Narrative Setting and Dramatic Poetry

This volume evaluates a single element of tragic art, namely the way in which narrative descriptions of place participate in the poetry of tragedy. They join together structures of the theater to create a context for tragic performance, and ultimately reflect upon tragedy's connection to earlier narrative forms and to the traditional tales that regularly supply tragic plots.
The first part of this book examines the introductory function of spatial descriptions and the peculiar resources offered to the playwright by cult settings. In the second part, the spatial oppositions, that are inherent structuring devices in traditional tales, are taken up in chapters treating the motif of exile in extant tragedy.

This examination of spatial descriptions in Greek tragedy explores how this element of the tragic text participates in the creation of dramatic meaning and traces the links to earlier narrative poetry suggested by these narrative descriptions.

Booknews

In this revision of her doctoral dissertation ("Setting and Theme in Greek Tragedy," Yale, 1985), Kuntz departs from previous studies of setting in Greek tragedy which have focused on the physical representation of space in the tragic theater, to setting as a crucial device of composition that both links tragedy to its antecedents in narrative poetry and traditional tales and also distinguishes it, in performance, from these antecedents. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Mary Kuntz, Ph.D. (1985) in Classical Languages and Literature, Yale University, is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, USA.