The Agon in Euripides
The Agon in Euripides

Author: Michael A. Lloyd

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 9780198147787

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This book is a study of the agon, or formal debate, in Euripides' tragedies. In these scenes, two characters confront each other, often before an arbitrator or judge, and make long speeches as if they were opponents in a court of law. Most of Euripides' extant plays contain an agon, often of crucial importance to the central conflict of the play. Lloyd provides interpretations of the more important agones, giving special attention to their dramatic context and function. Concentrating on Euripides' rhetorical skill, brilliance in argument, and interest in philosophy, Lloyd explores the role of formal debate in Euripides. He contrasts the agon in Euripides' work with that of Sophocles, and discusses extensively Euripides' relationship to fifth-century rhetorical theory and practice.

Agon in Classical Literature
Agon in Classical Literature

Author: Efstathiou EDWARDS

Publisher: University of London Press

Published: 2022-05-02

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 9781905670994

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A collection of essays on the topical concept of agon in Greek literature. The papers collected in this volume are offered by colleagues and former students in honor of Chris Carey, emeritus professor of Greek at University College London. The multifaceted topic of the agon, or contest of word, and its varying representations in Greek literature aptly corresponds to the outstanding variety of Carey's research interests, which include the works of Homer, lyric poetry, drama, law, rhetoric, and historiography. This volume sets out to reflect on facets of the agon across these literary genres and the pivotal role of competition in ancient Greek thought. It aims to explore the wide range of agonal dynamics, and their generic and cultural value, as well as stimulating fresh discussions under a broad spectrum of theoretical and methodological approaches.

Entering the Agon
Entering the Agon

Author: Elton T. E. Barker

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2009-01-22

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 0191562246

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This book investigates one of the most characteristic and prominent features of ancient Greek literature - the scene of debate or agon, in which with varying degrees of formality characters square up to each other and engage in a contest of words. Drawing on six case studies of different kinds of narrative - epic, historiography and tragedy - and authors as diverse as Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, Sophocles and Euripides, this wide-ranging study analyses each example of debate in its context according to a set of interrelated questions: who debates, when, why, and with what consequences? Based on the changing representations of debate across and within different genres, it shows the importance of debate to these key canonical genres and, in turn, the role of literature in the construction of a citizen body through the exploration, reproduction and management of dissent from authority.

Euripides Danae and Dictys
Euripides Danae and Dictys

Author: Ioanna Karamanou

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2012-02-14

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 3110938731

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Euripides' Danae and Dictys are two of the most important and influential treatments of a popular tragic myth-cycle, which is unrepresented among extant plays. Moreover, they are early treatments of major Euripidean plot-patterns that anticipate and illuminate more familiar works in the corpus, both extant and fragmentary. This is the first full-scale study of the two plays, which sheds light on plot-patterns, key themes and aspects of Euripidean dramatic technique (e.g. his rhetoric, imagery, stagecraft), as well as matters of reception and transmission of both tragedies, by taking into account newly related evidence. The cautious recovery of the two lost plays based on the available evidence and the detailed commentary on their fragments seek to complement our knowledge of Euripidean drama by contributing to an overview and more comprehensive picture of the dramatist's technique, as the extant corpus represents only a small portion of his oeuvre.

The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours
The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours

Author: Gregory Nagy

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2020-01-10

Total Pages: 657

ISBN-13: 0674244192

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What does it mean to be a hero? The ancient Greeks who gave us Achilles and Odysseus had a very different understanding of the term than we do today. Based on the legendary Harvard course that Gregory Nagy has taught for well over thirty years, The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours explores the roots of Western civilization and offers a masterclass in classical Greek literature. We meet the epic heroes of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, but Nagy also considers the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the songs of Sappho and Pindar, and the dialogues of Plato. Herodotus once said that to read Homer was to be a civilized person. To discover Nagy’s Homer is to be twice civilized. “Fascinating, often ingenious... A valuable synthesis of research finessed over thirty years.” —Times Literary Supplement “Nagy exuberantly reminds his readers that heroes—mortal strivers against fate, against monsters, and...against death itself—form the heart of Greek literature... [He brings] in every variation on the Greek hero, from the wily Theseus to the brawny Hercules to the ‘monolithic’ Achilles to the valiantly conflicted Oedipus.” —Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly

Conflict and Competition: Agon in Western Greece
Conflict and Competition: Agon in Western Greece

Author: John Serrati

Publisher:

Published: 2020-06

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 9781942495352

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In 2004, the city of Athens hosted the the Olympic Games. But the word 'games' almost trivializes the ancient concept of ag?n, which transcends sport, drama, war, and even philosophical debate. The ag?n deemed characteristic of ancient Greek culture has roots in in the eris (strife) illustrated in Homer and Hesiod and debated in the metaphysics of Heraclitus and Empedocles. It reverberates throughout philosophy, drama, history, poetry, art, and even the 19th century reception of Greek culture. This volume considers ag?n from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, with a special emphasis on Western Greece - the ancient Hellenic cities of Sicily and Southern Italy. Authors discussed include Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Euripides, Plato, Aristotle, Theocritus, Callimachus, Diodorus, Porphyry, Nietzsche, and Burkhardt.

Euripides and the Politics of Form
Euripides and the Politics of Form

Author: Victoria Wohl

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-06-09

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 0691202370

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How can we make sense of the innovative structure of Euripidean drama? And what political role did tragedy play in the democracy of classical Athens? These questions are usually considered to be mutually exclusive, but this book shows that they can only be properly answered together. Providing a new approach to the aesthetics and politics of Greek tragedy, Victoria Wohl argues that the poetic form of Euripides' drama constitutes a mode of political thought. Through readings of select plays, she explores the politics of Euripides' radical aesthetics, showing how formal innovation generates political passions with real-world consequences. Euripides' plays have long perplexed readers. With their disjointed plots, comic touches, and frequent happy endings, they seem to stretch the boundaries of tragedy. But the plays' formal traits—from their exorbitantly beautiful lyrics to their arousal and resolution of suspense—shape the audience's political sensibilities and ideological attachments. Engendering civic passions, the plays enact as well as express political ideas. Wohl draws out the political implications of Euripidean aesthetics by exploring such topics as narrative and ideological desire, the politics of pathos, realism and its utopian possibilities, the logic of political allegory, and tragedy's relation to its historical moment. Breaking through the impasse between formalist and historicist interpretations of Greek tragedy, Euripides and the Politics of Form demonstrates that aesthetic structure and political meaning are mutually implicated—and that to read the plays poetically is necessarily to read them politically.