Russ Leo
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- February 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198834212
- eISBN:
- 9780191874048
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198834212.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Chapter 3 demonstrates how the English Puritan John Rainolds followed the philosophical account of tragedy in the Poetics to the letter, mobilizing an anti-theatrical Aristotle against stage plays, ...
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Chapter 3 demonstrates how the English Puritan John Rainolds followed the philosophical account of tragedy in the Poetics to the letter, mobilizing an anti-theatrical Aristotle against stage plays, an Aristotle for whom spectacle and histrionic performance are anathema to tragedy. In his heated exchanges with the Oxford jurist Alberico Gentili, Rainolds betrays his deep suspicion of spectacle and stage-playing as they relate to mendacia and other species of falsehood, offering a comprehensive defense of tragedy at the expense of histrionic performance, distinguishing licit recitative enactment from illicit modes of presentation that compromise the rhetorical and dialectical precision of tragedy. William Shakespeare, in turn, responded to Rainolds in Hamlet, defending the rich resources of spectacle and stage-playing available to the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, offering a forensic vision of tragedy in The Murder of Gonzago that counters Rainolds’ Aristotelian assumptions about tragedy.Less
Chapter 3 demonstrates how the English Puritan John Rainolds followed the philosophical account of tragedy in the Poetics to the letter, mobilizing an anti-theatrical Aristotle against stage plays, an Aristotle for whom spectacle and histrionic performance are anathema to tragedy. In his heated exchanges with the Oxford jurist Alberico Gentili, Rainolds betrays his deep suspicion of spectacle and stage-playing as they relate to mendacia and other species of falsehood, offering a comprehensive defense of tragedy at the expense of histrionic performance, distinguishing licit recitative enactment from illicit modes of presentation that compromise the rhetorical and dialectical precision of tragedy. William Shakespeare, in turn, responded to Rainolds in Hamlet, defending the rich resources of spectacle and stage-playing available to the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, offering a forensic vision of tragedy in The Murder of Gonzago that counters Rainolds’ Aristotelian assumptions about tragedy.
Humberto Brito
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198715719
- eISBN:
- 9780191783395
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198715719.003.0017
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
Aristotle’s Poetics displayed an unambiguous interest in poetry and drama, and modern readers have been always inclined to suppose that Aristotle’s fundamental purpose was to endorse the rewards of ...
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Aristotle’s Poetics displayed an unambiguous interest in poetry and drama, and modern readers have been always inclined to suppose that Aristotle’s fundamental purpose was to endorse the rewards of dealing with mimetic materials: paintings, plays, poems, sculptures, and so forth—representational art, generally. Thus the Poetics has been praised as the rightful ancestor of esthetics as a distinct field of inquiry, and as a philosophical account of how art makes us smarter, morally deeper, and better persons. This chapter calls this “injunctive Aristotelianism,” and it challenges the belief that there is only this one strain of significance stemming from Aristotle’s text by offering in its place a different kind of focus, one uncovering ever-more fine threads that interrelate, and show the deep connections between, our thinking about art and about morality.Less
Aristotle’s Poetics displayed an unambiguous interest in poetry and drama, and modern readers have been always inclined to suppose that Aristotle’s fundamental purpose was to endorse the rewards of dealing with mimetic materials: paintings, plays, poems, sculptures, and so forth—representational art, generally. Thus the Poetics has been praised as the rightful ancestor of esthetics as a distinct field of inquiry, and as a philosophical account of how art makes us smarter, morally deeper, and better persons. This chapter calls this “injunctive Aristotelianism,” and it challenges the belief that there is only this one strain of significance stemming from Aristotle’s text by offering in its place a different kind of focus, one uncovering ever-more fine threads that interrelate, and show the deep connections between, our thinking about art and about morality.
Russ Leo
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- February 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198834212
- eISBN:
- 9780191874048
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198834212.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The Introduction illustrates how humanists like Desiderius Erasmus, Philipp Melanchthon, and Martin Bucer imported the study of drama into theology, mining antique poetics for exegetical and ...
