Tragik und Metatragik

What is the tragic in Euripides' Bacchae? A nowadays predominant view sees it in the self-reflexion of the genus 'tragedy' and the medium 'theatre': The presence of the theatre god Dionysos on stage turns the tragic of the Bacchae into metatragic. In contrast, by carefully scrutinizing the premises of structuralist methods applied and by interpreting the complete text of the play, Gyburg Radke reads the Bacchae as a 'textbook example' of an Aristotelian tragedy evoking fear and pity, in which the combination of the individual character of the protagonist Pentheus and of his failure constitutes the tragic quality of the plot.

Gyburg Radke is Privatdozentin in the Department of Classics at the University of Marburg, Germany.