The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy

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.

• All essays newly commissioned for this Companion • The contributors include five of the most widely known and respected scholars in the field • New approach to the subject - fresh readings of familiar texts • Chapters on modern performance and adaptation, including opera and film • Considers the role of tragedy in society • Pat Easterling is the editor of the Greek and Latin Classics series

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 life Paul Cartledge; 2. A show for Dionysus P. E. Easterling; 3. The audience of Athenian tragedy Simon Goldhill; 4. The pictorial record Oliver Taplin; Part II. The Plays: 5. The sociology of Athenian tragedy Edith Hall; 6. The language of tragedy: rhetoric and communication Simon Goldhill; 7. Form and performance P. E. Easterling; 8. Myth into mythos: the shaping of tragic plots Peter Burian; Part III. Reception: 9. From repertoire to canon P. E. Easterling; 10. Tragedy adapted for stages and screens: the Renaissance to the present Peter Burian; 11. Tragedy in performance: nineteenth- and twentieth-century productions Fiona Macintosh; 12. Modern critical approaches Simon Goldhill; Glossary; Chronology; Texts, commentaries and translations; Works cited; Index.