The Materialities of Greek Tragedy : Objects and Affect in Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides

Situated within contemporary posthumanism, this volume offers theoretical and practical approaches to materiality in Greek tragedy. Established and emerging scholars explore how works of the three major Greek tragedians problematize objects and affect, providing fresh readings of some of the masterpieces of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Situated within contemporary posthumanism, this volume offers theoretical and practical approaches to materiality in Greek tragedy. Established and emerging scholars explore how works of the three major Greek tragedians problematize objects and affect, providing fresh readings of some of the masterpieces of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. The so-called new materialisms have complemented the study of objects as signifiers or symbols with an interest in their agency and vitality, their sensuous force and psychosomatic impact-and conversely their resistance and irreducible aloofness. At the same time, emotion has been recast as material "affect," an intense flow of energies between bodies, animate and inanimate. Powerfully contributing to the current critical debate on materiality, the essays collected here destabilize established interpretations, suggesting alternative approaches and pointing toward a newly robust sense of the physicality of Greek tragedy Cover 1 Half-title 3 Title 5 Copyright 6 Contents 7 List of Figures 9 List of Contributors 10 Acknowledgments 12 Abbreviations 13 Introduction 15 1. Stone into Smoke 31 2. Morbid Materialism 49 3. Orestes’ Urn in Word and Action 63 4. Weapons as Friends and Foes in Sophocles’ 77 5. The Familiar 93 6. The Other Side of the Mirror 111 7. Memory Incarnate 125 8. The Boon and the Woe 147 9. Noses in the Orchestra 167 10. Speaking Sights and Seen Sounds in Aeschylean Tragedy 183 11. Electra, Orestes, and the Sibling Hand 199 12. Materialisms Old and New 217 Notes 233 Bibliography 283 Index 307 Edited By Mario Telò And Melissa Mueller. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.