The Mourning Voice
An Essay on Greek Tragedy

Nicole Loraux (Author), Elizabeth Trapnell Rawlings (Translated by), Pietro Pucci (Foreword by)

9780801438301

Hardback, published 15 May 2002

144 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.454 kg

In her many publications, the author has never ceased to provide new and exciting perspectives on Greek culture. Although one many not agree with every detail of her findings in the present book, the work is nonetheless a stimulating contribution to our understanding of Greek tragedy.

In The Mourning Voice, Nicole Loraux presents a radical challenge to what has become the dominant view of tragedy in recent years: that tragedy is primarily a civic phenomenon, infused with Athenian political ideology, which envisions its spectators first and foremost as citizens, members of the political collective. Instead, Loraux maintains, the spectator addressed by tragedy is the individual defined primarily in terms of his or her humanity, rather than in terms of affiliation with a political group. The plays, she says, involve the spectators in the emotional expressiveness of tragic suffering, thereby creating a theatrical identity. Aroused by the experience of suffering, the audience is reminded that it is witnessing a theatrical representation of the instability of the human condition—a state that Loraux asserts tragedy is uniquely suited to convey.