Tragedy on the Comic Stage

Tragedy on the Comic Stage

Author: Matthew C. Farmer

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0190492074

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Aristophanes' engagement with tragedy is one of the most striking features of his comedies. Tragedy on the Comic Stage contextualizes this engagement with tragedy within Greek comedy as a genre by examining paratragedy in the fragments of Aristophanes' contemporaries and successors in the fifth and fourth centuries.


Crisis on Stage

Crisis on Stage

Author: Andreas Markantonatos

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2011-11-30

Total Pages: 521

ISBN-13: 3110271567

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This volume explores the relationships between masterworks of Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes and critical events of Athenian history, by bringing together internationally distinguished scholars with expertise on different aspects of ancient theatre. These specialists study how tragic and comic plays composed in late fifth century BCE mirror the acute political and social crisis unfolding in Athens in the wake of the military catastrophe in 413 BCE and the oligarchic revolution in 411 BCE. With events of such magnitude the late fifth century held the potential for vast and fast cultural and intellectual change. In times of severe emergency humans gain a more conscious understanding of their historically shaped presence; this realization often has a welcome effect of offering new perspectives to tackle future challenges. Over twenty academic experts believe that the Attic theatre showed increased responsiveness to the pressing social and political issues of the day to the benefit of the polis. By regularly promoting examples of public-spirited and capable figures of authority, Greek drama provided the people of Athens with a civic understanding of their own good.


Paracomedy

Paracomedy

Author: Craig Jendza

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 0190090936

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Paracomedy: Appropriations of Comedy in Greek Drama is the first book that examines how ancient Greek tragedy engages with the genre of comedy. While scholars frequently study paratragedy (how Greek comedians satirize tragedy), this book investigates the previously overlooked practice of paracomedy: how Greek tragedians regularly appropriate elements from comedy such as costumes, scenes, language, characters, or plots. Drawing upon a wide variety of complete and fragmentary tragedies and comedies (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Rhinthon), this monograph demonstrates that paracomedy was a prominent feature of Greek tragedy. Blending a variety of interdisciplinary approaches including traditional philology, literary criticism, genre theory, and performance studies, this book offers innovative close readings and incisive interpretations of individual plays. Jendza presents paracomedy as a multivalent authorial strategy: some instances impart a sense of ugliness or discomfort; others provide a sense of light-heartedness or humor. While this work traces the development of paracomedy over several hundred years, it focuses on a handful of Euripidean tragedies at the end of the fifth century BCE. Jendza argues that Euripides was participating in a rivalry with the comedian Aristophanes and often used paracomedy to demonstrate the poetic supremacy of tragedy; indeed, some of Euripides' most complex uses of paracomedy attempt to re-appropriate Aristophanes' mockery of his theatrical techniques. Paracomedy: Appropriations of Comedy in Greek Tragedy theorizes a new, ground-breaking relationship between Greek tragedy and comedy that not only redefines our understanding of the genre of tragedy, but also reveals a dynamic theatrical world filled with mutual cross-generic influence.


Plato's Symposium

Plato's Symposium

Author: Frisbee Sheffield

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2006-07-20

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0191536822

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Frisbee Sheffield argues that the Symposium has been unduly marginalized by philosophers. Although the topic - eros - and the setting at a symposium have seemed anomalous, she demonstrates that both are intimately related to Plato's preoccupation with the nature of the good life, with virtue, and how it is acquired and transmitted. For Plato, analysing our desires is a way of reflecting on the kind of people we will turn out to be and on our chances of leading a worthwhile and happy life. In its focus on the question why he considered desires to be amenable to this type of reflection, this book explores Plato's ethics of desire.