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The Introduction illustrates how humanists like Desiderius Erasmus, Philipp Melanchthon, and Martin Bucer imported the study of drama into theology, mining antique poetics for exegetical and philosophical tools, recruiting tragedy in particular to pedagogical, theological, and devotional ends. Tracing the simultaneous development of Reformed poetics and original works of tragoedia sacra across the first half of the sixteenth century, the Introduction also foregrounds the emergence of a precise philosophical idea of tragedy under the influence of Aristotle’s Poetics. The Introduction illustrates just how important tragedy had become to diverse reformers and Reformers by 1550, underscoring the theological and philosophical purchase of tragedy and the Poetics in and beyond dramatic practice.Less
The Introduction illustrates how humanists like Desiderius Erasmus, Philipp Melanchthon, and Martin Bucer imported the study of drama into theology, mining antique poetics for exegetical and philosophical tools, recruiting tragedy in particular to pedagogical, theological, and devotional ends. Tracing the simultaneous development of Reformed poetics and original works of tragoedia sacra across the first half of the sixteenth century, the Introduction also foregrounds the emergence of a precise philosophical idea of tragedy under the influence of Aristotle’s Poetics. The Introduction illustrates just how important tragedy had become to diverse reformers and Reformers by 1550, underscoring the theological and philosophical purchase of tragedy and the Poetics in and beyond dramatic practice.
Edward Paleit
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199602988
- eISBN:
- 9780191744761
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199602988.003.0003
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, British and Irish History: BCE to 500CE
This chapter discusses how the reception of Aristotle’s Poetics, particularly in early sixteenth-century Italy, revived ancient concerns over Lucan’s generic status, and shows how the friction ...
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This chapter discusses how the reception of Aristotle’s Poetics, particularly in early sixteenth-century Italy, revived ancient concerns over Lucan’s generic status, and shows how the friction between the categories of ‘poetry’ and ‘history’ - however confusingly defined and understood - continued to affect English responses to the Bellum Ciuile until well into mid-seventeenth century England. Among other engagements it examines in detail the role of the poetry-history debate over Lucan in relation to Samuel Daniel’s complex and unfinished verse history The Civil Wars (ca. 1595 – 1609), Thomas Farnaby’s commentary on Lucan of 1618, and Thomas May’s responses to Lucan of the late 1620s.Less
This chapter discusses how the reception of Aristotle’s Poetics, particularly in early sixteenth-century Italy, revived ancient concerns over Lucan’s generic status, and shows how the friction between the categories of ‘poetry’ and ‘history’ - however confusingly defined and understood - continued to affect English responses to the Bellum Ciuile until well into mid-seventeenth century England. Among other engagements it examines in detail the role of the poetry-history debate over Lucan in relation to Samuel Daniel’s complex and unfinished verse history The Civil Wars (ca. 1595 – 1609), Thomas Farnaby’s commentary on Lucan of 1618, and Thomas May’s responses to Lucan of the late 1620s.
Russ Leo
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- February 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198834212
- eISBN:
- 9780191874048
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198834212.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Chapter 2 explores how the heterodox Italian critic Lodovico Castelvetro appropriated Aristotle’s Poetics to religious ends in his influential 1570 commentary, the Poetica D’Aristotele Vulgarizzata, ...
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Chapter 2 explores how the heterodox Italian critic Lodovico Castelvetro appropriated Aristotle’s Poetics to religious ends in his influential 1570 commentary, the Poetica D’Aristotele Vulgarizzata, Et Sposta, a work that is seldom recognized as pious or polemical but which revises the ancient text with an eye to its meaning and utility in Reformed contexts. Castelvetro insists, after Aristotle, that tragedy is an exacting philosophical form, and the Poetics enables him to sharpen Reformed arguments concerning faith and authority. Castelvetro also affirms the importance of performance and, against Aristotle, contends that spectacle and stage-playing are integral to tragedy insofar as they accommodate otherwise difficult or forbidding concepts to diverse audiences. Castelvetro’s is a Melanchthonian interpretation of the Poetics, foregrounding accommodation and the edifying effects of performance, distinguishing between edifying, didactic tragedies and the meager capacities of their audiences.Less
Chapter 2 explores how the heterodox Italian critic Lodovico Castelvetro appropriated Aristotle’s Poetics to religious ends in his influential 1570 commentary, the Poetica D’Aristotele Vulgarizzata, Et Sposta, a work that is seldom recognized as pious or polemical but which revises the ancient text with an eye to its meaning and utility in Reformed contexts. Castelvetro insists, after Aristotle, that tragedy is an exacting philosophical form, and the Poetics enables him to sharpen Reformed arguments concerning faith and authority. Castelvetro also affirms the importance of performance and, against Aristotle, contends that spectacle and stage-playing are integral to tragedy insofar as they accommodate otherwise difficult or forbidding concepts to diverse audiences. Castelvetro’s is a Melanchthonian interpretation of the Poetics, foregrounding accommodation and the edifying effects of performance, distinguishing between edifying, didactic tragedies and the meager capacities of their audiences.
