Materialities of Greek Tragedy

Mario Telò is Professor of Classics at University of California, Berkeley, USA. He is author of Aristophanes and the Cloak of Comedy: Affect, Aesthetics, and the Canon (2016) and an edition and commentary of Eupolis's Demes (2007).Melissa Mueller is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA. She is author of Objects as Actors: Props and the Poetics of Performance in Greek Tragedy (2016).

• List of ContributorsList of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsIntroduction: Greek Tragedy and the New Materialisms - Mario Telò, University of California, Berkeley, USA and Melissa Mueller, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA1. Stone into Smoke: Metaphor and Materiality in Euripides’ Troades - Victoria Wohl, University of Toronto, Canada2. Morbid Materialism: The Matter of the Corpse in Euripides’ Alcestis - Karen Bassi, University of California, USA3. Orestes' Urn in Word and Action - Joshua Billings, Princeton University, USA4. Weapons as Friends and Foes in Sophocles’ Ajax and Euripides’ Heracles - Erika Weiberg, Florida State University, USA5. The Familiar Mask - Al Duncan, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA6. The Other Side of the Mirror: Reflection and Reversal in Euripides’ Hecuba - Ava Shirazi, Princeton University, USA7. Memory Incarnate: Material Objects and Private Visions in Classical Athens from Euripides’ Ion to the Gravesite - Seth Estrin, University of Chicago, USA8. The Boon and the Woe: Friendship and the Ethics of Affect in Sophocles’ Philoctetes - Mario Telò, University of California, Berkeley, USA9. Noses in the Orchestra: Bodies, Objects, and Affect in Sophocles’ Ichneutae - Anna Uhlig, University of California, Davis, USA10. Speaking Sights and Seen Sounds in Aeschylean Tragedy - Naomi Weiss, Harvard University, USA11. Electra, Orestes, and the Sibling Hand - Nancy Worman, Barnard College and Columbia University, USA12. Materialisms Old and New - Edith Hall, King's College London, UKBibliographyIndex

This is an enormously engaging book, full of subtle and imaginative treatments of tragedy … What it offers most clearly is a taste of the great variety of modern materialisms and also a sharp sense of what these movements disavow: explorations of the soul, the spirit, transcendence, language as a transparent or logical system, transparency or logic, human agency, consciousness, intentionality, or authorship. Engaging with the volume is an extraordinarily useful way to understand the many potentials, and the constraints, of this varied set of intellectual movements. I can well imagine teaching with these essays, if only to prod my students to excitement, irritation, and ideas.