Greek Tragedy in a Global Crisis : Reading Through Pandemic Times

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, Prometheus Bound, and Trojan Women, 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. "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, Prometheus Bound, and Trojan Women, 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"-- Provided by publisher Cover 1 Halftitle page 2 Series page 3 Title page 4 Copyright page 5 Contents 6 Figures 8 Acknowledgments 9 Introduction Reading Greek Tragedy through Pandemic Times 10 Part One Air Time Faces 24 1 Oedipus 26 2 Teiresias Cadmus Dionysus 45 3 Iphigenia 62 Part Two Communities 84 4 Alcestis 86 5 The Suppliant Women 101 Part Three Ruins 116 6 Antigone 118 7 Niobe 135 Part Four Insurrections 152 8 Prometheus 154 9 Hecuba 178 10 The Trojan Women 191 Epilogue 198 Notes 205 Bibliography 259 Index 286