Oedipus at Colonus and King Lear: Classical and Early Modern Intersections
Oedipus at Colonus and King Lear: Classical and Early Modern Intersections

Author: Silvia Bigliazzi

Publisher: Skenè. Texts and Studies

Published: 2019-12-29

Total Pages: 454

ISBN-13:

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The story of King Lear seems to fill in the blank space separating the end of Oedipus Tyrannus and the beginning of Oedipus at Colonus. In both Oedipus at Colonus and the latter part of King Lear we are presented with an old man who was once a King and, following his expulsion from his kingdom on account of a crime or of an error, is turned into a ‘no-thing’. This happens in the time of the division of the kingdom, which is also the time of the genesis of intraspecific conflict and, consequently, of the end of the dynasty. This collection of essays offers a range of perspectives on the many common concerns of these two plays, from the relation between fathers and sons/daughters to madness and wisdom, from sinning and suffering to ‘being’ and ‘non-being’ in human and divine time. It also offers an overarching critical frame that interrogates questions of ‘source’ and ‘reception’, probing into the possible exchangeability of perspectives in a game of mirrors that challenges ideas of origin.

A Feast of Strange Opinions: Classical and Early Modern Paradoxes on the English Renaissance Stage 1.2
A Feast of Strange Opinions: Classical and Early Modern Paradoxes on the English Renaissance Stage 1.2

Author: Marco Duranti

Publisher: Skenè. Texts and Studies

Published: 2023-12-20

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 884676837X

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This volume originates as a continuation of the previous volume in the CEMP series (1.1) and aims at furthering scholarly interest in the nature and function of theatrical paradox in early modern plays, considering how classical paradoxical culture was received in Renaissance England. The book is articulated into three sections: the first, “Paradoxical Culture and Drama”, is devoted to an investigation of classical definitions of paradox and the dramatic uses of paradox in ancient Greek drama; the second, “Paradoxes in/of Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama” looks at the functions and uses of paradox in the play-texts of Shakespeare and his contemporaries; finally, the essays in “Paradoxes in Drama and the Digital” examine how the Digital Humanities can enrich our knowledge of paradoxes in classical and early modern drama.

Shakespeare and the Mediterranean 2: The Tempest
Shakespeare and the Mediterranean 2: The Tempest

Author: Fabio Ciambella

Publisher: Skenè. Texts and Studies

Published: 2023-08-23

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 8846767365

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Is Shakespeare’s The Tempest a Mediterranean play? This volume explores the relationship between The Tempest and the Mediterranean Sea and analyses it from different perspectives. Some essays focus on close readings of the text in order to explore the importance of the Mediterranean Sea for the genesis of the play and the narration of the past and present events in which the Shakespearean characters participate. Other chapters investigate the relationship between the Shakespearean play, its resources from the Mediterranean Graeco-Latin past and its afterlives in twentieth-century poems looking at the Mediterranean dimension of the play. Moreover, influences on and of The Tempest are investigated, looking at how Italian Renaissance music may have influenced some choices concerning Ariel’s song(s) and how The Tempest has shaped the production of twentieth-century Italian directors. Finally, other chapters try to reaffirm the centrality of the Mediterranean Sea in The Tempest, bringing to the fore new textual evidence in support of the Mediterraneity of the play, by adopting and/or criticising recent approaches.

Shakespeare and Crisis
Shakespeare and Crisis

Author: Silvia Bigliazzi

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2020-06-15

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 9027261113

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Shakespeare and Crisis: One hundred years of Italian narratives explores how Shakespeare intervened in the Italian socio-political and cultural scene between his third and fourth centenaries, at times which were manifestly perceived as ‘critical’. It asks which complex mythopoietic processes contributed to shaping regimes of reading Shakespeare in response to those times of crisis. Crises of national identity during the Great War and the Fascist regime, crises of history in the 1970s, and crises of representation in the second half of the twentieth century extending into the new millennium constitute the three main areas of a discussion that ultimately aims at probing into the role of literature at times of crisis. The volume situates itself at the juncture of European Shakespeare studies and studies of Shakespeare and Italy. It addresses essential questions about the position of literature in society, offering at different levels new insights for scholars, students, and the general reader.

