This book opens with the observation that recent scholarship on Greek tragedy ‘outside the commentary tradition’ has concerned itself principally with the plays' social and political context, their ideological content or their later reception. R.'s own emphasis, by contrast, is on ‘the dramas as poetic texts’ (p. ix): he reaffirms the value of close reading, he stresses the importance of language and style in one's appreciation of tragedy and, unlike many modern critics, he does not shy away from evaluative aesthetic judgements (see e.g. pp. 125–6). Tragedy, according to R., is to be read and appreciated as poetry rather than treated as a repository of ideas or data for some other sort of investigation.
This approach makes a refreshing change, and one may well agree that it is time for tragic scholarship to be reaching the end of one phase and coming to the start of another. Indeed, this feeling seems to be reflected in other works of scholarship hot off the press – notably S. Goldhill's Sophocles and the Language of Greek Tragedy (2012), a book which also powerfully re-states the case for close reading of the Greek texts. But whereas Goldhill's work adopts an ostensibly traditional, philological mode as the basis for a highly innovative approach (linking the tragedian's own style with the language and rhetoric of critics past and present), R.'s book remains firmly located within ‘the commentary tradition’: it does not really represent a new phase, intellectually speaking, so much as a return to an earlier, more traditional style of scholarship. But R.'s scholarship is impeccable, and many readers will welcome such a book, which usefully assembles in a single place the accumulated wisdom of many earlier commentators and critics and offers a series of subtle, sensitive close readings of passages from tragedy.
The subject is an extensive one, which might conceivably have been treated in a number of different ways, and the preface (p. xii) reflects some uncertainty regarding the selection and arrangement of material. Nevertheless R.'s division of topics chapter-by-chapter seems perfectly sensible and clear. After an introduction in which the concept of ‘style’ is given careful definition, there are eight main chapters, dealing with the structural building-blocks of tragedy and the formal differences between tragedy and other genres; the verbal elements which might be said to make up ‘the tragic Kunstsprache’; the three major tragedians' use of imagery; the treatment of dialogue, in particular the interplay between speeches of varying lengths; the lyric portions; the connection between language and characterisation; the varieties of tragic irony; and the deployment of moralising or gnomic reflections of various sorts. A brief summary can only hint at the enormous amount of detail and the depth of discussion to be found here. But in general what links all this material together is a judicious appreciation of the balance between convention and variety in tragic language, as well as an explicit acknowledgement that individual stylistic features have to be appreciated in context (rather than in isolation or as items on a list). As R. points out early on (p. 9), ‘style’ cannot altogether be detached from ‘content’. Thus R.'s characteristic method is to illustrate a given feature by means of quotation and extended discussion – not just quotation of a single verse or phrase, but sustained quotation of the whole passage or scene in which the feature in question appears, in order to elucidate more fully the ways in which the stylistic feature functions alongside all the other elements that are present. Throughout the book, cumulatively, there emerges a sense of the main ways in which Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides differ from one another in terms of style, and a sense of the ways in which tragic language evolved over time.
An exhaustive study of Greek tragic style could, potentially, fill thousands of pages. R. does not claim to be offering an exhaustive or comprehensive account, merely ‘an exploration’ or ‘a foundation for others' investigations’ (p. 411). His book constitutes a useful manual which teachers will be able to recommend to their students as a first port of call and a stimulus to further study. R. not only offers a sober, lucid account of the principal features of tragic form and language, but he also directs the novice (via a series of compendious bibliographic footnotes) to other authoritative accounts.
More experienced scholars may find themselves wishing that R. had said rather more about some of the topics. For instance, I would have welcomed more discussion of the contribution made by rhythm and sound-effects to one's appreciation of the poetry, but (despite scattered remarks on metre and a whole chapter on lyric poetry) these aspects are given comparatively little weight. The issue of ‘poetic’ versus ‘everyday’ language (and the related phenomenon of colloquialism, briefly mentioned at pp. 404–8) might have been given more detailed treatment. I would also have been interested to see more consideration of the ways in which the issue of ‘style’ bears on the question of textuality versus performance: this question is raised, tantalisingly and very suggestively, in an early chapter (pp. 89–91) but quickly set aside. Somewhat more clarity, or (at least) an explicit definition of terminology, would have been desirable in R.'s discussions of ‘mood’, ‘tone’, ‘humour’ and other related effects which seem to be tied up (somehow) with questions of ‘style’ but which are also dependent on subjective responses. R. identifies these effects as being present in various passages (e.g. pp. 240, 242, 340, etc.), but does not quite explain how it is that the particular effect on the reader (or audience member) is being created; indeed, it is never made quite clear whether the ‘mood’ or ‘tone’ arises from the passage's style (as such), from the events that are taking place on stage or from some other source. Another area in which more explicit discussion would have been helpful is in the realm of aesthetic value-judgements (mentioned above). R. is right to acknowledge that readers inevitably find some passages of poetry ‘better’ than others, but he never says in so many words just what it is that gives certain passages ‘greatness’ (p. 282), ‘quality’ (p. 368), ‘splendour’ (p. 375), ‘sublimity’ (p. 376) or ‘grandeur’ (p. 382), nor crucially does he explain just how these qualities are related to style. The phenomenon of ‘irony’, by contrast, is explicitly defined (pp. 323–8), though it is hard not to find R.'s definition disappointingly thin in comparison with more nuanced theoretical accounts that exist (such as those cited, without discussion, in the footnote on p. 323); by far the most interesting or suggestive portion of the chapter on irony is the section on ‘metatextual irony’, which is oddly relegated to the status of an ‘Appendix’.
There are numerous other (large and small) points with which one could take issue, but that is inevitable with a book of this size and scope. As R. himself says, ‘an enquiry of this kind has no end’ (p. 411). The value of R.'s work lies in the fact that it puts its finger decisively on many important topics and provides ample stimulus for further debate. Its clarity and rigour of presentation are hard to fault, its discussions of individual passages are satisfyingly complex and thoughtful, and above all it is a timely reminder of the importance of treating tragedy as poetry.
