Myth, ritual and politics in Euripides' The Bacchae

This drama has since antiquity never been remotely understood. I will explain (a) its religious significance, as an aetiological myth of the rite of passage known as mystic initiation, which accommodated death by rehearsing it, (b) its political significance both for the Greeks and ourselves, as setting the man-of-money against community, and (c) the relationship of (a) to (b).

Reading the drama before the seminar is highly recommended