Greek Tragedy in a Global Crisis: Reading through Pandemic Times

Description

What does it mean to read Greek tragedy in a pandemic, a global crisis? How can Greek tragedy address urgent contemporary troubles? One of the outstanding and most widely read theorists in the discipline, Mario Telò, brings together a deep understanding of Greek tragedy and its most famous icons with contemporary times. In close readings of plays such as Alcestis, Antigone, Bacchae, Hecuba, Oedipus the King, PrometheusBound, and TrojanWomen, our experience is precariously refracted back in the formal worlds of plays named after and, to an extent, epitomized by tragic characters. Structured around four thematic clusters – Air Time Faces, Communities, Ruins, and Insurrections – this book presents timely interventions in critical theory and in the debates that matter to us as disaster becomes routine in the time-out-of-joint of a (post-)pandemic world. Violently encompassing all pre-existing and future crises (relational, political and ecological), the pandemic coincides with the queer unhistoricism of tragedy, and its collapsing of present, past, and future readerships. Cover Halftitle page Series page Title page Copyright page Contents Figures Acknowledgments Introduction Reading Greek Tragedy through Pandemic Times Part One Air Time Faces 1 Oedipus 2 Teiresias Cadmus Dionysus 3 Iphigenia Part Two Communities 4 Alcestis 5 The Suppliant Women Part Three Ruins 6 Antigone 7 Niobe Part Four Insurrections 8 Prometheus 9 Hecuba 10 The Trojan Women Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index