The Politics of Greek Tragedy
The Politics of Greek Tragedy
D. M. Carter
Series: Bristol Phoenix Press Greece and Rome Live
Copyright Date: 2007
Edition: 1
Published by: Liverpool University Press
Pages: 136
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vjm0t
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Book Info
The Politics of Greek Tragedy
Book Description:

This book addresses the political aspects of fifth-century Athenian tragedies, setting them in their immediate historical context. It is an important topic and one that only rarely and sporadically finds its way into accessible accounts of Greek tragedy. Carter sets out to elucidate to a student and general audience how and why Athenian tragedy should be read as a political art form. The political content of ancient drama has been the subject of much scholarly debate in the last thirty years, but much of that debate is highly technical and inaccessible. Carter demonstrates that like the contemporary satirical comedy of Aristophanes, or indeed the sculptures of the Parthenon, tragedy involved a highly political dimension.He provides stimulating and provocative analyses, from varied points of view, of the political aspect in several individual tragedies (always referred to in modern translations). To this he adds a chapter on the ‘reception’ of political tragedy, alluding to theatre and film productions of the Greek plays that have taken an overtly political stance within a modern context.

eISBN: 978-1-78138-546-3
Subjects: Language & Literature
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. I-VI)
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. VII-VIII)
  3. Preface
    Preface (pp. IX-XII)
  4. Chapter 1 Introduction
    Chapter 1 Introduction (pp. 1-20)

    Early in the year 405 bc (by the modern calendar) the Athenians were facing defeat and possible annihilation at the hands of Sparta. Nearly thirty years of on-off conflict were heading for a disastrous end. At this moment of political crisis they did what they always did, twice a year, and held a dramatic festival. One of the plays performed, a comedy by Aristophanes calledFrogs, addressed the city’s problems in a way that might seem surprising to a modern audience. As the action starts the god Dionysus (in whose honour the dramatic festivals were held) is on his way...

  5. Chapter 2 Some views, their implications
    Chapter 2 Some views, their implications (pp. 21-63)

    Few topics in Greek literature have been as hotly debated in recent years as the political function of Greek tragedy. The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate and criticise six of the more important critical approaches of the last fifty years. Each approach is illustrated with a discussion of one or two plays and the chapter concludes with a critical summary of Aeschylus’Oresteia. Three broad points will become clear: the number and variety of modern political readings of Greek tragedy; the differing politics of several individual plays; that all this is crucial to our understanding of Greek drama...

  6. Chapter 3 The political shape of tragedy
    Chapter 3 The political shape of tragedy (pp. 64-89)

    There are two lessons to be drawn from the survey in the previous chapter: first, that different tragedies are political in different ways and second, that any inquiry into the politics of Greek tragedy must be informed by a working definition of the ‘political’. Disregarding for the moment the need for flexibility necessitated by my first point, I attempt to find such a definition here.

    A good starting point is Macleod’s definition of the political as ‘a concern with human beings as part of a community’. This has a special relevance to the study of ancient Greece. The life of...

  7. Chapter 4 Four political tragedies
    Chapter 4 Four political tragedies (pp. 90-142)

    We can now look at some tragedies in depth, taking a political perspective. We must bear in mind our working definition of ‘the political’ as ‘a concern with human beings as part of the community of thepolis’. This definition, however, is only our best fit: we must not be too disappointed if a clearly political play appears to transgress it. I have chosen four plays, two by Sophocles and two by Euripides, that yield a variety of political readings. Some of them have been mentioned already in the previous two chapters. In each case, there are three questions that...

  8. Chapter 5 The political reception of Greek tragedy
    Chapter 5 The political reception of Greek tragedy (pp. 143-160)

    ‘Just how far will a leader go in order to save face and secure a military victory in the East?’ This question was posed in the publicity material for a National Theatre production of Euripides’Iphigenia at Aulisin the summer of 2004 (in a translation by the late Don Taylor, directed by Katie Mitchell). The words are cleverly arranged to create a parallelism between King Agamemnon and Prime Minister Tony Blair. The one man took the desperate measure of sacrificing his own daughter in order to save face with his troops and sail to Troy; the other took his...

  9. Notes
    Notes (pp. 161-178)
  10. Appendix A: Chronology
    Appendix A: Chronology (pp. 179-180)
  11. Appendix B: Authors and surviving works
    Appendix B: Authors and surviving works (pp. 181-182)
  12. Appendix C: Some heroic genealogy
    Appendix C: Some heroic genealogy (pp. 183-183)
  13. Appendix D: Glossary of Greek terms
    Appendix D: Glossary of Greek terms (pp. 184-186)
  14. Further reading
    Further reading (pp. 187-194)
  15. Index
    Index (pp. 195-212)
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