Greek Tragedy sets ancient tragedy into its original theatrical, political and ritual context and applies modern critical approaches to understanding why tragedy continues to interest modern audiences.

• An engaging introduction to Greek tragedy, its history, and its reception in the contemporary world with suggested readings for further study
• Examines tragedy’s relationship to democracy, religion, and myth
• Explores contemporary approaches to scholarship, including structuralist, psychoanalytic, and feminist theory
• Provides a thorough examination of contemporary performance practices
• Includes detailed readings of selected plays

“Engaging introduction to Greek tragedy, … Greek Tragedy is written in an informal, appealing style … .Rabinowitz is able to lead the reader quickly to the central issues of a play, often with reference to key terms or ideas already brought up in the ‘context’ chapters, and then to explore those ideas as pairs of irreconcilables in a way consistent with her overall emphasis on the ambivalences, ambiguities, and unresolved problems tragedy poses to ancient and modern audiences alike.” (Bryn Mawr Classical Review, December 2008)

“As a supplement … [it’s] a vein of gold. [The author’s] nuanced familiarity with every aspect of the topic of Greek drama is breath-taking.” (About.com)

Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz is the Margaret Bundy Scott Professor of Comparative Literature at Hamilton College, where she teaches tragedy, modern drama, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction. She is the author of Anxiety Veiled: Euripides and the Traffic in Women (1993), as well as the co-editor of Feminist Theory and the Classics (1993), Among Women: From the Homosocial to the Homoerotic in the Ancient World (2002), and Women on the Edge: Four Plays by Euripides (1998), for which she translated Euripides’ Alcestis.