The Body and the Senses in Greek Tragedy

Abstract The Body and the Senses in Greek Tragedy investigates how embodied knowledge and experience shape the language and performance of Greek tragic plays. Working at the intersection of embodiment theories, theater, and performance studies, this book brings together theatrical and literary criticism through close readings of select dramatic scripts: the Oresteia and the Persians by Aeschylus, the Ajax and the Philoctetes by Sophocles, and the Medea and the Trojan Women by Euripides. The Body and the Senses in Greek Tragedy argues that the human sensorium can function as a useful theoretical device, through which one can gain a holistic understanding of the theatrical experience, namely what happens between the events on the stage and the spectator’s mind and body. Focusing on the close relationship between physical movement, sensory experience, language, and affect, this study examines how intercorporeal processes unfold on the stage and within the theater space, encouraging the audience to actively participate in the construction of emotional and intellectual meaning. The Body and the Senses in Greek Tragedy argues that a corporeal hermeneutics of tragic narratives can reveal the inextricable link between the lived body and questions of ethics, aesthetics, and other dimensions of cognitive and affective experience, inside as well as outside the theater.