Ocean State Libraries

Oedipus has unknowingly killed his father, married his mother and had four children by her. The play centers around how the persons react as they become aware of the facts.

A discussion of the sources and historical background of the play accompanies the text and critical commentaries.

"The Medea of Euripides is one of the greatest of all Greek tragedies, and arguably the one that has the most significance for us today. A barbarian woman brought to Corinth and there abandoned by her Greek husband, Medea seeks vengeance on Jason, and is willing to strike out against his new wife and family--even slaughtering the sons she has born him. From the very beginning of the play we are drawn into a world "torn asunder by blind, disruptive...

"A...new translation of Sophocles'...political tragedy that pits a tyrant's heartless rectitude against a woman's love for her traitorous brother"--

"The summer before Sally Holt starts the eighth grade begins as a gloriously uneventful one, full of family trips to the beach and long afternoons at the local pool with her older sister Kathy, which they mostly use as an excuse to ogle Billy Barnes, who works the concession stand there. Their fascination with him is one of the few things the increasingly different sisters have in common. By summer's end Billy and Kathy are an item-an unthinkable...

An anthology of critical essays that provide a wide range of information and opinion about the sixteenth-century play "Romeo and Juliet," and it's author William Shakespeare.

An engrossing and provocative look at the decline of tragedy in modern art "All men are aware of tragedy in life. But tragedy as a form of drama is not universal." So begins George Steiner's adept analysis of the demise of classic tragedy as a dramatic depiction of heroism and suffering. In The Death of Tragedy, Steiner examines the uniqueness and importance of the Greek classical tragedy-from antiquity to the age of Jean Racine and William Shakespeare-as...

"Yes, what is Dionysian? - This book provides an answer - "a man who knows" speaks in it, the initiate and disciple of his god.' The Birth of Tragedy (1872) is a book about the origins of Greek tragedy and its relevance to the German culture of its time. For Nietzsche, Greek tragedy is the expression of a culture which has achieved a delicate but powerful balance between Dionysian insight into the chaos andsuffering which underlies all existence and...

"When Katie Garrett gets the unexpected news that she's received an inheritance from the grandmother she hardly knew, it couldn't have come at a better time. She flees Boston - and her increasingly estranged husband - and travels to rural Texas. There, she's greeted by her distant cousin Scarlett. Friendly, flamboyant, eternally optimistic, Scarlett couldn't be more different from sensible Katie. And as they begin the task of sorting through their...