Greek Tragedy

This is an engaging introduction to Greek tragedy, its history, and its reception in the contemporary world. Rabinowitz sets ancient tragedy into its original theatrical, political, and ritual context and applies modern critical approaches to understanding why tragedy continues to interest modern audiences. Presenting multiple perspectives and addressing the significant topics in the field, this comprehensive book examines tragedy's relationship to Athenian democracy, religion, and myth. It explores how contemporary approaches to scholarship - including structuralist, psychoanalytic, and feminist theory - have changed the study and reception of Greek tragedy. Providing a thorough examination of ancient performance practices, and including detailed readings of selected plays, this text explores tragedy's ideology and effects, illuminating the reasons why Greek tragedy continues to be a subject of consequence to the modern world.

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.