So little happens in the earliest surviving plays that their dramatic status almost eludes the reader. This kind of reading experience encourages a revision of inherited views and historiographies of dramatic literature. It also raises broader questions about how action came to define drama and how these genre developments influenced the reception of more open forms. Narratives at Play in Aeschylus reassesses tragic narratives and the power they exert over (internal) narratees as the essence of tragedy in the 470s–460s BCE. The book understands Aeschylean and Aeschylus-like theatre as a practice that combined elements of storytelling with enacted responses to them. Crucially, it develops and tests strategies for reading the literary remains of this practice. Drawing on archaic to contemporary discourses on genre, we seek to adapt the reader’s perspective on earlier dramatic texts, rather than vice versa.

Narratives at Play in Aeschylus was awarded the Gustav Figdor Prize for Linguistics and Literary Studies.