Pollution and crisis in Greek tragedy / Fabian Meinel, Centre Paul-Albert Février, Aix-en ̄- Provence (Université d'Aix-Marseille, CNRS, TDMAM-UMR 7297).

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Preface and acknowledgements -- Note on the text -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- Plays with pollution -- Backdrops -- Tragedy and crisis -- Pollution, crisis, tragedy -- Texts and contexts -- The plot -- 1. Pollution, interpretation and understanding -- Euripides' Hippolytus -- Inherited evil and pollution -- Ritual pollution as subtext of causation -- The spread of pollution and excessive characters -- Medicine and miasma -- The question of causation -- A journey inwards: Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus -- Overture and minor key: the story of the plague -- Crescendo and major keys: the story of Oedipus -- The limits of ritual: miasma -- The limits of ritual: purification -- 2. Pollution and the stability of civic space -- Law and stability and ancient Greece -- Pollution and civic stability -- Sophocles' Antigone -- The crisis of civic space -- Pollution and civic space -- Transgressing corpses: nameless pollution and Creon's failure -- Transgressive corpses: Polyneices' dissolving body and civil war -- 3. Evaluation and stability in Aeschylus' Oresteia -- Part I: Evaluation, justice, pollution -- Part II: Stability and justice -- Appendix: pollution, purification, release -- Excursus: re-reading the Oresteia. Euripides' Iphigenia among the Taurians -- Release and purification in Iphigenia among the Taurians and the Oresteia -- Pollution, purification and release -- Metatheatre, rewriting and the question of release -- 4. Pollution, purity and civic identity -- Purity, space and civic identity -- Ethnic purity and identity -- Aeschylus' Suppliants -- Suppliants' spaces -- Purity, territory, identity -- Purity, sanctity, virginity -- Sacred space, virginity and civic space -- Sophoclean variations: excursus to Colonus -- Euripides' Ion -- Identity, boundaries, purity: Athens -- Identity, boundaries, purity: Apollo and Ion -- Intermezzo: purity at play -- Problematic purities: Apollo and Ion -- First conclusions: dissonances -- Pure identity as clarified identity -- Second conclusions: relocating Athenian purity -- Envoi -- Bibliography -- Index locorum -- General index.

Pollution is ubiquitous in Greek tragedy: matricidal Orestes seeks purification at Apollo's shrine in Delphi; carrion from Polyneices' unburied corpse fills the altars of Thebes; delirious Phaedra suffers from a'pollution of the mind'. This book undertakes the first detailed analysis of the important role which pollution and its counterparts - purity and purification - play in tragedy. It argues that pollution is central in the negotiation of tragic crises, fulfilling a diverse array of functions by virtue of its qualities and associations, from making sense of adversity to configuring civic identity in the encounter of self and other. While primarily a literary study providing close readings of several key plays, the book also provides important new perspectives on pollution. It will appeal to a broad range of scholars and students not only in classics and literary studies, but also in the study of religions and anthropology.