The author reads the Bacchae in the framework of a complete textual interpretation as a "textbook example" of a tragedy evoking fear and pity in the Aristotelian sense. She sees the tragic quality of the action in the connection between the individual character of the protagonist Pentheus and his failure. Radke draws her conclusions from a critical application of modern methods of literary criticism to a Greek tragedy. In this way, the classical theory of tragedy is again placed centre-stage as an alternative model.