This book reads tragedy as a genre in which the protagonist is estranged from the world around him, and, displaced in time, space, and language, comes to inhabit a milieu which is no longer shared by other characters. This alienation from others also entails a decomposition of the integrity of the individual, which is often seen in tragedy's uncertainty about the protagonists' autonomy: do they act, or do the gods act through them? Where are the boundaries of the self, and the boundaries of the human? After an introductory essay exploring the theatrical and linguistic means by which the...