H. D. F. Kitto Livres

‘Criticism, it seems to me, can without discredit begin with what’s in the poet’s head, without inquiring how it got there.’ Why did Aeschylus characterize differently from Sophocles? Why did Sophocles introduce the third actor? Why did Euripides not make better plots? So asks H.D.F Kitto in his acclaimed study of Greek tragedy, first published in 1936 and available for the first time in Routledge Classics. Kitto argues that in spite of dealing with big moral and intellectual questions, the Greek dramatist is above all an artist and the key to understanding classical Greek drama is to try and understand the tragic conception of each play. In Kitto’s words ‘ We shall ask what the dramatist is striving to say, not what in fact he does say about this or that.’ Through a fascinating analysis of Aeschylus’s Oresteia, the plays of Sophocles including Antigoneand Oedipus Tyrannus; and Euripides’s Medeaand Hecuba, Kitto skilfully conveys the artistic and literary brilliance of the Greek dramatists and explains why classical Greek tragedy has the power to grip the reader today as when the plays were first written and performed. This Routledge Classicsedition includes a new foreword by Edith Hall.

The Greeks were extraordinary not least because they evolved 'a totally new conception of what human life was for'. Describing that claim, this title explores the life, culture and history of classical Greece.