What does it mean to read Greek tragedy in a pandemic, a global crisis that encompasses many others? How can Greek tragedy address urgent contemporary troubles? One of the outstanding and most widely read theorists in the discipline, Mario Telo, weaves together a deep understanding of Greek tragedy and its most famous "icons" with a spotlight on the times we live through. He shows how close readings of the plays, such as Oedipus the King, Bacchae, Antigone and Prometheus, can illuminate how our time finds itself reflected in the world of a play named after and, to an extent, epitomized by a tragic character.

Structured around four themes, or crises - The Tragedy of the Pandemic, The Tragedy of Heterosexuality, The Tragedy of Insurrection and The Tragedy of Ecology - this book presents timely interventions in critical theory and in the debates that matter to us as disaster becomes routine in the time-out-of-joint of a (post-)pandemic world. A moment in time that violently encompasses all pre-existing and future crises (social, political, and ecological), the pandemic coincides with the queer unhistoricism of tragedy, and its collapsing of present, past, and future readerships.