Russ Leo
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- February 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198834212
- eISBN:
- 9780191874048
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198834212.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Chapter 4 examines how Daniel Heinsius’ path-breaking treatise De Tragoediae Constitutione (1611) belongs not only to the Arminian Controversy but also to larger debates concerning providence and ...
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Chapter 4 examines how Daniel Heinsius’ path-breaking treatise De Tragoediae Constitutione (1611) belongs not only to the Arminian Controversy but also to larger debates concerning providence and predestination in early modernity. Theologies of election and reprobation necessarily traffic in mystery, taxing the limits of the human understanding. Tragedy, however, enables readers to comprehend actions in terms of natural cause and effect; in this sense Heinsius renders divinity intelligible, even tentatively, when he develops Aristotle’s comments concerning necessity and probability (or verisimilitude) as well as his strictures regarding devices and dei ex machinis. In his tragedy Herodes Infanticida, moreover, Heinsius reframes Scripture as a tragedy, eschewing miracles and theological explanations, demonstrating instead how this key evangelical episode—Herod’s massacre of the innocents—is an all-too-human story of fear, power, ignorance, and interpretation.Less
Chapter 4 examines how Daniel Heinsius’ path-breaking treatise De Tragoediae Constitutione (1611) belongs not only to the Arminian Controversy but also to larger debates concerning providence and predestination in early modernity. Theologies of election and reprobation necessarily traffic in mystery, taxing the limits of the human understanding. Tragedy, however, enables readers to comprehend actions in terms of natural cause and effect; in this sense Heinsius renders divinity intelligible, even tentatively, when he develops Aristotle’s comments concerning necessity and probability (or verisimilitude) as well as his strictures regarding devices and dei ex machinis. In his tragedy Herodes Infanticida, moreover, Heinsius reframes Scripture as a tragedy, eschewing miracles and theological explanations, demonstrating instead how this key evangelical episode—Herod’s massacre of the innocents—is an all-too-human story of fear, power, ignorance, and interpretation.
Russ Leo
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- February 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198834212
- eISBN:
- 9780191874048
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198834212.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Chapter 5 examines Milton’s detailed engagements with Reformation poetics that render tragedy a precise philosophical and theological resource. In his 1671 poems Paradise Regain’d and Samson ...
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Chapter 5 examines Milton’s detailed engagements with Reformation poetics that render tragedy a precise philosophical and theological resource. In his 1671 poems Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes Milton responds directly to Reformed poetics, pointing methodically to the limits of tragedy, exposing the extent to which divinity and its agencies exceed and confound the philosophical vision of the Poetics. In Paradise Regain’d, for instance, Milton’s Jesus relocates the birth of tragedy from Athens to the Levant, claiming that tragedy belongs first to the Hebrews. Greek tragedy is thus derivative and degraded; Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristotle, to say nothing of the traditions to which they gave rise, appropriated tragic forms and resources from Hebrew antiquity. Milton advances Pareus’ theses on tragedy and Scripture beyond the scope of Pareus’ own text, arguing for a more comprehensive Christian archive of tragedy as well as a daring account of tragedy’s sacred origins.Less
Chapter 5 examines Milton’s detailed engagements with Reformation poetics that render tragedy a precise philosophical and theological resource. In his 1671 poems Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes Milton responds directly to Reformed poetics, pointing methodically to the limits of tragedy, exposing the extent to which divinity and its agencies exceed and confound the philosophical vision of the Poetics. In Paradise Regain’d, for instance, Milton’s Jesus relocates the birth of tragedy from Athens to the Levant, claiming that tragedy belongs first to the Hebrews. Greek tragedy is thus derivative and degraded; Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristotle, to say nothing of the traditions to which they gave rise, appropriated tragic forms and resources from Hebrew antiquity. Milton advances Pareus’ theses on tragedy and Scripture beyond the scope of Pareus’ own text, arguing for a more comprehensive Christian archive of tragedy as well as a daring account of tragedy’s sacred origins.
Paul M. Blowers
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- July 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198854104
- eISBN:
- 9780191888458
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198854104.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
This introductory chapter lays the groundwork for the monograph by establishing the paucity of actual works of early Christian tragedy, but also the growing Christian recognition of the power of ...
