Stemming from Harvard University's Carl Newell Jackson lectures, this text sets out a radical re-examination of the relationship between Greek tragedy and religion. Based on a reconstruction of the context in which tragedy was generated as a ritual performance during the festival of the City Dionysia, Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood shows that religious exploration had been crucial in the emergence of what developed into fifth-century Greek tragedy. A contextual analysis of the perceptions of fifth-century Athenians suggests that the ritual elements clustered in the tragedies of Euripedes, Aeschylus and Sophocles provided a framework for the exploration of religious issues, in a context perceived to be part of a polis ritual. This reassessment of Athenian tragedy is based both on a reconstruction of the Dionysia and the various stages of its development and on a deep textual analysis of fifth-century tragedians.
By examining the relationship between fifth-century tragedies and performative context, the work presents a view of tragedy as a discourse that explored (among other topics) the problematic issues of the time, and so ultimately strengthened Athenian religion even at a time of crisis in very complex ways - rather than, as some simpler modern readings argue, challenging and attacking religion and the gods.