photo of temple TROY
Greek Drama Bibliography

Adkins, Arthur W. H. Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values. 1960. Rpt. University of Chicago Press, Midway Reprint, 1975.

Aeschylus. "The Eumenides." In The "Oresteia" by Aeschylus. A new translation for the theater by David Grene and Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty. With Introductions by David Grene, Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, and Nicholas Rudall. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.

Aeschylus. The Oresteia: A New Translation for the Theater by David Grene and Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty. With Introductions by David Grene, Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, and Nicholas Rudall. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1989.

-------. The Oresteia. Ed. and trans. by Michael Ewans. Everyman. London: J. M. Dent, 1995.[good intro on how Aeschylus changed old myths; masculinized Clytemnestra, so matricide and gender conflict at center of plot; not an allegory of law coming to Athens; Aeschylus. knew law could not solve such problems; rather play a "paradigm of patterns of human conduct"; Lloyd-Jones agrees ([xxxi)]

Bieber, MargareteThe History of the Greek and Roman Theater.  Princeton University Press, 1939. [many pictures; pro the Dionysian origins of Greek theater theory]

Bloom, Harold, Ed.Sophocles' Oedipus Rex.  With an introduction by Harold Bloom. Modern Critical Interpretations. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988. [includes Knox's " Sophocles' Oedipus," Dodds' "On Misunderstanding the Oedipus Rex," and Gould, "The Innocence of Oedipus," Reinhardt, "Illusion and Truth in OR"]

Bowra, Maurice. Sophoclean Tragedy. 1944. First Published by the Clarendon Press. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970.  [standard background and interpretation; solid]

Burkert, Walter. "Greek tragedy and sacrificial ritual," Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 7 (1966): 87-129. [important]

Carpenter, T. H. Art and Myth in Ancient Greece. World of Art. London: Thames and Hudson, 1991. [a series of vase paintings on the death of Troilus is included; acc. Proclus, Cypria had story of Achilles killing Troilus; later, 2 motives: 1-Achilles loved him and was rejected; 2-a legend that Troy could not be taken once Troilus reached 20, so Achilles had to kill him before that; no ancient source for the romance of T & C.  T. assoc. with horses [17] [re: Hippolytus?]; Polyxena often in scene, as well as two horses and a raven [Apollo?]; acc. to Proclus, in Ilioupersis, Polyxena was sacrificed on Achilles' tomb, but not clear why; maybe he had loved her too.[18-19]

Case, Sue-Ellen. "Classic Drag: The Greek Creation of Female Parts." Theatre Journal 1985 Oct., Vol. 37 No. 3: 317-327.[in Greek drama; treatment of patriarchy; focus on Oresteia; feminist]

Croally, N. T. Euripidean polemic: The Trojan women and the function of tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge U. P.,1994. [quite theoretical]

Dodds, E. R. "On Misunderstanding the Oedipus Rex.." In Bloom, 1988. Rpt. from Greece and Rome 13, No. 1 (April 1966): 35-47.

Dover, K. J. Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle. Oxford, 1974.[sections on human responsibility and on the gods, "Understanding," and "Divine Intervention."]

Foley, Helene P. Female Acts in Greek Tragedy.  Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.

Goldhill, SimonLanguage, Sexuality, Narrative: The Oresteia.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. [Greek language; stylistics; semiotics; Oresteia as study example]

Goodkin, Richard E. The Tragic Middle: Racine, Aristotle, Euripides. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991.

Gould, Thomas. "The Innocence of Oedipus: The Philosophers on Oedipus the King." Arion5.4 (April 1966). Rpt. in Bloom, 1988: 49-63.

Graves, Robert. The Greek Myths: II. 1955. Rpt. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973.

Grube, G. M. A. "Euripides and the Gods." In Euripides A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Erich Segal. Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1968: 34-50. Original title: "The Gods."  From The Drama of Euripides by G. M. A. Grube. London: Methuen, 1941. [interesting on the non-moral nature of Greek Gods and the "divinity" of eternal stuff, irrespective of good/evil;  Euripides as a possible atheist; his gods cause bitter misery for human beings]

Harsh, Philip Whaley. A Handbook of Classical Drama. 1944. Rpt. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1979.

Havelock, Eric A. "Watching the Trojan Women. In Segal, Ed. Euripides, 1968: 115-127. [a scene by scene "watching" of the play; quite helpful]

Heaney, Seamus. The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1991.

Holmberg, Ingrid E. "Euripides' Helen: Most noble and most chaste." American Journal of Philology Spring 1995, Vol. 116 No.1: 19-42. [how Euripides changed Homer's Helen]

Jaeger, W. Paideia  Vol. I, 2nd Ed., 4th printing. N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1962.

