Revenge in Attic and Later Tragedy
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5th century greek literature
A01=Anne Pippin Burnett
aeschylus
ajax
ancient athens
ancient drama
ancient literature
aristogeiton
attic tragedy
Author_Anne Pippin Burnett
Category=DSBB
Category=DSG
children of heracles
criminality
cyclops
depravity
drama
electra
english renaissance
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
euripides
grotesque
harmodius
hecuba
heracles
human actions
libation bearers
medea
necessity
odyssey
orestes
pindar
radical insights
revenge tragedies
sensational
sophocles
supernatural powers
tereus
vengeance
Product details
- ISBN 9780520210967
- Weight: 726g
- Dimensions: 159 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 01 Oct 1998
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Modern readings of ancient Athenian drama tend to view it as a presentation of social or moral problems, as if ancient drama showed the same realism seen on the present-day stage. Such views are belied by the plays themselves, in which supremely violent actions occur in a legendary time and place distinct both from reality and from the ethics of ordinary life. Offering fresh readings of Attic tragedy, Anne Pippin Burnett urges readers to peel away twentieth-century attitudes toward vengeance and reconsider the revenge tragedies of ancient Athens in their own context. After a consideration of how our view of Elizabethan drama has obscured an accurate view of the ancient tragedies, Burnett reviews early Greek notions of vengeance as expressed in the Odyssey, Heracles' tales, Pindar's odes, Attic judicial processes, and the legend of Harmodius and Aristogeiton. Then, setting aside post-Platonic and Judeo-Christian notions of criminality, she provides new interpretations of all the Attic tragedies in which revenge is a central theme: Aeschylus' Libation Bearers, Sophocles' Ajax, Electra, and Tereus, and Euripides' Children of Heracles, Hecuba, Medea, Electra, and Orestes.
Burnett shows that for the ancients, revenge meant a redress of imbalances in both human and divine worlds, achieved through human actions. The vengeful heroines thus appear in a new light. Electra, Hecuba, Medea, and others cease to be the picture of depravity in dramas that are grotesque and sensational, and are instead representative human figures who respond with grandeur to the outsize demands of necessity and supernatural powers.
Anne Pippin Burnett is Professor of Classics, Emerita, University of Chicago. Her previous books include Catastrophe Survived: Euripides' Plays of Mixed Reversal, Three Archaic Poets: Archilochus, Alcaeus, Sappho, and The Art of Bacchylides.
