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The scope of Aristophanes' use of tragedy remains insufficient!y explored. Most existing critical literature treats paratragedy as stylistic parody, peripheral to the text. This study aims to show how the use of tragedy, parodic and otherwise, informs Aristophanic texts substantively as well as stylistically through a range of complex textual functions.

Vulnerable children are crucial in Greek tragedy and to the philosophy of suffering that it explores. They attract high levels of emotional concern that spill over from the human arena into the divine. As a means of exposing the presence or absence of the power and influence of the gods, children in tragedy are pivotal voices in the integrity and survival of the tragic family. The literary, social and historical contexts within which this importance falls are set out in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 investigates how tragedy features important roles for vulnerable children and how ritual human sacrifice and murder highlight the importance of divine intervention in family life. Chapter 3 looks at the underlying reasons for parents killing their children and examines how this can destroy the family unit by eradicating the family line and preventing the continuance of name and inheritance. The chapter also analyses how divine interference can override a parent's will and sense of right. Chapter 4 considers how the killing of parents by children destroys the vertical family structure and so threatens a crucial aspect of social order. It analyses how the plays test allegiances, power relations and filial obligations to the limit and, within this context, the involvement of the gods creates different levels of liability and degrees of authority. Chapter 5 shows how when planning to murder the most vulnerable children, or in circumstances of abandonment or illegitimacy, the relative power and influence of the divine and human is brought under conclusive and central scrutiny. From this the Conclusion pinpoints the importance of children in Greek tragedy in (i) showing the family capable of repairing itself and establishing values sufficient for it to recover from the worst events, and (ii) suggesting that this can be done without the involvement, interference, or influence of the gods. This realisation offers a fresh aspect to further analyses of Greek tragedy, its form and implications.

As argued, the connection between Athenian BC society and tragedy - an area of research far from exhausted - should be examined on the basis of an anthropological/cultural, and rather comparatively oriented perspective, rather than a purely historical or literary one. A further defence holds that such an approach explores in a fresh way the connection between the two which is based on a model of self, on the one hand, and Sophocles' and Euripides' characters on the other - both proposed to consist of the same culturally framed, yet diversely expressed components which define an individual actor/self as would be portrayed by anthropological studies. Because of the proposed nexus of variously expressed components, the staged character is seen as an agent who exposes the complexity and ambiguity of one's own self of whom the individual agent was unaware of possessing. The above argument, approached mainly through primary sources, will be defended as follows. After defining in the introduction concepts such as `self' and `performance', the discussion on the components of self and character begins by exploring their background - the ideology and culture of Athens. As argued, because of particular factors linked to economic and military power, Athens is contrasted with other Greek cities, and at the same time, its performance culture becomes the topos of the performing self. The second chapter defends the concepts of self and dramatic character, as well as the elements associating them which are cultural projections of the society, but also are associated with the notion of `self as presented in recent anthropological discussions of human agency. Lastly, the third chapter argues on the actualisation of the self's model on stage; after the comparative analysis of the characters' actions in three plays by Sophocles, and three by Euripides, the conclusion reached is that the proposed model of self, cultural, but also self-reliant, is an entity which is utilised as a model agent of staged characters.

In this dissertation, I approach the interpretation of a classical text in performance by examining the practical elements (directorial and design choices: set, costumes, lighting, music, etc.) and promotional materials (programmes, press releases, photographs, etc.) for a selection of significant test cases in order to determine how these production decisions engage with external factors of political, intellectual, and cultural import. Trojan Women is a particularly useful case study to explore within the parameters of this method because the dynamism and immediacy of the play is most powerfully articulated when production choices allow for it to be wielded as a weapon of protest or reaction against contemporary policy, especially the waging of war. Using a chronological approach, this analysis of Trojan Women as a text for performance provides a broad and in-depth discussion of the reception of the play in the twentieth century, the period in which the ancient text was most frequently performed. Through the investigation of several influential productions on the international stage, and through an examination of the roles of key players (particularly Gilbert Murray and Jean-Paul Sartre), Trojan Women emerges as a play that offers theatre artists a unique and effective forum for debating issues of human responsibility in times of war a central theme in the play and a considerable preoccupation during a century of armed conflict. Chapter One discusses how the play was used to criticize imperial activity and promote ideological causes in the first half of the century. Chapters Two and Three draw attention to a major cluster of performances reflecting the spirit of international war protest in the 1960s and 1970s. Chapter Four addresses productions of the play affected by delayed responses to the Holocaust. Chapter Five features performances in the 1990s that respond to crises of civil conflict and genocide.