In his play Bacchae, Euripides chooses as his central figure the god
who crosses the boundaries among god, man, and beast, between reality
and imagination, and between art and madness. In so doing, he explores
what in tragedy is able to reach beyond the social, ritual, and
historical context from which tragedy itself rises. Charles Segal's
reading of Euripides' Bacchae builds gradually from concrete details
of cult, setting, and imagery to the work's implications for the nature
of myth, language, and theater. This volume presents the argument that
the Dionysiac poetics of the play characterize a world view and an art
form that can admit logical contradictions and hold them in suspension.