Tragic Workings in Euripides' Drama : The Anthropology of the Genre

Tragic Workings in Euripides Drama offers a substantially new theory and method for understanding Attic tragedy. Starting from anthropological insights, and drawing on Aristotles 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 Bouvries 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 authors 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.