?. Definitions of Tragedy. What Did It Do?. Where Did It Come From?. How Were the Plays Performed?. 2 Tragedy and the Polis. Democracy. Empire and Hegemony. Performance Setting. Rhetoric. Referentiality. Ideology. Nothing to Do with the City?. 3 Tragedy and Greek Religion. Dionysos. Sacred Time and Space. Ritual Practices. Ritual Practice in Tragedy. Greek Gods and Mortals. Tragedy and Myth. Euripides’ Bacchai. Part II Thematic Approaches. 4 War and Empire. Aeschylus’ Persians. Aeschylus’ Oresteia. Euripides’ Iphigeneia at Aulis. 5 Family Romance and Revenge in the House of Atreus. Euripides’ Elektra. Sophocles’ Elektra. 6 Victims and Victimizers. Euripides’ Trojan Women. Euripides’ Hekabe. Euripides’ Medea. 7 The King and I. Sophocles’ Antigone. Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannos. 8 Epilogue: Modern Performances (with Sue Blundell). References. Index

Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz is the Margaret Bundy Scott Professor of Comparative Literature at Hamilton College, where she teaches tragedy, modern drama, and nineteenth– and twentieth–century fiction. She is the author of Anxiety Veiled: Euripides and the Traffic in Women (1993), as well as the co–editor of Feminist Theory and the Classics (1993), Among Women: From the Homosocial to the Homoerotic in the Ancient World (2002), and Women on the Edge: Four Plays by Euripides (1998), for which she translated Euripides’ Alcestis .

“Engaging introduction to Greek tragedy, … Greek Tragedy is written in an informal, appealing style … .Rabinowitz is able to lead the reader quickly to the central issues of a play, often with reference to key terms or ideas already brought up in the ‘context’ chapters, and then to explore those ideas as pairs of irreconcilables in a way consistent with her overall emphasis on the ambivalences, ambiguities, and unresolved problems tragedy poses to ancient and modern audiences alike.” ( Bryn Mawr Classical Review , December 2008) “As a supplement … [it’s] a vein of gold. [The author’s] nuanced familiarity with every aspect of the topic of Greek drama is breath–taking.” ( About.com )