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Summary
Summary
As a creative medium, ancient Greek tragedy has had an extraordinarily wide influence: many of the surviving plays are still part of the theatrical repertoire, and texts like Agamemnon, Antigone, and Medea have had a profound effect on Western culture. This Companion is not a conventional introductory textbook but an attempt, by seven distinguished scholars, to present the familiar corpus in the context of modern reading, criticism, and performance of Greek tragedy. There are three main emphases: on tragedy as an institution in the civic life of ancient Athens, on a range of different critical interpretations arising from fresh readings of the texts, and on changing patterns of reception, adaptation, and performance from antiquity to the present. Each chapter can be read independently, but each is linked with the others, and most examples are drawn from the same selection of plays.
Reviews (1)
Choice Review
No dry handbook purveying conventional wisdom with an air of authority, this volume is the product of a group of scholars doing some of the most exciting work on Greek tragedy. They contribute essays on such subjects as the civic context of Athenian theater, Dionysus, the composition of the audience, pictorial representations of tragedy, the sociology of tragedy (gender, class), tragic language, and the construction of the plot, concluding with chapters on modern adaptations and performances and recent critical approaches. One may consult the volume on particular topics or read it cover to cover: the essays are lively and the treatments thorough without suppressing individual styles and views. One of a kind, this book is best used alongside Eric Csapo and William Slater's The Context of Ancient Drama (1995), which collects ancient sources in translation. The Cambridge Companion does not offer resumes or interpretations of all the tragedies; for this, readers must consult individual editions and works of criticism, or surveys such as Bernhard Zimmermann's brief and readable Greek Tragedy (English tr., CH, Sep'91) or, for hardy souls, Albin Lesky's Greek Tragic Poetry (English tr., 1983). Highly recommended for all classics collections. D. Konstan; Brown University
Table of Contents
| List of illustrations |
| List of contributors |
| Preface |
| Plan of the city of Athens |
| Part I Tragedy as an Institution: The Historical Context |
| 1 'Deep plays': theatre as process in Greek civic lifePaul Cartledge |
| 2 A show for DionysusP. E. Easterling |
| 3 The audience of Athenian tragedySimon Goldhill |
| 4 The pictorial record OliverTaplin |
| Part II The Plays |
| 5 The sociology of Athenian tragedyEdith Hall |
| 6 The language of tragedy: rhetoric and communicationSimon Goldhill |
| 7 Form and performanceP. E. Easterling |
| 8 Myth into mythos: the shaping of tragic plotsPeter Burian |
| Part III Reception |
| 9 From repertoire tocanon P. E. Easterling |
| 10 Tragedy adapted for stages and screens: the Renaissance to the presentPeter Burian |
| 11 Tragedy in performance: nineteenth- and twentieth-century productionsFiona Macintosh |
| 12 Modern critical approachesSimon Goldhill |
| Glossary |
| Chronology |
| Texts, commentaries and translations |
| Works cited |
| Index |