Greek Tragedy

Greek tragedy remains a subject of central concern, not only in classics, English and world literature courses at school and university, but also in the live theatre, where new translations of the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides continue to play to capacity audiences. This volume is the second to be published in the "Greece & Rome Studies" series. It collects together 17 studies of Greek tragedy by leading authorities in the field, published between 1972 and 1989 in the journal "Greece & Rome" (published by the Oxford University Press for the Classical Association). The articles include treatments of individual plays by all three playwrights, studies of character and imagery, and to begin with, an examination of recent critical assumptions. Aeschylus is represented by four articles, Sophocles by five, and Euripides by six. All are aimed at non-linguistic as well as linguistic students of classical literature.Table of ContentReading performance criticism, Simon Goldhill; presentation of character in Aeschylus, P.E. Easterling; the imagery of "The Persians", Michael Anderson; dramatic structure in the "Persae" and "Prometheus" of Aeschylus, S. Ireland; the theodicy of Aeschylus, David Cohen; character in Sophocles, P.E. Easterling; the background to Polyneices' disinterment and reburial, John Whitehorne; a misunderstood scene in Sophocles' "Oidipous" (OT 300-462), David Bain; bow, oracle and epiphany in Sophocles' "Philoctetes", Christopher Gill; the "phusis" of Neoptolemus in Sophocles' "Philoctetes", Mary Whitlock Blundell; Heracles and Greek tragedy, M.S. Silk; Euripides and the unexpected, W.Geoffrey Arnott; formal debates in Euripides' drama, C. Collard; Euripides' "Alcestis", Michael LLoyd; domestic disharmony in Euripides' "Andromache", Ian C. Storey; structure and dramatic realism in Euripides' "Heracles", Shirley A. Barlow; double the vision - a reading of Euripides' "Electra", W.Geoffrey Arnott.Essential reading for students