Reperforming Greek Tragedy
Reperforming Greek Tragedy

Author: Anna A. Lamari

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2017-10-23

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 3110559935

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An inexplicably understudied field of classical scholarship, tragic reperformance, has been surveyed in its true dimension only in the very recent years. Building on the latest discussions on tragic restagings, this book provides a thorough survey of reperformance of Greek tragedy in the fifth and fourth centuries BC, also addressing its theatrical, political, and cultural context. In the fifth and fourth centuries, tragic restagings were strongly tied to cultural mobility and exchange. Poets, actors, texts, vases, and vase-painters were traveling, bridging the boundaries between mainland Greece and Magna Graecia, boosting the spread of theater, facilitating theatrical literacy, and setting a new theatrical status quo, according to which popular tragic plays were restaged, by mobile actors, in numerous dramatic festivals, in and out of Attica, with or without the supervision of their composers. This book offers a holistic examination of ancient reperformances of tragedy, enhancing our perception of them as a vital theatrical practice that played a major part in the development of the tragic genre in the fifth and fourth centuries BC.

Classical Greek Tragedy
Classical Greek Tragedy

Author: Judith Fletcher

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-12-16

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 1350144584

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Classical Greek Tragedy offers a comprehensive survey of the development of classical Greek tragedy combined with close readings of exemplary texts. Reconstructing how audiences in fifth-century BCE Athens created meaning from the performance of tragedy at the dramatic festivals sponsored by the city-state and its wealthiest citizens, it considers the context of Athenian political and legal structures, gender ideology, religious beliefs, and other social forces that contributed to spectators' reception of the drama. In doing so it focuses on the relationship between performers and watchers, not only Athenian male citizens, but also women and audiences throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. This book traces the historical development of these dynamics through three representative tragedies that span a 50 year period: Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes, Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus, and Euripides' Helen. Topics include the role of the chorus; the tragic hero; recurring mythical characters and subject matter; Aristotelian assessments of the components of tragedy; developments in the architecture of the theater and their impact on the interactions of characters, and the spaces they occupy. Unifying these discussions is the observation that the genre articulates a reality beyond the visible stage action that intersects with the characters' existence in the present moment and resonates with the audience's religious beliefs and collective psychology. Human voices within the performance space articulate powerful forces from an invisible dimension that are activated by oaths, hymns, curses and prayers, and respond in the form of oracles and prophecies, forms of discourse which were profoundly meaningful to those who watched the original productions of tragedy.

Fragmentation in Ancient Greek Drama
Fragmentation in Ancient Greek Drama

Author: Anna A. Lamari

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-08-10

Total Pages: 734

ISBN-13: 311062169X

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This volume examines whether dramatic fragments should be approached as parts of a greater whole or as self-contained entities. It comprises contributions by a broad spectrum of international scholars: by young researchers working on fragmentary drama as well as by well-known experts in this field. The volume explores another kind of fragmentation that seems already to have been embraced by the ancient dramatists: quotations extracted from their context and immersed in a new whole, in which they work both as cohesive unities and detachable entities. Sections of poetic works circulated in antiquity not only as parts of a whole, but also independently, i.e. as component fractions, rather like quotations on facebook today. Fragmentation can thus be seen operating on the level of dissociation, but also on the level of cohesion. The volume investigates interpretive possibilities, quotation contexts, production and reception stages of fragmentary texts, looking into the ways dramatic fragments can either increase the depth of fragmentation or strengthen the intensity of cohesion.

Greek Tragedy After the Fifth Century
Greek Tragedy After the Fifth Century

Author: Vayos Liapis

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 431

ISBN-13: 1107038553

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What happened to Greek tragedy after the death of Euripides? This book provides some answers, and a broad historical overview.

Female Characters in Fragmentary Greek Tragedy
Female Characters in Fragmentary Greek Tragedy

Author: P. J. Finglass

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-07-02

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1108864708

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How were women represented in Greek tragedy? This question lies at the heart of much modern scholarship on ancient drama, yet it has typically been approached using evidence drawn only from the thirty-two tragedies that survive complete - neglecting tragic fragments, especially those recently discovered and often very substantial fragmentary papyri from plays that had been thought lost. Drawing on the latest research on both gender in tragedy and on tragic fragments, the essays in this volume examine this question from a fresh perspective, shedding light on important mythological characters such as Pasiphae, Hypsipyle, and Europa, on themes such as violence, sisterhood, vengeance, and sex, and on the methodology of a discipline which needs to take fragmentary evidence to heart in order to gain a fuller understanding of ancient tragedy. All Greek is translated to ensure wide accessibility.

