U.S.A.: Princeton University Press, Date: 1996 SOFT COVER IN NEAR FINE CONDITION. Soft cover. Near Fine. 1996. U.S.A.: Princeton University Press ISBN 0691029164 9780691029160 [US]

Princeton: Princeton University Press, Date: 1994. Paperback. Very good. Paperback. 237pp+ index. Very good in publisher's wraps. 1994. Princeton University Press ISBN 0691029164 9780691029160 [US]

Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1996. 3rd impr. XVIII,246p. ills. Paperback. 'The merits of this study is the systematic gathering of references to marriage and death rituals (as advertised). As the jacket blurb states 'the parallels between Greek wedding and death rituals have never been followed through a series of different tragedies as they have here.' Fair enough. This is a useful and profitable endeavor, as is the convenient presentation of practical and iconographical evidence of the first two chapters. Some of the readings and insights (as of Euripides' Suppliants, omitting the facile efforts to historicize and moralize) are worthy on their own, even for more familiar plays. R. knows his Greek, knows the scholarly literature, and works closely with texts in dissertation-like paraphrase. But the second part of the blurb that claims the contribution of this study as revealing 'that these rituals are not used to provide stability but are instead altered in ways that shake up the audience' or that this study offers a 'new perspective on Greek tragedy' is far less accurate. The complexity and significance of ritual acts in tragedy are principles discovered long ago and are subjects of continuing interest and sophisticated criticism. To state that 'wedding and funeral rituals provided a warp to match the woof of traditional mythology, on which was woven the cultural 'rug' of Athenian self-expression' (p. 139) and ...