Greek Drama

Greenhaven Press Companion to Literary Movements and Genres

by Don Nardo (Editor)

Essays explore the social, philosophical, and political trends that influenced the writers of Greek drama.

176 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1999

About the author

Don Nardo (born February 22, 1947) is an American historian, composer, and writer. With close to four hundred and fifty published books, he is one of the most prolific authors in the United States, and one of the country's foremost writers of historical works for children and teens.

Reviews

[John Geddie · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's less of a single tome on the subject, but a collection of 18 scholarly articles on different facets of the subject. I was initially put off, but going through I changed my mind and decided this was a feature not a bug. It ended up being a series of hyper-focused looks at different subjects. I liked some more than others, but most were very interesting and contained a lot of things I didn't know.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Greenhaven's Greek Drama offers a lovely selection of articles on various topics such as scenery and mechanical devices, women in Greek tragedy, and the nature of tragedy. Each piece is excerpted from a larger article or book, and edited for content or reading level, so there's a fair number of ellipses or explanatory notes in brackets. It's a strictly introductory work, and the chapters are largely drawn from works in the '60s and '70s, but it offers a nice spread, particularly the pieces on comedy (which lay people like myself likely don't always think of when we think of Greek tragedy) and the closing bit on the continued relevancy of Greek tragedy today. I read this as secondary material when in a book club on The Orestia, and found it both interesting and useful in aiding my understanding of the plays.