ABOUT THIS BOOK

In The Eating of the Gods the distinguished Polish critic Jan Kott reexamines Greek tragedy from the modern perspective. As in his earlier acclaimed Shakespeare Our Contemporary, Kott provides startling insights and intuitive leaps which link our world to that of the ancient Greeks. The title refers to the Bacchae of Euripides, that tragedy of lust, revenge, murder, and "the joy of eating raw flesh" which Kott finds paradigmatic in its violence and bloodshed.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

JAN KOTT, formerly professor of literature at the University of Warsaw, left Poland for the United States in 1966. He has taught at Yale, the University of California at Berkeley, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, as well as overseas in Japan, at the Catholic University at Louvain in Belgium, and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 1964 he received the Herder Award in Vienna, and in 1984 the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. His other books include The Theater of Essence, The Bottom Translation, The Eating of the Gods, and Four Decades of Polish Essays (editor), all published by Northwestern University Press.

REVIEWS

"He sights at Greek tragedy along the smoking chimneys of Auschwitz. . . . No 20th century [critic] could come closer to making Sophocles a contemporary." —Melvin Maddocks, Time

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface
Introduction
The Vertical Axis, or The Ambiguities of Prometheus
Ajax Thrice Deceived, or The Heroism of the Absurd
The Veiled Alcestis
"But Where Now Is Famous Heracles?"
I. The Faces of Heracles
II. Black Sophocles, or the Circulation of Poisons
III. "Oh to Be a Stone!"
IV. Philoctetes, or The Refusal
The Eating of the Gods, or The Bacchae
Appendices
Medea at Pescara
Orestes, Electra, Hamlet
Lucian in Cymbeline
Notes
Index

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