Greek Tragedy
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Fair
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Markings: Previous owner
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
At the crossroads of art, religion, and political life in ancient Athens, Greek tragedy stands as one of the most enduring and consequential achievements in the history of human expression — and H. D. F. Kitto's landmark study presents this magnificent tradition with unrivalled clarity and scholarly authority. The work chronicles the great tragedians — Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides — examining their surviving plays not merely as literary artifacts, but as living expressions of a civilization grappling with fate, justice, and the nature of the divine. Kitto guides the reader through the structural and philosophical development of the tragic form, from its choral origins to its fully realized dramatic peaks, illuminating how each playwright reshaped and reinvented the genre in response to shifting Athenian values. What distinguishes Kitto's approach is his insistence on treating the plays as integrated wholes — poetic, dramatic, and intellectual simultaneously — rather than dissecting them into isolated fragments of myth or rhetoric. His prose is lucid yet commanding, instructing both the student and the general reader in the art of reading Greek drama with fresh eyes, stripped of modern preconceptions. First published in 1939 and long regarded as a cornerstone text in classical studies, Greek Tragedy remains a vital and irreplaceable introduction to a body of work that continues to haunt the imagination of every era that encounters it — leaving one to wonder whether the Greeks understood something about human suffering that we have yet to fully reckon with.
Author: H. D. F. Kitto
Format: Paperback
Genre: Plays
Condition remarks:
Book: Fair
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Markings: Previous owner
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
At the crossroads of art, religion, and political life in ancient Athens, Greek tragedy stands as one of the most enduring and consequential achievements in the history of human expression — and H. D. F. Kitto's landmark study presents this magnificent tradition with unrivalled clarity and scholarly authority. The work chronicles the great tragedians — Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides — examining their surviving plays not merely as literary artifacts, but as living expressions of a civilization grappling with fate, justice, and the nature of the divine. Kitto guides the reader through the structural and philosophical development of the tragic form, from its choral origins to its fully realized dramatic peaks, illuminating how each playwright reshaped and reinvented the genre in response to shifting Athenian values. What distinguishes Kitto's approach is his insistence on treating the plays as integrated wholes — poetic, dramatic, and intellectual simultaneously — rather than dissecting them into isolated fragments of myth or rhetoric. His prose is lucid yet commanding, instructing both the student and the general reader in the art of reading Greek drama with fresh eyes, stripped of modern preconceptions. First published in 1939 and long regarded as a cornerstone text in classical studies, Greek Tragedy remains a vital and irreplaceable introduction to a body of work that continues to haunt the imagination of every era that encounters it — leaving one to wonder whether the Greeks understood something about human suffering that we have yet to fully reckon with.