Tells of the great siege at Troy, the woman who caused it, the warriors who fought and fell, and the trickery that ended it all. The Trojan prince Paris has abducted Helen, the beautiful wife of King Menelaus. It is a crime that will unite all of Greece's armies against the kingdom of Troy. In a 10-year siege, brave warriors will fight, and both sides will suffer great bloodshed. Can the deadlock be broken?"
Greek and Roman epic poetry has always provided creative artists in the modern world with a rich storehouse of themes. Tim Supple and Simon Reade's 1999 stage adaptation of Ted Hughes' Tales from Ovid for the RSC heralded a new lease of life for receptions of the genre, and it now routinely provides raw material for the performance repertoire of both major cultural institutions and emergent, experimental theatre companies. This volume represents the first systematic attempt to chart the afterlife of epic in modern performance traditions, with chapters covering not only a significant chronological span, but also ranging widely across both place and genre, analysing lyric, film, dance, and opera from Europe to Asia and the Americas. What emerges most clearly is how anxieties about the ability to write epic in the early modern world, together with the ancient precedent of Greek tragedy's reworking of epic material, explain its migration to the theatre. This move, though, was not without problems, as epic encountered the barriers imposed by neo-classicists, who sought to restrict serious theatre to a narrowly defined reality that precluded its broad sweeps across time and place. In many instances in recent years, the fact that the Homeric epics were composed orally has rendered reinvention not only legitimate, but also deeply appropriate, opening up a range of forms and traditions within which epic themes and structures may be explored. Drawing on the expertise of specialists from the fields of classical studies, English and comparative literature, modern languages, music, dance, and theatre and performance studies, as well as from practitioners within the creative industries, the volume is able to offer an unprecedented modern and dynamic study of 'epic' content and form across myriad diverse performance arenas.
Return to Troy presents essays by American and European classical scholars on the Director’s Cut of Troy, a Hollywood film inspired by Homer’s Iliad. The book addresses major topics that are important for any twenty-first century representation of ancient Greek myth and literature in the visual media, not only in regard to Troy: the portrayals of gods, heroes, and women; director Wolfgang Petersen’s epic technique; anachronisms and supposed mistakes; the fall of Troy in classical literature and on screen; and the place of the Iliad in modern popular culture. Unique features are an interview with the director, a report on the complex filming process by his personal assistant, and rare photographs taken during the original production of Troy.
An authoritative, modernized edition of the complete works of the great Elizabethan dramatist offers the complete texts of every comedy, tragedy, and history play, along with key facts about each work, a plot summary, major roles, sources, textual history, glossaries, and other helpful textual notes.
Ralph Rosen explores the dynamics of comic mockery and satire in Greek and Roman poetry, encouraging a synoptic, synchronic view of such poetry, from archaic iambus through Roman satire.
The attitudes and assumptions of different cultures and historical periods toward war and the maintenance of peace are reviewed by recalling authors who include Euripides, Sophocles, Plato, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Hobbes, and Zola. The challenges of war, peace, and national security for and by Americans are examined, and documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of 1787. The lives and thought of eminent Americans are also recalled (including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt), as well as the challenges posed by incidents such as the Dreyfus Affair and monstrosities such as the Second World War Holocaust. The Appendixes reinforce these inquiries by providing critical documents in American history and interviews with a Holocaust survivor.
The essays in this collection addresses questions of intense interest in Homeric studies today: the questions of performance and poet-audience interaction, especially as depicted in idealized performances within the Iliad and the Odyssey; the ways in which epic incorporates material of diverse genres, such as women's laments, blame poetry, or folk tales; how the ideological balance of epic can change and be influenced by 'alternative ideologies' introduced through the incorporation of new material; the implications of the continuity of tradition for etymological studies; and how the traditional nature of epic affects textual criticism. The essays differ in focus and method, but all share one fundamental approach to Homer: an understanding of the Homeric tradition as a poetic system that expresses and preserves what is culturally important and a view of the Homeric epics as instances of a cultural tradition which they attempt to explore through the epics themselves and through the comparative, anthropological, and linguistic evidence they bring to bear on these texts. A unique collection that explores Homeric poetry through a variety of tools and approaches--linguistics, philology, cultural anthropology, sociology, textual criticism, and archeology--this volume will be of interest to all scholars and students of oral poetry and Classical literature.
