Greek tragedy and contemporary democracy - Chou, Mark , (Political scientist) (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012)
Title from PDF title page (viewed Dec. 11, 2012)
Title; Copyright; Contents; Acknowledgements; Introduction: Democracy and Tragedy; Tragedy's multivocal form: The lessons for democracy today; A multivocal contribution to contemporary democratic debates; What this book does not do; Structure of this book; Chapter 1 Democracy and Tragedy in Ancient Athens; Democracy as self-institution and self-limitation in ancient Athens; Being as chaos: Tragedy's democratic intervention; Chapter 2 A Multivocal Democracy: The Democratic Impact of Tragedy's Multivocal Form in Ancient Athens and Today
The democratic impact of tragedy's multivocal form in Athens: Tragedy's political decline; Reviving the democratic impact of tragedy's multivocal form today; Chapter 3 Dramatizing Democracy: Introducing Aeschylus' Suppliants; Aeschylus, the democrat; Aeschylean tragedy and democracy; Chapter 4 Marginal Women, Marginalized Stories: Democracy and the Politics of Fifth-Century Supplication; Plot; Characters; Language; The multivocal form of Aeschylus' Suppliants: A dramatic representation of Athens' democracy; Order/Disorder; Reality/Fiction
This engaging work tells the story of democracy through the perspective of tragic drama. It shows how the ancient tales of greatness and its loss point to the potential dangers of democracy then and now. Greek Tragedy dramatized a variety of stories, characters, and voices drawn from reality, especially from those marginalized by Athens's democracy. It brought up dissident figures through its multivocal form, disrupting the perception of an ordered reality. Today, this helps us grasp the reality of Athenian democracy, that is, a system steeped in patriarchy, slavery, warmongering, and xenophobia