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Theatre Journal 53.1 (2001) 177-179



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Book Review

After Dionysus: A Theory Of The Tragic

Gender And Politics In Greek Tragedy


After Dionysus: A Theory Of The Tragic. By William Storm. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998; pp. 186. $37.50.

Gender And Politics In Greek Tragedy. By Michael X. Zelenak. Artists and Issues in the Theatre, Vol. 7. New York: Peter Lang, 1998; pp. 156. $23.95.

The beginnings of theatre in ancient Greece provide a common point of embarkation for these books, although the authors' purposes and intended audiences are markedly different. Michael Zelenak's book examines tragedy within the political and cultural context of the patriarchal democracy of classical Athens, while William Storm provides a phenomenological exploration of the concept of the tragic as a human condition transcending geography and history and preceding artistic exhibition in the dramatic genre of tragedy.

After Dionysus: A Theory of the Tragic offers an erudite, thoroughly researched, and rigorously [End Page 177] examined theory of the tragic that will appeal to those who share a philosophical as well as dramaturgical interest in the concepts of tragedy, the tragic, and tragic vision. Storm focuses on a Dionysian rather than an Aristotelian approach to the study of the tragic condition, stressing sparagmos, the ritual tearing apart or rending of a sacrificial offering. Sparagmos reflects both the myth of Dionysus' dismemberment by the Titans and his later appearance in Euripides' The Bacchae as both a character and an amorphous spirit that possesses the bacchantes. Storm argues that the Dionysian rending action or fracturing of identity can be either physical and/or psychological, but it is a condition of nature and an underlying pattern of human existence.

Storm clarifies his terminology by separating the tragic from tragedy and tragic vision. According to Storm, the dramatic genre of tragedy is an artistic representation that makes the tragic visible. Thus, the tragic exists independently of tragedy but is inherent in it. Tragedy, with its focus on plot, tells a story in which a central character provides the site for a rending of identity or self-image, allowing an audience to recognize the manifestation of the tragic. This rending or separation offers the sacrificial victim no possibility for synthesis or transcendence. Sparagmos requires the presence of an identity, a character with whom an audience may identify. This character is endowed with tragic vision and provides the perspective from which one views the events. Character is thus central both to tragic vision and to the tragic. The dramatist acts as mediator between the tragic and its appearance as tragedy by articulating the tragic condition and personalizing it through the creation of character. Storm claims, "Whereas vision and tragedy are man-made, the tragic is not; it is, rather, a law of nature, a specific relation of being and cosmos" (81). Storm asserts that the tragic is a condition where division and separation are inevitable and that this condition precedes tragedy and can exist independently of it.

One of the strengths of Storm's argument resides in his methodological choices. By employing the field approach used by physicists, Storm explores his examples in an innovative analysis of clusters. He defines a field as both the site or arena for activity and the complex of forces that trigger human behavior. The site is not only temporal location but also the character(s) who strives to create order while the Dionysian forces bring about the inevitable rending or fragmentation of identity. He first employs the field approach in an examination of Agamemnon that includes representations of the character in Homer, Aeschylus, and Euripides. By identifying the inevitable rending of identity, the sparagmos of Agamemnon, torn between identities as warrior-king with responsibilities to his army and as husband-father with responsibilities to his family, Storm concludes that the tragic condition "is built into the very being of his character" (137). In his analysis of Shakespeare's King Lear, Storm focuses not on the character but on the historical context and the metaphorical "field" provided by the...

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