Greek Fragments in Postmodern Frames

'Greek Fragments in Postmodern Frames' takes as its subject adaptation of Greek tragedy in the last decades, arguing that rewritings of Greek tragic texts in this period can be used as a tool to uncover a significant dialogue with postmodernism. Despite the large number of staged and written adaptations of Greek tragic texts in recent years, the idea still persists that tragedy is incompatible with postmodernism, with the long-standing debate over the demise of the genre in the modern era undergoing a recent resurgence with the claim that postmodernism precludes tragedy both as an aesthetic form and as a way of perceiving the world. This volume focuses on the adaptation of Greek tragedy between 1970 and 2005 and explores a wide range of adaptations from a variety of different countries: the plays under discussion are characterized by an extended intertextual engagement with their prototype texts - instead of simply adapting the Greek myth, they rewrite the classical text in ways akin to the renegotiation of authorship and textuality proffered by poststructuralist thought.