Jones, John. On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy. Chatto and Windus, 1962. [Aristotle defines tragedy as imitation of action, not of person; one is what one does; good on Aeschylus and Necessity; Greek gods NOT omniscient nor omnipotent, but we think in those categories now]

Kitto, H.D.F. Greek Tragedy: A Literary Study. 1939. Rpt. London: Routledge, 1986.

Knox, Bernard. Word amd Action: Essays on the Ancient Theater. 1979. Paperback edition, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986. [includes 8 essays on Euripides]

-------. "Sophocles' Oedipus." In Tragic Themes in Western Literature. Ed. Cleanth Brooks. Yale: Yale University Press, 1955: 5-22.  Rpt. in Bloom, 1988.

Kuhns, Richard. Tragedy: Contradiction and Repression. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. [from Aeschylus to modern American tragedy]

Lefkowitz, Mary R. "The Last Hours of the Parthenos." Pandora, 32-38: 32.

Lloyd-Jones, Hugh. The Justice of Zeus. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971.

Loraux, Nicole. Mothers in Mourning, with the essay “Of Amnesty and Its Opposite”. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998. [on athenian imagination of motherhood]

Lubeck, Maria Holmberg. Iphigenia Agamemnon's Daughter: A Study of Ancient Conceptions in Greek Myth and Literature Associated wiith the Atrides. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1993.

Padel, Ruth. Whom Gods Destroy: Elements of Greek and Tragic Madness. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.

Pomeroy, Sarah B. Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity. New York: Schocken, 1975.

-------. Spartan Women. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. [Sparta was remarkably different from Athens in many ways, perhaps mostly in the roles of women, who were raised to be athletic and educated, could hold and inherit property, and in general were valued as human beings. Helen, of course, was Spartan, and some of her negative qualities may well have come from Athenians viewing the freedom of Spartan women with horror.]

Rabinowitz, Nancy Sorkin. Anxiety Veiled: Euripides and the Traffic in Women. Ithaca: Cornell, 1993. [Iphigenia’s death an affirmation of male hierarchy; protect Greek beds for Greek men]

Reeder, Ellen D. Pandora: Women in Classical Greece. With essays by Sally C. Humphreys, Mary R. Lefkowitz, FranHois Lissarrague, et. al.  Baltimore, Maryland: the Trustees of The Walters Art Gallery, 1995. [accompanied the exhibit, "Pandora's Box" on roles of women in fifth century Athens.  Good on wildness of untamed women; girls as "little bears" who needed to be tamed by marriage and controlled by society.]

--------. "Women and Men in Classical Greece." In Ellen D. Reeder, Ed. Pandora: Women in Classical Greece. Baltimore: The Walters Art Gallery, 1995: 20-31.

Reinhardt, Karl. "Illusion and Truth in Oedipus Tyrannus. In Bloom (1988). Rpt. from Sophocles. Basil Blackwell Publishers, Ltd., 1979: 65-102.

Rose, Peter W. Sons of the Gods, Children of Earth: Ideology and Literary Form in Ancient Greece. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1992. [on social changes in Athens leading to the expansion of the folk dionysian festival into a major event of the new democracy; Oresteia as anti-aristocratic, reflecting political changes in Athens; thus, a genuine "progress" reflected in the trilogy]

Rosenmeyer, Thomas G. The Art of Aeschylus. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. [on character, fate & gods, guilt and choice; intelligent, thorough discussion of Oresteia]

Sartre, Jean-Paul. "Why the Trojan Women?" In Segal, Ed., Euripides: 128-131.  Trans. by Jeffrey Mehlman. Introduction to Sartre's adaptation of the Trojan Women. Editions Gallimard., 1965. [on how to present these ideas for a modern audience that needs contextual information]

Seaford, Richard. Reciprocity and Ritual: Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City-State. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Segal, Charles. Euripides and the Politics of Sorrow: Art, Gender and Commemoration in Alcestes, Hippolytus, and Hecuba. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993.

Segal, Erich, Ed. Euripides: A Collection of Critical Essays.  Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1968. [essays by Grube, Havelock and Sartre.]

Sourvinou-Inwood, Cristiane. "Male and Female, Public and Private, Ancient and Modern." In Pandora, 111-120: 112-113.

Vickers, Brian. Towards Greek Tragedy: Drama, Myth, Society. London: Longman, 1973.

Whallon, William. Problem and Spectacle: Studies in the Oresteia. Heidelberg: 1980. [male as female conventions in Aeschylus and Shakespeare]

Winnington-Ingram, R. P. "Hippolytus: a study in causation." Entretiens Fondation Hardt VI: Euripide, Vandoeuvres-Geneve, 1958, 171-91.

Last Updated: October 13, 2010

© Thompson: 9/22/1998