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.

'The Soul of Tragedy' brings together scholars to offer perspectives on the Greek tragedy. The collection pays homage to this genre by offering an exploration into the oldest form of dramatic expression.

A collection of essays that brings new insight to the question of the continuing, and inexhaustible, fascination of Athenian tragedy of the fifth century BCE. There is particular reference to the visual - the myriad ways in which tragic texts are (re)interpreted, (re)appropriated, and (re)visualized through verbal and artistic description.

Euripides' Danae and Dictys are two of the most important and influential treatments of a popular tragic myth-cycle, which is unrepresented among extant plays. Moreover, they are early treatments of major Euripidean plot-patterns that anticipate and illuminate more familiar works in the corpus, both extant and fragmentary. This is the first full-scale study of the two plays, which sheds light on plot-patterns, key themes and aspects of Euripidean dramatic technique (e.g. his rhetoric, imagery, stagecraft), as well as matters of reception and transmission of both tragedies, by taking into account newly related evidence. The cautious recovery of the two lost plays based on the available evidence and the detailed commentary on their fragments seek to complement our knowledge of Euripidean drama by contributing to an overview and more comprehensive picture of the dramatist's technique, as the extant corpus represents only a small portion of his oeuvre.

In this book Professor Mastronarde draws on the seventeen surviving tragedies of Euripides, as well as the fragmentary remains of his lost plays, to explore key topics in the interpretation of the plays. It investigates their relation to the Greek poetic tradition and to the social and political structures of their original setting, aiming both to be attentive to the great variety of the corpus and to identify commonalities across it. In examining such topics as genre, structural strategies, the chorus, the gods, rhetoric, and the portrayal of women and men, this study highlights the ways in which audience responses are manipulated through the use of plot structures and the multiplicity of viewpoints expressed. It argues that the dramas of Euripides, through their dramatic technique, pose a strong challenge to simple formulations of norms, to the reading of consistent human character, and to the quest for certainty and closure.

Marianne McDonald brings together her training as a scholar of classical Greek with her vast experience in theatre and drama to help students of the classics and of theatre learn about the living performance tradition of Greek tragedy. The Living Art of Greek Tragedy is indispensable for anyone interested in performing Greek drama, and McDonald's engaging descriptions offer the necessary background to all those who desire to know more about the ancient world. With a chapter on each of the three major Greek tragedians (Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides), McDonald provides a balance of textual analysis, practical knowledge of the theatre, and an experienced look at the difficulties and accomplishments of theatrical performances. She shows how ancient Greek tragedy, long a part of the standard repertoire of theatre companies throughout the world, remains fresh and alive for contemporary audiences.

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.

Poetry in archaic and classical Greece was a practical art that arose from specific social or political circumstances. The interpretation of a poem or dramatic work must therefore be viewed in the context of its performance. In Poetry, Public, and Performance in Ancient Greece, Lowell Edmunds and Robert W. Wallace bring together a distinguished group of contributors to reconstruct the performance context of a wide array of works, including epic, tragedy, lyric, elegy, and proverb. Analyzing the passage in the Odyssey in which a collective delirium comes over the suitors, Giulio Guidorizzi reveals how the poet describes a scene that lies outside the narrative themes and diction of epic. Antonio Aloni offers a reading of Simonides' elegy for the Greeks who fell at Plataea. Lowell Edmunds interprets the so-called seal of Theognis as lying on a borderline between the performed and the textual. Taking up proverbs, maxims, and apothegms, Joseph Russo examines "the performance of wisdom." Charles Segal focuses on the unusual role played by the chorus in Euripides' Bacchae. Reading the plot of Euripides' Ion, Thomas Cole concludes that the task of constructing the meaning of the play is to some extent delegated to the public. Robert Wallace describes the "performance" of the Athenian audience and provides a catalog of good and bad behavior: whistling, shouting, and throwing objects of every kind. Finally, Maria Grazia Bonanno stresses the importance of performance in lyric poetry.

Objects as Actors charts a new approach to Greek tragedy based on an obvious, yet often overlooked, fact: Greek tragedy was meant to be performed. As plays, the works were incomplete without physical items—theatrical props. In this book, Melissa Mueller ingeniously demonstrates the importance of objects in the staging and reception of Athenian tragedy. As Mueller shows, props such as weapons, textiles, and even letters were often fully integrated into a play’s action. They could provoke surprising plot turns, elicit bold viewer reactions, and provide some of tragedy’s most thrilling moments. Whether the sword of Sophocles’s Ajax, the tapestry in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, or the tablet of Euripides’s Hippolytus, props demanded attention as a means of uniting—or disrupting—time, space, and genre. Insightful and original, Objects as Actors offers a fresh perspective on the central tragic texts—and encourages us to rethink ancient theater as a whole.

The esteem in which satyr drama was held in antiquity still arouses curiosity and controversy. Twelve new papers, generated in North America by a distinguished cast of scholars, explore questions central to the genre. How did satyr drama relate to comedy and tragedy; how closely was it tied to its tragic trilogy? How did the Athenians react to pro-satyric drama, such as the Alcestis? How far did satyr plays reflect contemporary political life? Fresh conclusions are adduced from the fragments, particularly those of Aeschylus, and there is special study of Euripides' Cyclops, not least for its possible reflection of the fifth-century sophists.