Andreas Markantonatos Libri

This volume is an accessible yet in-depth narratological study of Euripides’ Alcestis - the earliest extant play of Euripides and one of the most experimental masterpieces of Greek tragedy, not only standing in place of a satyr-play but also preserving at least some of its typical features. Commencing from the widely-held view, so lamentably ignored within the domain of Classics, that a narratology of drama should be predicated upon the notion of narrative as verbal, as well as visual, rendition of a story, this unique volume contextualizes the play in terms of its reception by the original audience, locating the intricate narrative tropes of the plot in the dynamics of fifth-century Athenian mythology and religion.

This multiauthored volume, as well as bringing into clearer focus the notion of drama and oratory as important media of public inquiry and critique, aims to generate significant attention to the unified intentions of the dramatist and the orator to establish favourable conditions of internal stability in democratic Athens. We hope that readers both enjoy and find valuable their engagement with these ideas and beliefs regarding the indissoluble bond between oratorical expertise and dramatic artistry. This exciting collection of studies by worldwide acclaimed classicists and acute younger Hellenists is envisaged as part of the general effort, almost unanimously acknowledged as valid and productive, to explore the impact of formalized speech in particular and craftsmanship rhetoric in general upon Attic drama as a moral and educational force in the Athenian city-state. Both poet and orator seek to deepen the central tensions of their work and to enlarge the main themes of their texts to even broader terms by investing in the art of rhetoric, whilst at the same time, through a skillful handling of events, evaluating the past and establishing standards or ideology.

This book aims to offer a contemporary literary interpretation of the play, including a readable discussion of its underlying historical, religious, moral, social, and mythical issues. Also, it discusses the most recent interpretative scholarship on the play, the main intertextual affiliations with earlier Thebes-related tragedies, especially focusing on Sophocles’ Antigone and Oedipus Tyrannus, and the literature and performance reception of the play; it contains an up-to-date bibliography and detailed indices. Thebook won the Academy of Athens Great Award for the Best Monograph in Classical Philology for 2008.

This study of Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus demonstrates the applicability of narrative models to drama. It presents a major contribution not only to Sophoclean criticism but to dramatic criticism as a whole. For the first time, the methods of contemporary narrative theory are thoroughly applied to the text of a single major play. Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus is presented as a uniquely rich text, which deftly uses the figure and history of the blind Oedipus to explore and thematize some of the basic narratological concerns of Greek tragedy: the relation between the narrow here-and-now of visible stage action and the many off-stage worlds that have to be mediated into it through narrative, including the past, the future, other dramatizations of the myth, and the world of the fifth-century audience.