Table of Contents

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

About the Author

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.

Reviews

"Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz has made a most useful contribution to the field... An insightful discussion of tragedy which is up-to-date with scholarly developments and academic debate, which offers helpful modern parallels throughout in connection with political and social issues." ( Scholia Reviews , 2009) "A new approach to a popular subject offering readings of some of the best-known Attic tragedies in both their ancient and modern contexts. The author's application of contemporary debates and issues to the ancient material is refreshing and stimulating. This book has much to offer." Fiona McHardy, Roehampton University "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)