Achilles in Greek Tragedy

Examines how the tragic dramatists persistently appropriated Achilles to address the concerns of their time.

Pantelis Michelakis (Author)

9780521038928, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 13 August 2007

236 pages, 5 b/w illus.
22.5 x 13.9 x 0.8 cm, 0.311 kg

'All in all, a well-written and carefully edited book. In my view, its main strength is the combination of an attentive reading of the plays with an analysis of the position Achilles occupies in the mythological tradition, artistic representations, the social and cultural context of classical Athens and contemporary literary and philosophical sources.' L'Antiquité Classique

This study examines how one of the most popular and glamorous figures of Greek mythology was imagined on the tragic stage of fifth-century Athens. Dr Michelakis argues that dramatists persistently appropriated Achilles to address concerns of their time, from heroism and education to individualism and gender. Whether an aristocrat, a dead warrior or a young man, the tragic Achilles serves as a receptacle for competing definitions of heroism, oscillating between presence and absence, the exceptional and the paradigmatic. Tragedy draws on Achilles to display and pit against one another contrasting views of the mythological self and of its rights and obligations, powers and limitations. The book considers the whole corpus of extant Greek tragedy, with particular attention paid to Aeschylus' Myrmidons and Euripides' Hecuba and Iphigenia at Aulis.

List of illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
1. Introduction: Achilles in the fifth century
2. The problematic hero: Aeschylus' Myrmidons
3. The dead hero: Euripides' Hecuba
4. The hero to be: Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis
5. Mapping the heroic absence: Achilles in other plays
6. Afterword
Bibliography
General index
Index of passages.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB], Theatre studies [AN]