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heliogabalous_vrz's review against another edition
5.0
If you ever want an interesting or off-kilter look into the world of tragedy, a mindset that sees love as a cruel creature of the night, life as doomed yet beautiful, this is the book to read. Saved me in philosophy of Mythology.
motifenjoyer's review against another edition
informative
4.5
"What is this being that tragedy describes as a deinos, an incomprehensible and baffling monster, both an agent and one acted upon, guilty and innocent, lucid and blind, whose industrious mind can dominate the whole of nature yet who is incapable of governing himself?"
Some essays are stronger + more compelling than others but the best are really great. My favorites: "The Historical Moment of Tragedy in Greece," "Tensions and Ambiguities in Greek Tragedy," "Oedipus Without the Complex," and "The Masked Dionysus of Euripides' Bacchae." (They're all Vernant's essays rather than Vidal-Naquet's, lol.)
Some essays are stronger + more compelling than others but the best are really great. My favorites: "The Historical Moment of Tragedy in Greece," "Tensions and Ambiguities in Greek Tragedy," "Oedipus Without the Complex," and "The Masked Dionysus of Euripides' Bacchae." (They're all Vernant's essays rather than Vidal-Naquet's, lol.)
iammyowngodandmartyr's review against another edition
5.0
I agree with the authors' approach to analysis (tragic works must be interpreted in their own particular context), although it was presented as quite the hot take. I guess it was pretty revolutionary when the articles were published in the 80s? The academic writing was certainly not transparent (and they're also FRENCH good grief the syntactic superfluousness) but I usually really liked the ideas presented. I generally enjoyed Vernant's articles more than Vidal-Naquet's though, I thought they were much more focused and insightful.
Complaints: Endnotes instead of footnotes and an absolutely egregious number of commas.
Complaints: Endnotes instead of footnotes and an absolutely egregious number of commas.
rheckner's review against another edition
4.0
This is a brilliant and challenging set of essays by two of the eminent classicists of a previous generation. It took me months to finish for a number of reasons: (1) I kept setting it aside for weeks and weeks without thinking to pick it up and (2) I am still struggling to delineate reading texts for pleasure and general knowledge/ interest and reading texts for technical depth and complete understanding. I tend to the second model of reading, which though academically and intellectually useful, is not sustainable if used for every book one attempts to read at every time. This book was a test of my ability to read for interesting without reading for complete understanding of all academic nuances— that I started it in August and finished in February, seems to indicate that I have work to do on this front.
Coming out of this personal aside — this book stands, in my mind, as an influential and insightful work on Ancient Greek tragedy that is at once innovative in reading and drives on back to the source material again and again. The essays are always sensitive to the nuances, difficulties, and paradoxes of tragic language; however, the essays do not read as dry technical papers on lexical definition (though as an aspiring lexicographer and philologist, I might be hard pressed to find a paper on lexical definition that I would call dry and technical). Of particular interest to me were: “Intimations of the Will in Greek Tragedy” and “Ambiguity and Reversal: On the Enigmatic Structure of Oedipus Rex.”
Coming out of this personal aside — this book stands, in my mind, as an influential and insightful work on Ancient Greek tragedy that is at once innovative in reading and drives on back to the source material again and again. The essays are always sensitive to the nuances, difficulties, and paradoxes of tragic language; however, the essays do not read as dry technical papers on lexical definition (though as an aspiring lexicographer and philologist, I might be hard pressed to find a paper on lexical definition that I would call dry and technical). Of particular interest to me were: “Intimations of the Will in Greek Tragedy” and “Ambiguity and Reversal: On the Enigmatic Structure of Oedipus Rex.”
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