The Mourning Voice : an essay on Greek tragedy

Foreword by Pietro Pucci    ix
Translator's Note    xv

I. Greek Tragedy: Political Drama or Oratorio?    I

In which the contemporary reader rediscovers the significance of oratorio in Greek tragedy.

Sartre's Trojan Women 3
Greek Tragedy: Is It Relovant? 8
What the Mourning Voice of Tragedy Tells Us 1l

II. The Theater of Dionysus Is Not in the Agora    14

In which the reader learns tbat Greck tragedy is more tban a controlled sef-representation that the city-state chooses to reveal.

The Agora, the Theater, the Pnyx 15
A Political Stage? 19
Mourning Becomes Electra 20
In the Theater of Dionysus, Seditious Assemblies 23

III. Tragedy and the Antipolitical    26

In which the reader measures how tragedy, as opposed to civic discourse, expresses ineffable grief by means of the oratorio.

Aei versus aei: Aspects of a Conflict 27
Electra, Again and Always 32
CONTENTS
Aei, aiei, aini
The Sound of the Cry 38

IV. The Dilemma of the Self and the Other in Tragedy    42

In which the reader learns how tragedy, as something other than civic discourse, mocks the obligation toforget and the ban on memory.

A Ban on Memory and Its Consequences 42
The Persians, between Civic Education and the
Pleasure of Dionysus 44
Between the Self and the Other, a Delicate Balance 49
The Other Is the Self, and They Are Mortals Equally 50

V. Songwithout Lyre    54

In which the readergrasps how tragedy exploits the       
prohiLitions and opposition of political discourse.       
Glory, Song, Tears 56
An Incompatible Form? 59
Under the Sign of the Oxymoron 62

VI. Dionysus, Apollo    66

In which the reader hears, between song and cry, the mourning voice of tragedy that mixes and disturbs civic identities.

The Muse of Sorrow 67
Shared Cnes 72
Loxias's Crying Woman and Apollo's Bacchante 75

Conclusion: From Citizen to Spectator    81
In which the reader sres tbat, in the theater on the Pnyx, the
spectator discovers throngh catharsis that he is a mortalfrst, a
citizen second.
The Play of Emotions 83
The Individual, the Collectivity, the Theater 85
Choral Catharsis 90
Notes    95
Acknowledgrnents    121   
Index    123