The postmodern remaking of Greek tragedy (David Rabe, John Jesurun, Charles Mee, Jr., Heinen Muller)

While there have been hundreds of remakings of Greek tragedies over the past thirty years, few manifest the postmodern tendencies of the end of the twentieth century. Instead of relying upon the traditional and modern modes of analogy and simply re-telling the ancient stories in contemporary places with updated dialogue, the remakings discussed in this dissertation re-imagine both the dramatic and thematic universes of the Greek tales and use them as material for postmodern theatrical texts.; Chapter One, "Remaking Tragedy: The Modern and the Postmodern," explores the intertextuality of tragedy and its manifestations in modern versions, with a particular focus on defining the tendencies of postmodern remaking. Postmodern remaking does not attempt to show the continuum of action and human behavior between ancient and contemporary cultures, as with most modern remakings. Instead, by selecting those tragedies as the site of their cultural critiques and fragmenting their structures and subjects, they acknowledge, confront, and challenge the cultural and dramatic importance that the Greek tragedies, and the structures they represent and propagate, maintain to this day.; The remnants of the modern subject and the juxtaposition of ancient and contemporary plots in David Rabe's only Greek remaking are the subject of Chapter Two, "David Rabe's The Orphan: A Helter Skelter Oresteia." Chapters Three and Four, "'Philoktetes is Dead': Language and Violence in John Jesurun's Philoktetes " and "Ancient Structure, Contemporary Ruins: Charles Mee, Jr.'s Orestes," explore the postmodern structural and linguistic impasses of these two remakings. Jesurun focuses especially on the problematics of language and communication, while Mee brings an interrupted structure, fragmented characterizations, and contemporary language and found text to Euripides' already problematized text. Chapter Five, "Heiner Muller and Medea: Allegory, Archetype, Anarchy," explores the fragmented postmodern landscapes of Heiner Muller, whose Medea represents the destructive future.; These works do not offer clear resolutions to their audiences or alternatives to the difficulties of the postmodern culture that they depict and critique. These postmodern remakings force a reconsideration of the traditions and structures expressed in and represented by the Greek works and contemporary civilization.