Contents

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter I
2. Contents VII
3. Acknowledgements IX
4. Introduction: The complex analogy between social appearance and stylistic presentation and the provocations to cultural self-awareness played out in Euripides’ Electra 1
5. I The initial presentation of the Old Man: Characterization and stylistic presentation of an oddly mundane, even anti-heroic, tragic character 7
6. II The initial presentation of Orestes: Appearance, eugeneia, and social expectations about character and agency 22
7. III Orestes, eugeneia, and aesthetic expectations about heroic characterization and agency 44
8. IV Achilles and the first stasimon: Stylistic effect and the “appearance” of an heroic character 53
9. V The Old Man again: The Kunstsprache and character construction 59
10. VI The Kunstsprache, defamiliarization, and the metapoetics of character construction 69
11. VII The Old Man and Orestes: The problem of eugeneia in the second episode 78
12. VIII Metapoetics in the abortive first section of the recognition scene 87
13. IX The recognition proper: the kharaktēr of tragic heroes 106
14. X Unquestioned assumptions and the aesthetics of valuation: What can be made of this Orestes? 115
15. Conclusion: Cultural context and tradition: Continuity of substance and appearance and the basis of the complex analogy 134
16. Works cited 144
17. Subject index 157