Diversifying Greek Tragedy on the Contemporary US Stage
Diversifying Greek Tragedy on the Contemporary US Stage

Author: Melinda Powers

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-08-16

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 0191083143

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In its long history of performance and reception, Greek drama has been interpreted and adapted in ever-changing ways to share in the preoccupations and tensions of particular historical moments. Diversifying Greek Tragedy on the Contemporary US Stage explores this tradition by investigating a cross section of theatrical productions that have reimagined Greek tragedy in order to address social and political concerns in the US. Studying performance and its role in creating social, historical, and cultural identities, this volume draws on cutting-edge research to move discussion away from the interpretation of dramatic texts in isolation from their performance contexts and towards an analysis of the dynamic experience of live theatre. The study focuses particularly on the ability of engaged performances to pose critical challenges to the long-standing stereotypes and political policies that have contributed to the misrepresentation and marginalization of underrepresented communities. However, in the process it also uncovers the ways in which such performances can inadvertently reinforce the very stereotypes they aim to challenge, demonstrating that ancient drama can be a powerful, yet dangerous tool in the search for justice.

Greek Drama V
Greek Drama V

Author: Hallie Marshall

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-02-06

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1350142360

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Drawing together new research from emerging and senior scholars, this selection of papers from the decennial Greek Drama V conference (Vancouver, 2017) explores the works of the ancient Greek playwrights and showcases new methodologies with which to study them. Sixteen chapters from a field of international contributors examine a range of topics, from the politics of the ancient theatre, to the role of the chorus, to the earliest history of the reception of Aeschylus' Oresteia. Employing anthropological, historical, and psychological critical methods alongside performance analysis and textual criticism, these studies bring fresh and original interpretations to the plays. Several contributions analyse fragmentary tragedies, while others incorporate ideas on the performance aspect of certain plays. The final chapters deal separately with comedy, naturally focusing on the plays of Aristophanes and Menander. Greek Drama V offers a window into where the academic field of Greek drama is now, and points towards the future scholarship it will produce.

Sensing Greek Drama
Sensing Greek Drama

Author: Zachary Case

Publisher: Cambridge Philological Society

Published: 2023-08-01

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1913701476

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Sensing Greek Drama explores ancient Greek tragedy and comedy through the lens of the senses. It works within and beyond a number of recent developments in the scholarship of Classics and related fields. The individual chapters engage with the senses in drama in manifold ways: through various theoretical frameworks borrowed from kindred fields in the humanities and sciences – postmodernism, humanism, feminism, phenomenology, cognitive theory and neuroscience, to name a few – as well as through the more traditional approaches within Classics, including philology, historicism, performance studies and reception. Above all, Sensing Greek Drama serves as a call to “to recover our senses”, as Susan Sontag wrote in her famous essay “Against Interpretation”, in a modern age characterized by sensory overload and deprivation.

The Comic Body in Ancient Greek Theatre and Art, 440-320 BCE
The Comic Body in Ancient Greek Theatre and Art, 440-320 BCE

Author: Alexa Piqueux

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022-06-16

Total Pages: 435

ISBN-13: 0192660330

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Using both textual and iconographic sources, this richly illustrated book examines the representations of the body in Greek Old and Middle Comedy, how it was staged, perceived, and imagined, particularly in Athens, Magna Graecia, and Sicily. The study also aims to refine knowledge of the various connections between Attic comedy and comic vases from South Italy and Sicily (the so-called 'phlyax vases'). After introducing comic texts and comedy-related vase-paintings in the regional contexts, The Comic Body in Ancient Greek Theatre and Art, 440-320 BCE considers the generic features of the comic body, characterized as it is by a specific ugliness and a constant motion. It also explores how costumes —masks, padding, phallus, clothing, accessories— and gestures contribute to the characters' visual identity in relation with speech : it analyzes the cultural, social, aesthetic, and theatrical conventions by which spectators decipher the body. This study thus leads to a re-examination of the modalities of comic mimesis, in particular when addressing sexual codes in cross-dressing scenes which reveal the artifice of the fictional body. It also sheds light on how comic poets make use of the scenic or imaginary representations of the bodies of those who are targets of political, social, or intellectual satire. There is a particular emphasis on body movements, where the book not only deals with body language and the dramatic function of comic gesture, but also with how words confer a kind of poetic and unreal motion to the body.