The Political Art of Greek Tragedy by Christian Meier (review)

IIB BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS nance of the noun. And when. in rather characteristic vein. she asserts the lack of any "obvious difference" in Socrates' use of certain vocatives (II4), my own inclination is to ask. why look only for the obvious -Le., that which can be incorporated in a sociolinguistic norm-in a supreme prose-writer. when one would hardly do the same for a great poet? Despite these criticisms. let me stress in conclusion that Eleanor Dickey has written an absorbing work whose immaculately accumulated data and findings deserve to be consulted and pondered by a11 advanced students of ancient Creek prose literature (and. for that matter . of Creek poetry). But I have tried to suggest that her commitment to using sociolinguistic method to illuminate literature involves her in some difficult tensions of which she seems imperfectly aware. The result is indeed a scrupulous piece of sociolinguistic argument. but for that very reason its contentions will still need to be supplernented by a closer. more precisely inflected reading of the significance of vocatives in particular authors and works: I have singled out Plato for some special attention here. as does Dickey herseH; but there are equivalent issues to be raised about other authors in her corpus. The moral is not new: sociolinguistic analysis will. rightly and properly. tend to produce sociolinguistic generalisations and systematisation. Such generalisations should not be ignored by readers of literary texts. but the interpretation of literature nonetheless needs to go beyond them if it is to deepen our understanding of the very things which make literature something more than a manifestation of linguistic norms. To anyone who doubts the existence of the tension I have diagnosed in Dickey's enterprise. or the resistance of literary texts to a completely sociolinguistic treatment. I can only say. "think again. hypocrite lecteur!" STEPHEN HALLIWELL UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS ST ANDREWS. SCOTLAND KY16 9AL CHRISTIAN MEIER. The Political Art of Creek Tragedy. Translated by Andrew Webber. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 1993. Pp. i + 238. US $37.50. ISBN 0-801-847273 · The Political Art of Creek Tragedy (first published as Die politische Kunst der griechischen Tragödie [Munich 1988]) sets out to place the drama of Aeschylus and Sophocles in the context of the massive changes undergone by Athens during the fifth century B.C.E. These BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS IIg changes were both internal. in the Athenian form of government. and external. in Athens' relatively sudden transformation from a single polis among many to an international and imperial power. Meier argues that tragic drama presented and enabled a dialogue between the old (mythical) and new (rational) ways of thinking. It thus assisted the citizens to cope with their new political and military power, by providing the mental infrastructure, the "nomological knowledge, " necessary not only to think but more important to feel their way into their new role. Attic democracy, Meier contends, was in this respect "as dependent upon tragedyas upon its councils and assemblies" (219). Meier is a political historian by training. His definition of "political" is conventional. in that it is largely limited to the behaviour of Athenian legislative bodies in the fifth century B.e.E., and the methods of influencing and controlling those bodies. His subject in this work is thus tragedy's representation of and relationship to the quickly changing methods of governance of the polis. He is only peripherally concerned with tragedy's representation of those members of the polis who could not form part of the legislative body-women. aliens, slaves,or children. This definition of "political" prevents Meier from considering nurnerous issues of great political interest, such as the methods used in the plays to justify the exclusion from direct power of non-enfranchised groups. but its very narrowness provides hirn with a well-defined framework for his discussion of the plays. The first two chapters. "Why the citizens of Athens needed tragedy " (I-7) and "Athens" (8-43), layout the historical and theoretical framework for the book. These chapters are largely areprise of Meier's earlier work on the shift in Creek and especially Athenian political systems in the fifth century (cf. Christian Meier, The Creek Discovery...