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This introductory chapter lays the groundwork for the monograph by establishing the paucity of actual works of early Christian tragedy, but also the growing Christian recognition of the power of tragedy to convey the vulnerability of the human condition and the subjection of all creation to what the Apostle Paul himself called an existential “vanity” or “futility” (Romans 8:19–23). The Christian reception and reworking of tragedy, however, stood at the end of a long evolution of tragedy and of its role in Greco-Roman civilization, which included strong philosophical criticism of the genre (Plato) and vigorous defense of its cultural utility (Aristotle). Christian polemicists against pagan theatrical art seized on the antecedent philosophical criticism but also developed their own, and included tragedy in their condemnation of the immorality, seductiveness, and irreligion of all pagan entertainment and “spectacle.” Yet Christian thinkers began their own rehabilitation of salvageable elements of tragedy as a literary, rhetorical, and dramatic artform. Some found noble and even theologically enriching passages in the ancient tragedians. Others looked, however, to free the genre to Christian appropriation, and to develop uniquely Christian forms of “tragical mimesis” for the edification of their audiences.Less
This introductory chapter lays the groundwork for the monograph by establishing the paucity of actual works of early Christian tragedy, but also the growing Christian recognition of the power of tragedy to convey the vulnerability of the human condition and the subjection of all creation to what the Apostle Paul himself called an existential “vanity” or “futility” (Romans 8:19–23). The Christian reception and reworking of tragedy, however, stood at the end of a long evolution of tragedy and of its role in Greco-Roman civilization, which included strong philosophical criticism of the genre (Plato) and vigorous defense of its cultural utility (Aristotle). Christian polemicists against pagan theatrical art seized on the antecedent philosophical criticism but also developed their own, and included tragedy in their condemnation of the immorality, seductiveness, and irreligion of all pagan entertainment and “spectacle.” Yet Christian thinkers began their own rehabilitation of salvageable elements of tragedy as a literary, rhetorical, and dramatic artform. Some found noble and even theologically enriching passages in the ancient tragedians. Others looked, however, to free the genre to Christian appropriation, and to develop uniquely Christian forms of “tragical mimesis” for the edification of their audiences.
Russ Leo
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- February 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198834212
- eISBN:
- 9780191874048
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198834212.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Tragedy as Philosophy in the Reformation World examines how a series of influential poets, theologians, and humanist critics turned to tragedy to understand providence and agencies human and divine ...
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Tragedy as Philosophy in the Reformation World examines how a series of influential poets, theologians, and humanist critics turned to tragedy to understand providence and agencies human and divine across diverse Reformation milieux. Rejecting familiar assumptions about tragedy, crucial figures like Philipp Melanchthon, David Pareus, Lodovico Castelvetro, John Rainolds, and Daniel Heinsius developed distinctly philosophical ideas of tragedy, irreducible to drama or performance, inextricable from rhetoric, dialectic, and metaphysics. In its proximity to philosophy, tragedy afforded careful readers crucial insight into causality, probability, necessity, and the terms of human affect and action. With these resources at hand, Reformed theologians, poets, and critics produced daring and influential theses on tragedy between the 1550s and the 1630s, all directly related to pressing Reformation debates. And while some poets employed tragedy to render sacred history palpable with new energy and urgency, others marshalled a precise philosophical notion of tragedy directly against spectacle and stage-playing, endorsing anti-theatrical theses on tragedy inflected by Aristotle’s Poetics. Uncovering a tradition of Reformation poetics in which tragedy often opposes performance, the work also explores the impact of these scholarly debates on more familiar works of vernacular tragedy, illustrating how William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and John Milton’s 1671 poems take shape in conversation with philosophical and philological investigations of tragedy. Tragedy as Philosophy in the Reformation World demonstrates how Reformation took shape in poetic as well as theological and political terms while simultaneously exposing the importance of tragedy to the history of philosophy.Less
Tragedy as Philosophy in the Reformation World examines how a series of influential poets, theologians, and humanist critics turned to tragedy to understand providence and agencies human and divine across diverse Reformation milieux. Rejecting familiar assumptions about tragedy, crucial figures like Philipp Melanchthon, David Pareus, Lodovico Castelvetro, John Rainolds, and Daniel Heinsius developed distinctly philosophical ideas of tragedy, irreducible to drama or performance, inextricable from rhetoric, dialectic, and metaphysics. In its proximity to philosophy, tragedy afforded careful readers crucial insight into causality, probability, necessity, and the terms of human affect and action. With these resources at hand, Reformed theologians, poets, and critics produced daring and influential theses on tragedy between the 1550s and the 1630s, all directly related to pressing Reformation debates. And while some poets employed tragedy to render sacred history palpable with new energy and urgency, others marshalled a precise philosophical notion of tragedy directly against spectacle and stage-playing, endorsing anti-theatrical theses on tragedy inflected by Aristotle’s Poetics. Uncovering a tradition of Reformation poetics in which tragedy often opposes performance, the work also explores the impact of these scholarly debates on more familiar works of vernacular tragedy, illustrating how William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and John Milton’s 1671 poems take shape in conversation with philosophical and philological investigations of tragedy. Tragedy as Philosophy in the Reformation World demonstrates how Reformation took shape in poetic as well as theological and political terms while simultaneously exposing the importance of tragedy to the history of philosophy.
