Reconstructing Satyr Drama

The origins of satyr drama, and particularly the reliability of the account in Aristotle, remains contested, and several of this volume’s contributions try to make sense of the early relationship of satyr drama to dithyramb and attempt to place satyr drama in the pre-Classical performance space and traditions. What is not contested is the relationship of satyr drama to tragedy as a required cap to the Attic trilogy. Here, however, how Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides (to whom one complete play and the preponderance of the surviving fragments belong) envisioned the relationship of satyr drama to tragedy in plot, structure, setting, stage action and language is a complex subject tackled by several contributors. The playful satyr chorus and the drunken senility of Silenos have always suggested some links to comedy and later to Atellan farce and phlyax. Those links are best examined through language, passages in later Greek and Roman writers, and in art. The purpose of this volume is probe as many themes and connections of satyr drama with other literary genres, as well as other art forms, putting satyr drama on stage from the sixth century BC through the second century AD. The editors and contributors suggest solutions to some of the controversies, but the volume shows as much that the field of study is vibrant and deserves fuller attention.

Andreas Antonopoulos, University of Ioannina; Menelaos Christopoulos, University of Patras; George W.M. Harrison, Carleton University.

"The editors and contributors have produced a volume abounding in first-class scholarship that throws new light on many hitherto elusive issues. This collection of papers is an impressive achievement that is sure to provide a stimulus to satyric scholarship." Μ. Heath, in: Greece & Rome 2022/2

"The book will certainly become a must for all student courses on satyr plays as well as an important reference work for scholars." Anna Novokhatko in: BMCR 2023.02.28