Stevens began identifying and collecting colloquialisms in Tragedy in 1937, refined his definitions in 1945 and finished his work with the monograph upon Euripides of 1976. This revised and enlarged edition assesses the contribution to the field by subsequent scholars. It adds many expressions to Stevens's list, which is now divided into two categories: expressions that are confidently identified as colloquial, and almost as many that are probable or possible. An unexpected finding is that Sophocles used hardly fewer such expressions than Euripides. The book's chief aim is to broaden the evidential basis for colloquialisms in Tragedy, and to attempt a more useful evaluation of their usage: statistics are gathered on their distribution and location, and their frequent concentration in types of dramatic and stylistic context. Many individual passages, and the possible use of colloquialisms for characterization, are discussed. The book includes full indices locorum for expressions and usages.

What happened to Greek tragedy after the death of Euripides? This book provides some answers, and a broad historical overview.

An exploration of the poetic qualities of the Greek tragic dramatists Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides highlighting their similarities and differences.

This volume offers an extensive overview of the various ways in which Sophocles’ use of the Greek language is currently being studied. Greatly admired in antiquity, Sophocles’ style only became a serious subject of investigation with Campbell’s Introductory essay On the language of Sophocles (1879). Fourteen chapters, divided into three sections (diction, syntax, pragmatics), discuss the linguistic register and use of gnomai in Ajax’ deception speech, Homeric intertextuality, the style of the Sophoclean satyr-plays in relation to tragedy and comedy, the relation between the repetition of words and focalization, the language of blindness, the image of ‘fire’, the use of deictic pronouns, the semantics of the middle-passive and of counterfactuals, the historic present and the constitution of the text, the suggestive power of descriptions, speech-acts, and strategies of politeness.

The Blackwell Companion to Greek Tragedy provides readers with a fundamental grounding in Greek tragedy, and also introduces them to the various methodologies and the lively critical dialogue that characterize the study of Greek tragedy today. Comprises 31 original essays by an international cast of contributors, including up-and-coming as well as distinguished senior scholars Pays attention to socio-political, textual, and performance aspects of Greek tragedy All ancient Greek is transliterated and translated, and technical terms are explained as they appear Includes suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter, and a generous and informative combined bibliography

Politeness serves to manage social relations or is wielded as an instrument of power. Through good manners, people demonstrate their educational background and social rank. This is the first book to bring together the most recent scholarship on politeness and impoliteness in Ancient Greek and Latin, signalling both its universal and its culture-specific traits. Leading scholars analyse texts by canonical classical authors (including Plato, Cicero, Euripides, and Plautus), as well as non-literary sources, to provide glimpses into the courtesy and rudeness of Greek and Latin speakers. A wide range of interdisciplinary approaches is adopted, namely pragmatics, conversation analysis, and computational linguistics. With its extensive introduction, the volume introduces readers to one of the most dynamic fields of Linguistics, while demonstrating that it can serve as an innovative tool in philological readings of classical texts.