Action, Song, and Poetry: Musical and Poetical Meta-performance in Aristophanes and Ben Jonson
Action, Song, and Poetry: Musical and Poetical Meta-performance in Aristophanes and Ben Jonson

Author: Alessandro Grilli

Publisher: Skenè. Texts and Studies & ETS

Published: 2023-01-30

Total Pages: 171

ISBN-13: 8846765826

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This study aims to provide a comparative analysis of the dynamics of musical and poetical meta-performance as they emerge both from the surviving corpus of ancient Attic comedy (which adds up, for our purposes, to Aristophanes’ eleven extant plays) and from Ben Jonson’s comedies. As a matter of fact, both corpora show a huge presence of meta-performative elements, that is, of moments in which musical and/or poetical performance is explicitly thematized or enacted in the drama. Those moments are hardly ever fortuitous, or not significant. On the contrary, they play each time a vital role in the development of the plot, in the portrait of characters, or in the definition of the ideology of the play. By means of a comparative analysis between the two authors, the book aims at providing a taxonomy of meta-performance in Aristophanes and Ben Jonson, with particular attention to its role in the definition of the characters' poetic ability. Such comparison will show that, despite using similar comic and performative strategies, the two authors draw a completely different ideology around the crucial themes of culture and titularity.

War Discourse in Four Paradoxes: the Case of Thomas Scott (1602) and the Digges (1604)
War Discourse in Four Paradoxes: the Case of Thomas Scott (1602) and the Digges (1604)

Author: Fabio Ciambella

Publisher: Skenè. Texts and Studies

Published: 2022-12-09

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13:

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In 1602 and 1604 two collections of paradoxes, both entitled Four Paradoxes, authored by Thomas Scott, and Thomas and Dudley Digges, respectively, were published. Scott, a Protestant preacher, wrote four poems about art, law, war, and service. On the other hand, the diplomat and intellectual Dudley Digges published his father’s two paradoxes about the art of war together with his own two texts concerning the worthiness of war and warriors. What do these two collections of paradoxes have in common, and why publishing their critical edition together? Apparently, besides sharing the same title, the two works do not seem to have anything else in common. Nevertheless, this modern spelling critical edition of both texts aims at demonstrating that they share political, cultural, and genre-related features connected with the circulation of paradoxical discourse about war in early modern England.

A Particle of Dread
A Particle of Dread

Author: Sam Shepard

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2017-03-21

Total Pages: 130

ISBN-13: 1101974397

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In A Particle of Dread, Sam Shepard takes one of the most famous plays in history—Oedipus Rex—and transforms it into a modern American classic. In this telling, Oedipus, King of Thebes, prophesized to kill his father and marry his mother, alternates between his classical identity and that of contemporary “Otto.” His wife (and true mother), Jocasta, is also called Jocelyn, and his antagonist (and true father) is split into three characters, Laius, Larry, and Langos. Two present-day policemen from the Southwest stand in for the Greek chorus as they investigate the murder case. Dazzlingly inventive, ringing with the timelessness of myth, A Particle of Dread is an unforgettable work that grapples with questions of storytelling and destiny—the narratives that we pass down, and how they shape our lives. It is a play that lingers in the mind long after we finish the last scene.

The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy
The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy

Author: Edwin Wong

Publisher: FriesenPress

Published: 2019-01-28

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 1525537555

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WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECT IT, BIRNAM WOOD COMES TO DUNSINANE HILL The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy presents a profoundly original theory of drama that speaks to modern audiences living in an increasingly volatile world driven by artificial intelligence, gene editing, globalization, and mutual assured destruction ideologies. Tragedy, according to risk theatre, puts us face to face with the unexpected implications of our actions by simulating the profound impact of highly improbable events. In this book, classicist Edwin Wong shows how tragedy imitates reality: heroes, by taking inordinate risks, trigger devastating low-probability, high-consequence outcomes. Such a theatre forces audiences to ask themselves a most timely question---what happens when the perfect bet goes wrong? Not only does Wong reinterpret classic tragedies from Aeschylus to O’Neill through the risk theatre lens, he also invites dramatists to create tomorrow’s theatre. As the world becomes increasingly unpredictable, the most compelling dramas will be high-stakes tragedies that dramatize the unintended consequences of today's risk takers who are taking us past the point of no return.

The Theban Plays
The Theban Plays

Author: Sophocles

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 1973-04-26

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 0141905646

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King Oedipus/Oedipus at Colonus/Antigone Three towering works of Greek tragedy depicting the inexorable downfall of a doomed royal dynasty The legends surrounding the house of Thebes inspired Sophocles to create this powerful trilogy about humanity's struggle against fate. King Oedipus is the devastating portrayal of a ruler who brings pestilence to Thebes for crimes he does not realize he has committed and then inflicts a brutal punishment upon himself. Oedipus at Colonus provides a fitting conclusion to the life of the aged and blinded king, while Antigone depicts the fall of the next generation, through the conflict between a young woman ruled by her conscience and a king too confident of his own authority. Translated with an Introduction by E. F. WATLING