Reading Greek Performance

Extract

Simon Goldhill's Reading Greek Tragedy is a welcome publication – not for its originality but because it makes available an important and eclectic body of critical approaches to Greek texts. Goldhill gives no quarter to the idea that the Greekless reader cannot deal with complex theoretical arguments. The (post-)structuralist revolution in modern thought, associated with Derrida, Foucault, and above all Barthes, mediated for the most part through classical scholars such as J-P. Vernant, Froma Zeitlin, and Charles Segal, has here found its way into a book targeted at the undergraduate market. I welcome Goldhill's book as one which demonstrates, without mystification, both the complexity of Greek tragedy, and the contemporary relevance of the questions which Greek tragedy poses. At the same time, as one who teaches students of Drama, I cannot but feel frustration.