Situated within contemporary posthumanism, this volume offers theoretical and practical approaches to materiality in Greek tragedy. Established and emerging scholars explore how works of the three major Greek tragedians problematize objects and affect, providing fresh readings of some of the masterpieces of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. The so-called new materialisms have complemented the study of objects as signifiers or symbols with an interest in their agency and vitality, their sensuous force and psychosomatic impact-and conversely their resistance and irreducible aloofness. At the same time, emotion has been recast as material "affect," an intense flow of energies between bodies, animate and inanimate. Powerfully contributing to the current critical debate on materiality, the essays collected here destabilize established interpretations, suggesting alternative approaches and pointing toward a newly robust sense of the physicality of Greek tragedy.

List of ContributorsList of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsIntroduction: Greek Tragedy and the New Materialisms - Mario Telò, University of California, Berkeley, USA and Melissa Mueller, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA1. Stone into Smoke: Metaphor and Materiality in Euripides' Troades - Victoria Wohl, University of Toronto, Canada2. Morbid Materialism: The Matter of the Corpse in Euripides' Alcestis - Karen Bassi, University of California, USA3. Orestes' Urn in Word and Action - Joshua Billings, Princeton University, USA4. Weapons as Friends and Foes in Sophocles' Ajax and Euripides' Heracles - Erika Weiberg, Florida State University, USA5. The Familiar Mask - Al Duncan, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA6. The Other Side of the Mirror: Reflection and Reversal in Euripides' Hecuba - Ava Shirazi, Princeton University, USA7. Memory Incarnate: Material Objects and Private Visions in Classical Athens from Euripides' Ion to the Gravesite - Seth Estrin, University of Chicago, USA8. The Boon and the Woe: Friendship and the Ethics of Affect in Sophocles' Philoctetes - Mario Telò, University of California, Berkeley, USA9. Noses in the Orchestra: Bodies, Objects, and Affect in Sophocles' Ichneutae - Anna Uhlig, University of California, Davis, USA10. Speaking Sights and Seen Sounds in Aeschylean Tragedy - Naomi Weiss, Harvard University, USA11. Electra, Orestes, and the Sibling Hand - Nancy Worman, Barnard College and Columbia University, USA12. Materialisms Old and New - Edith Hall, King's College London, UKBibliographyIndex