The Oresteian Trilogy: Agamemnon; The Choephori; The Eumenides
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: Yellowed
Markings: Previous owner
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
At the heart of Western dramatic tradition stands a trilogy so thunderous in its moral ambition that it has never ceased to resonate across millennia — Aeschylus's The Oresteian Trilogy, comprising Agamemnon, The Choephori, and The Eumenides. Set against the smoldering aftermath of the Trojan War, the cycle chronicles the cursed House of Atreus: the murder of King Agamemnon by his queen Clytemnestra, the agonizing vengeance enacted by their son Orestes, and the terrifying pursuit of justice by the ancient Furies. Translated with elegance and dramatic force by Philip Vellacott, this edition renders the archaic grandeur of the Greek into vivid, speakable English that crackles with violence, grief, and divine inevitability. Aeschylus, the earliest of the great Athenian tragedians, argues nothing less than the birth of civilised justice itself — the transformation of blood-vengeance into the rule of law, presided over by Athena and the court of the Areopagus. The trilogy presents the eternal tensions between fate and free will, male and female authority, and divine versus mortal power with a structural boldness that no playwright before him had attempted and few since have surpassed. This Penguin Classics edition remains an essential gateway for any reader seeking to understand the very foundations of European literature and theatre — and to confront the primal question that haunts every page: can justice ever truly be separated from vengeance?
Author: Aeschylus
Format: Paperback
Genre: Plays
Condition remarks:
Book: Fair
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Yellowed
Markings: Previous owner
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
At the heart of Western dramatic tradition stands a trilogy so thunderous in its moral ambition that it has never ceased to resonate across millennia — Aeschylus's The Oresteian Trilogy, comprising Agamemnon, The Choephori, and The Eumenides. Set against the smoldering aftermath of the Trojan War, the cycle chronicles the cursed House of Atreus: the murder of King Agamemnon by his queen Clytemnestra, the agonizing vengeance enacted by their son Orestes, and the terrifying pursuit of justice by the ancient Furies. Translated with elegance and dramatic force by Philip Vellacott, this edition renders the archaic grandeur of the Greek into vivid, speakable English that crackles with violence, grief, and divine inevitability. Aeschylus, the earliest of the great Athenian tragedians, argues nothing less than the birth of civilised justice itself — the transformation of blood-vengeance into the rule of law, presided over by Athena and the court of the Areopagus. The trilogy presents the eternal tensions between fate and free will, male and female authority, and divine versus mortal power with a structural boldness that no playwright before him had attempted and few since have surpassed. This Penguin Classics edition remains an essential gateway for any reader seeking to understand the very foundations of European literature and theatre — and to confront the primal question that haunts every page: can justice ever truly be separated from vengeance?