The Ecstasy and the Tragedy: Varieties of Religious Experience in Art, Drama, and Society
Robin Osborne
Greek Tragedy and the Historian March 27, 1997 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198149873.003.0010 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | MDMA |
| Key points | Argues that the question of whether a history of religious experience can be written from representations of maenads in tragedy and Athenian pottery needs scrutiny, and examines how vase images relate to dramatic portrayals. The author engages E. R. Dodds's confidence that such a history is possible, treating the evidentiary limits of these representations as the central problem. |
Abstract
Abstract: This book is concerned with what sort of histories can and cannot be written on the basis of the representations of tragedy. In this paper I want to look not just at the representations of maenads in tragedy but also in art, and in particular on Athenian pots, and to ask two questions: first, how do the representations on pots relate to the representations in drama? and second, can we use these representations to write a history of religious experience? E. R. Dodds had no doubt that we could talk of a history of religious experience.
Comparable studies
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| The Background and Chemistry of MDMA | 1986 | Historical analysis | |
| The origin of MDMA (ecstasy) revisited: the true story reconstructed from the original documents* Original documents in Merck's historical archive in Darmstadt, Germany, years 1900–1960 | 2006 | Historical analysis | |
| Distinct neural mechanisms for the prosocial and rewarding properties of MDMA | 2019 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| How could MDMA (ecstasy) help anxiety disorders? A neurobiological rationale | 2009 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |