In this volume - which will be followed as quickly as possible by a second one - we decided to gather seven studies, published in France and abroad, because these works are part of a common research that has been going on for many years and has as its starting point the teaching of Louis Gernet.
What do we mean exactly by the title "Myth and Tragedy"? Tragedies, of course, are not myths. On the contrary, one could argue that the tragic genre appears at the end of the 6th century BC, when the language of myth is no longer in direct contact with the political reality of the city. The space of the tragic is situated between two worlds; and this very double reference, that is, on the one hand to myth (which belongs, according to the new perception, to a past time, but still alive in people's consciousness), and on the other hand, to the new values (which develop so quickly with the city of Peisistratos, Kleisthenes, Themistocles, Pericles) is one of the originalities of this space and the same motive of the tragic action. Within the tragic conflict, the hero, the king, the tyrant, appear to act and be bound within the framework of the heroic and mythical tradition, but the solution of the drama escapes them: because it is never given by the solitary hero, but always expresses the triumph of the collective values imposed by the new democratic city. [...]
Jean-Pierre Vernant
Pierre Vidal-Naquet

Contains the essays:
Jean-Pierre Vernant
- The historical moment of tragedy in Greece. Some social and psychological conditions.
- Tensions and ambiguities in ancient Greek tragedy
- Sketches of will in Greek tragedy
- "Oedipus" without a complex
- Ambiguity and reversal. Regarding the enigmatic structure of the tragedy "Oedipus Tyrannus"
Pierre Vidal-Naquet
- Hunting and sacrifice in Aeschylus' "Oresteia"
- Sophocles' "Philoctetes" and adolescence