Reading Dionysus: Euripides’ Bacchae and the Cultural Contestations of Greeks, Jews, Romans, and Christians. By Courtney J. P. Friesen.

Abstract

In this erudite study, Courtney Friesen surveys a plethora of Greco-Roman (i.e. pagan), Jewish, and Christian engagements with Dionysus, many of which entail receptions of Euripides’ Bacchae. Given a ‘central interest’ in ‘the ways in which the Bacchae animates and is reanimated within diverse modes of literary engagement’ (p. 57), this is prima facie an essay in reception studies. At the same time, these putative receptions of Euripides’ play also, we are told, illuminate ‘transformative historical moments or expressions of cultural struggle’ and destabilize the old categories ‘pagan’, ‘Jewish’, and ‘Christian’ (p. 2). Chapter 1 examines Dionysus vis-à-vis Greco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian attitudes to ecstatic worship, the afterlife, violence, and empire; ‘encounters of Jews and Christians with the god assume heightened urgency’ (p. 23). Chapter 2 surveys the social context of drama from Athens to Byzantium. Chapter 3 outlines different readings of Bacchae. Chapter 4 sketches out contexts for reception and introduces an overarching theoretical framework.