Objects as Actors
Props and the Poetics of Performance in Greek Tragedy
- Contents
- Review Quotes

Introduction
Props and the Poetics of Performance
Props and Deixis
Organization and Chapters
Part I
1 Epic Weapons on the Tragic Stage
Exekias’s Ajax
From Text to Performance: Reading the Sword in Sophocles’ Ajax
The “Deception” Speech (646–92)
Hector’s Revenge (815–65)
A Riddle Resolved
Weapons and the Poetics of Reperformance
Philoctetes’ Bow as a Haptic Actor
Conclusion
2 Tragic Textiles and the House of Atreus
Electra in Rags
Playing Priam in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon
Silver-Bought Textiles and Sensory Overload
Textilizing Agamemnon: Aeschylus and the Dokimasia Painter
The Weaver Woven: The Tapestry Scene Re-played
From Costume to Character
Conclusion
3 The Material Poetics of Tragic Recognition
Euripides’ Ion and the Power of the Replica
Objects and Interpellation
A Mother’s Symbola
Containing Time in an Ageless Basket
Autopsy, Recognition, and Collective Memory
Signatures of the Self: Signet Rings and Secret Signs
Putting Tokens to the Test in Euripides’ Electra
Grafting Culture onto the Body
The City’s Test: Recognition as Dokimasia
A Nature-Culture Hybrid
Falling into the Present: Recognition and Embateusis
Conclusion
Part II
4 Electra’s Urns: Receptacles and Tragic Reception
Receptacles and Reception
Electra’s Urn and “The Haunted Stage”
Hidden in the Bushes
Somatic Memories and Mourning
Temporal Materialities
Props as Props: An Intermedial Turn
Props, Pathos, and Nachleben
Conclusion
5 Ajax’s Shield: Bridging Troy and Athens
Ajax’s Shield as a Second Skin
Eurysakes the Shield-Receiver
Solon’s Sakos
Ajax’s Exodos
Conclusion
6 Tragic and Tragicomic “Letters”
The Deltos from Dodona: A Hidden Prop in Sophocles’ Trachiniae
Co-opting the Plot: Phaedra’s Deltos and Aphrodite’s Revenge
Reading Phaedra’s Deltos as a Defixio
Epistolary Dysfunction in the Iphigenia Plays
The “Rape” of the Tablet in Iphigenia at Aulis
Conclusion
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
General Index
Index Locorum
History: Ancient and Classical History
Literature and Literary Criticism: Classical Languages
You may purchase this title at these fine bookstores. Outside the USA, see our international sales information.