Tragedy and the Tragic: Greek Theatre and Beyond

by: Silk, M.S.

 The Greeks invented tragedy; and from the age of the Greeks to the present day, tragedy has been seen to be a uniquely powerful and affecting form of art. But what makes it what it is? This challenging volume of twenty-nine new essays has an exceptional range - from Aeschylus to Sean O'Casey, from Aristotle to Rene Girard - but also a consistent focus on the ultimate question: how best to define or understand Greek tragedy in particular and tragedy in general. The contributors, who include many of the world's foremost names in the field of Greek drama, debate the question. They reassess particular Greek plays, from Oresteia to Antigone and Oedipus to Ion; they re-examine Greek tragedy in its cultural and political context; and the relate the tragedy of the Greeks to the serious drama and theoretical perspectives of the modern world, with Shakespeare at the forefront of several essays. The book is accessible to readers with no Greek and will be essential reading for anyone interested in tragedy, especially students and specialists in Classics, Drama, and English Literature

1. Vision, blindness, and mask : the radicalization of the emotions in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex / Claude Calame
What can you rely on in Oedipus Rex? : response to Calame / Richard Buxton
Antigone as moral agent / Helene P. Foley
Tragedy and the fragility of moral reasoning : response to Foley / Michael Trapp
Shifts of mood and concepts of time in Euripides' Ion / Kevin Lee
Realism in the Ion : response to Lee / W. Geoffrey Arnott
The unity of the Oresteia / A. Maria van Erp Taalman Kip
The tragedy of the Oresteia : response to van Erp Taalman Kip / A.F. Garvie
Catharsis, audience, and closure in Greek tragedy / Charles Segal
Weeping, witnessing, and the tragic audience : response to Segal / P.E. Easterling. (Cont.) 2. Greek tragedy : contexts. Comedy and the tragic / Oliver Taplin
Comedy and tragedy
inevitable distinctions : response to Taplin / Bernard Gredley
Tragedy and collective experience / John Gould
Collectivity and otherness
the authority of the tragic chorus : response to Gould / Simon Goldhill
Everything to do with Dionysos? : ritualism, the Dionysiac, and the tragic / Rainer Friedrich
Something to do with Dionysos
tragedy and the Dionysiac : response to Friedrich / Richard Seaford
Is there a polis in Aristotle's Poetics? / Edith Hall
Tragic rhetoric : the use of tragedy and the tragic in the fourth century / P.J. Wilson
Plato's repudiation of the tragic / Stephen Halliwell. (Cont.) 3. Greek tragedy and 'tragedy as a whole' : perspectives and definitions. Tragic freedom and fate in Sophocles' Antigone : notes on the role of the 'ancient evils' in 'the tragic' / Emese Mogyorodi
Perpeteia and the tragic dialectic in Euripidean tragedy / Bernd Seidensticker
Emotion and meaning in tragic performance / Ismene Lada
Tragic last words : the big speech and the lament in ancient Greek and modern Irish tragic drama / Fiona Macintosh
Dramatic scapegoating : on the uses and abuses of Girard and Shakespearean criticism / Robin N. Mitchell-Boyask
Patterns of tragedy in Sophokles and Shakespeare / Michael Ewans
Tragic language : the Greek tragedians and Shakespeare / M.S. Silk
Ironies in serious drama / Thomas G. Rosenmeyer
Tragic and Homeric ironies : response to Rosenmeyer / N.J. Lowe
Tragedy, pure and simple / George Steiner

Tragedy and the Tragic: Greek Theatre and Beyond

by: Silk, M.S.

• ISBN-13: 9780198149514 / 978-0-19-814951-4
• ISBN-03: 0198149514 / 0-19-814951-4
• Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996