SEEKING AND SUBVERTING PRAISE IN TRAGEDY - (K.) Cook Praise and Blame in Greek Tragedy. Pp. vi + 252. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024. Cased, £85, US$115. ISBN: 978-1-350-41049-7.

This book does not seek to offer a broad perspective on praise and blame in Greek tragedy.Instead, C. focuses tightly on six plays in which heroes seek but are denied a particular type of praise, and are occasionally threatened or afflicted with blame.The first three examples present male heroes who overtly value and seek praise, while the last three focus on female disruption of the praise more implicitly expected by and for male characters.Within this broader structure, each study is essentially discrete, with a clear and concise introduction and conclusion and every element of the argument carefully signposted by subheadings.This is a familiar topic addressed through traditional close reading.I am sympathetic to this approach when the observations are sharp and fresh.At the level of detail, there is not much opportunity for originality as these topics in these texts have been scrutinised carefully, and C. conscientiously documents previous scholarship on almost every point of close reading.The value of the book lies rather in those case studies where C. suggests fresh readings, grounded in these familiar details, of the broader dynamics between characters' use of praise language over the course of a play.These can in turn be set in conversation with other thematic interpretations, though this falls outside the scope of the book.Not all of the studies are equally successful.The first two in particular struck me as offering a synthesis of existing interpretations rather than new readings.C. examines Sophocles' engagement with the Iliadic search for kleos in both Philoctetes and Ajax; however, Neoptolemus', Philoctetes' and Ajax' desire for praise according to an Achillean model is especially well-travelled ground, and the painstaking approach to uncontroversial material makes for slow reading.Nevertheless, these might be fine readings for undergraduate students because of the clarity and thoroughness of exposition.The third case study argues that Euripides' Heracles seeks but fails to add his defence of his family to the praise tradition focused on his labours, especially as represented in epinician poetry.As C. carefully acknowledges, neither the duality of Heracles' identity in this play nor the importance of the epinician tradition to this tragedy is new; what she brings to the table is the interplay of these two well-recognised aspects of the play.She does overstate the case somewhat, arguing that Heracles fails to establish himself 'as praiseworthy father' specifically 'as a result of the reactions of the chorus and characters around him' (p.70)as though these reactions were more important than the central fact that Heracles murders his family.It is hardly sufficient to say that he goes to Athens 'leav[ing] his uncelebrated family life behind him ' (p.70).Yet it is a valuable observation that the hero's efforts to expand the terms of his praise discourse and the prominence of traditional praise language in his promised rehabilitation are significant aspects of his failed attempt to change his heroic identity.The last three case studies focus on praise discourse in plays whose gendered dynamics are central to their interpretation: Euripides' Suppliant Women, Trachiniae and Medea.C. argues that in the first of these Theseus does not receive the praise that long-standing 'political' interpretations of the play might lead us to expect, while the chorus' notoriously problematic praise in their lament for the Seven subverts the larger discourses of praise that the male characters attempt to establish and has a troubling influence on other characters.Again, some elements of this argument have been much discussed, such as the unusual

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