Russ Leo
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- February 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198834212
- eISBN:
- 9780191874048
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198834212.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The Conclusion traces how Milton investigates the extent to which tragedy is able to render divinity intelligible. If Reformation tragedy offers pointed insight into probability and necessity in ...
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The Conclusion traces how Milton investigates the extent to which tragedy is able to render divinity intelligible. If Reformation tragedy offers pointed insight into probability and necessity in nature, or serves as an object lesson in immanent causality, Samson Agonistes troubles such pursuits, illuminating instead the fundamental limits of both tragedy and human comprehension. In Heinsius’ treatments of tragedy, for instance, miracles are rare, and intervening gods generally confound otherwise laudable attempts to understand causality in nature. Divine intervention is no less difficult to discern in Samson Agonistes; Milton is skeptical, however, of tragedy’s capacity to render either God or totality intelligible as such. The philosophical account of tragedy that emerges across this book reaches an impasse in Milton’s 1671 poems, works that nonetheless look forward to other philosophical horizons for tragedy in modernity.Less
The Conclusion traces how Milton investigates the extent to which tragedy is able to render divinity intelligible. If Reformation tragedy offers pointed insight into probability and necessity in nature, or serves as an object lesson in immanent causality, Samson Agonistes troubles such pursuits, illuminating instead the fundamental limits of both tragedy and human comprehension. In Heinsius’ treatments of tragedy, for instance, miracles are rare, and intervening gods generally confound otherwise laudable attempts to understand causality in nature. Divine intervention is no less difficult to discern in Samson Agonistes; Milton is skeptical, however, of tragedy’s capacity to render either God or totality intelligible as such. The philosophical account of tragedy that emerges across this book reaches an impasse in Milton’s 1671 poems, works that nonetheless look forward to other philosophical horizons for tragedy in modernity.
Mary Lefkowitz
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780199752058
- eISBN:
- 9780190463113
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199752058.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
In modern productions, translators and directors, aided by our own imaginations, edit the gods away in order to concentrate on human action. Because modern readers do not try to comprehend the ...
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In modern productions, translators and directors, aided by our own imaginations, edit the gods away in order to concentrate on human action. Because modern readers do not try to comprehend the theology of an ancient and foreign civilization, they fail to see that in Euripides’ plays (as in dramas by other poets), it is the gods who control what happens in human life, even when the human characters in the dramas are unable to imagine the full extent of the gods’ power. The chapter discusses the modern tendency to omit divine action in Euripides’ Trojan Women, and inability to recognize its presence in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus, even though Aristotle understood that the contrast between human ignorance and divine omniscience was a central feature of Athenian drama. It also explains why this book discusses the roles played by individual gods, as well as the function of divine epiphanies in general.Less
In modern productions, translators and directors, aided by our own imaginations, edit the gods away in order to concentrate on human action. Because modern readers do not try to comprehend the theology of an ancient and foreign civilization, they fail to see that in Euripides’ plays (as in dramas by other poets), it is the gods who control what happens in human life, even when the human characters in the dramas are unable to imagine the full extent of the gods’ power. The chapter discusses the modern tendency to omit divine action in Euripides’ Trojan Women, and inability to recognize its presence in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus, even though Aristotle understood that the contrast between human ignorance and divine omniscience was a central feature of Athenian drama. It also explains why this book discusses the roles played by individual gods, as well as the function of divine epiphanies in general.