Telling Tragedy

An exploration of the narrative strategies that sustain the complex relationship between the tragic poet and his audience. The text explores the changing patterns of Greek tragedy in the work of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.

Using recent narrative theory, this book explores the narrative strategies that sustain the complex relationship between the tragic poet and his sophisticated audience. It discusses how these sprawling stories were typically shaped by Aeschylus into dramatic form; and, once established, how these patterns were successively adapted, subverted, capped or ignored by Sophocles and Euripides in the annual attempt to recreate suspense and express fresh meanings relevant to the difficult last decades of the fifth century.