›Dionysiac‹ Dialogues

Book excerpt: This book consists of two main, interrelated thematic units: the reception of Aeschylus' Dionysiac plays in Bacchae and the refiguration of the latter in the Byzantine drama Christus Patiens. In both sections the common denominator is Euripides' Bacchae, which is approached as a receiving text in the first unit and as a source text in the second. Each section addresses dramatic, ideological and cultural facets of the reception process, yielding insight into pivotal Dionysiac motifs that the ancient and Byzantine treatments share. Different pieces of evidence, mythographic, stylistic, and iconographic, are interrogated, so that light is shed on aspects of the storyline, the concepts, and the imagery of Aeschylus' two tetralogies. At the same time, Bacchae provides a valuable exemplum for aspects of dramatic technique, plot-patterns, and concepts refigured in Christus Patiens. This exploration thoroughly and systematically focuses on the ways in which the pagan play was transformed to bring forward new pillars of thought and innovative values in different cultural and ideological contexts over a wide time span from Greek Antiquity to Byzantium.