Tragedy Plus Time

Tragedy Plus Time

Author: Adam Cayton-Holland

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2018-08-21

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 150117018X

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“Inspiring, tragic, and at times heart-rendingly funny.” —People Unsentimental, unexpectedly funny, and incredibly honest, Tragedy Plus Time is a love letter to every family that has ever felt messy, complicated, or (even momentarily) magnificent. Meet the Magnificent Cayton-Hollands, a trio of brilliant, acerbic teenagers from Denver, Colorado, who were going to change the world. Anna, Adam, and Lydia were taught by their father, a civil rights lawyer, and mother, an investigative journalist, to recognize injustice and have their hearts open to the universe—the good, the bad, the heartbreaking (and, inadvertently, the anxiety-inducing and the obsessive-compulsive disorder-fueling). Adam chose to meet life’s tough breaks and cruel realities with stand-up comedy; his older sister, Anna, chose law; while their youngest sister, Lydia, struggled to find her place in the world. Beautiful and whip-smart, Lydia was witty, extremely sensitive, fiercely stubborn, and always somewhat haunted. She and Adam bonded over comedy from a young age, running skits in their basement and obsessing over episodes of The Simpsons. When Adam sunk into a deep depression in college, it was Lydia who was able to reach him and pull him out. But years later as Adam’s career takes off, Lydia’s own depression overtakes her, and, though he tries, Adam can’t return the favor. When she takes her own life, the family is devastated, and Adam throws himself into his stand-up, drinking, and rage. He struggles with disturbing memories of Lydia’s death and turns to EMDR therapy to treat his post-traumatic stress disorder when he realizes there’s a difference between losing and losing it. Adam Cayton-Holland is a tremendously talented writer and comedian, uniquely poised to take readers to the edges of comedy and tragedy, brilliance and madness. Tragedy Plus Time is a revelatory, darkly funny, and poignant tribute to a lost sibling that will have you reaching for the phone to call your brother or sister by the last page.


The Dark Comedy

The Dark Comedy

Author: J. L. Styan

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1968-07

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9780521095297

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Anyone who takes an intelligent interest in theatre-going will find profit and stimulus in this book.


Costume in the Comedies of Aristophanes

Costume in the Comedies of Aristophanes

Author: Gwendolyn Compton-Engle

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-04-27

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1107083796

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This book interprets the handling of costume in the plays of the ancient Greek comic playwright Aristophanes, using as evidence the surviving plays as well as vase-paintings and terracotta figurines. This book fills a gap in the study of ancient Greek drama, focusing on performance, gender, and the body.


The Comic Matrix of Shakespeare's Tragedies

The Comic Matrix of Shakespeare's Tragedies

Author: Susan Snyder

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2019-01-29

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 0691196613

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Comic elements in Shakespeare's tragedies have often been noted, but while most critics have tended to concentrate on humorous interludes or on a single play, Susan Snyder seeks a more comprehensive understanding of how Shakespeare used the conventions, structures, and assumptions of comedy in his tragic writing. She argues that Shakespeare's early mastery of romantic comedy deeply influenced his tragedies both in dramaturgy and in the expression and development of his tragic vision. From this perspective she sheds new light on Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear. The author shows Shakespeare's tragic vision evolving as he moves through three possibilities: comedy and tragedy functioning first as polar opposites, later as two sides of the same coin, and finally as two elements in a single compound. In the four plays examined here, Professor Snyder finds that traditional comic structures and assumptions operate in several ways to shape the tragedy: they set up expectations which when proven false reinforce the movement into tragic inevitability; they underline tragic awareness by a pointed irrelevance; they establish a point of departure for tragedy when comedy's happy assumptions reveal their paradoxical "shadow" side; and they become part of the tragedy itself when the comic elements threaten the tragic hero with insignificance and absurdity. Susan Snyder is Professor of English at Swarthmore College. Originally published in 1979. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.


Comic Tragedies

Comic Tragedies

Author: Louisa May Alcott

Publisher: Lindhardt og Ringhof

Published: 2022-07-14

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 8726903008

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Louisa May Alcott's most popular novel, ́Little Women ́, featured the March sisters, who were based on her own family. In this collection of short plays, originally written by Alcott and her real sisters, Alcott adds to the world of ́Little Women ́, as the plays are made to seem like they were penned by Jo and Meg from ́Little Women ́ and acted out by them and other characters in the book. The plays are not as complicated as the background, thankfully. They are short, pithy, melodramatic and feature witches, magic, murder, ghosts and farcical situations. If you are a fan of ́Little Women ́, which was recently adapted for the silver screen for the seventh time, starring Emma Watson and Timothée Chalamet, you will love this additional glimpse into the lives of the March sisters. Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) was an American writer who is best known for her novel ́Little Women ́. She also grew up among some heavyweight 19th-century intellectuals, including Henry David Thoreau and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. With her parents struggling financially, Alcott worked to support them. At the same time, she began writing, initially under pseudonyms because her work was largely short stories and sensation novels for adults. ́Little Women ́, published in 1868, was an instant success upon release. Alcott also penned the follow-ups ́Little Men ́ and ́Jo's Boys ́.