Tragic Workings in Euripides' Drama
Subtitle: The Anthropology of the Genre
Publisher: Museum Tusculanum Press
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 512
ISBN-13: 9788763545952
Description: "Tragic Workings in Euripides'  Drama offers a substantially new theory and method for understanding Attic tragedy. Starting from anthropological insights, and drawing on Aristotle's theory of the specific tragic reactions of shock and horror as well as his propositions on the tragic violation of fundamental social values, Des Bouvrie argues that the participating community in fifth-century Greece, for instance at the Dionysia, the Athenian dramatic festival, assembled as a collective body engaging in a program of prescribed sentiments. She identifies this program as a tragic process that mobilized the audience into revitalizing their institutional order, the unquestionable values sustaining the oikos and preserving the polis. Des Bouvrie's novel, not to say revolutionary, and explicitly anthropological approach, consists in focusing primarily on the tragic workings of Attic tragedy. While Euripides is singled out with astute readings of Heracleidae, Andromache, Hecuba, Heracles, The Trojan Women, Iphigenia in Tauris and Iphigenia at Aulis on offer - the author's earlier work on other Greek tragedians suggests that these features were operating in the genre as such. For students and scholars interested in ancient Greek tragedy, this volume constitutes a remarkable contribution. It will significantly further studies of the tragic genre as well as stimulate new debate."--Dust jacket flap.