Did Greek tragedy die along with Euripides? This accessible survey demonstrates that this is far from being the case. In it, thirteen eminent specialists offer, for the first time in English, broad coverage of a little-studied but essential part of the history of Greek tragedy. The book contains in-depth discussions of all available textual evidence (including inscriptions and papyri), but also provides historical perspectives on every aspect of the post-fifth-century history of tragedy. Oft-neglected plays, such as Rhesus, Alexandra, and Exagōgē (the only surviving Biblical tragedy), are studied alongside such topics as the expansion of Greek tragedy beyond Athens, theatre performance, music and dance, society and politics, as well as the reception of Greek tragedy in the Second Sophistic and in Late Antiquity, and the importance of ancient scholarship in the transmission of Greek tragic texts.
Did Greek tragedy die along with Euripides? This accessible survey demonstrates that this is far from being the case. In it, thirteen eminent specialists offer, for the first time in English, broad coverage of a little-studied but essential part of the history of Greek tragedy. The book contains in-depth discussions of all available textual evidence (including inscriptions and papyri), but also provides historical perspectives on every aspect of the post-fifth-century history of tragedy. Oft-neglected plays, such as Rhesus, Alexandra, and Exagōgē (the only surviving Biblical tragedy), are studied alongside such topics as the expansion of Greek tragedy beyond Athens, theatre performance, music and dance, society and politics, as well as the reception of Greek tragedy in the Second Sophistic and in Late Antiquity, and the importance of ancient scholarship in the transmission of Greek tragic texts.
Beyond the Fifth Century brings together 13 scholars from various disciplines (Classics, Ancient History, Mediaeval Studies) to explore interactions with Greek tragedy from the 4th century BCE up to the Middle Ages. The volume breaks new ground in several ways. Its chronological scope encompasses periods that are not usually part of research on tragedy reception, especially the Hellenistic period, late antiquity and the Middle Ages. The volume also considers not just performance reception but various other modes of reception, between different literary genres and media (inscriptions, vase paintings, recording technology). There is a pervasive interest in interactions between tragedy and society-at-large, such as festival culture and entertainment (both public and private), education, religious practice, even life-style. Finally, the volume features studies of a comparative nature which focus less on genealogical connections (although such may be present) but rather on the study of equivalences.
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.
The Athenian democracy of the 5th century B.C. created the most important political theatre of western culture. Sophocles, the most successful tragic playwright of the age, was a radical innovator who produced his tragedies to present to his audience complex moral, social, and political issues of a kind that they might be faced with in their various legal and political assemblies. Beer examines Sophocles as a political playwright against the background of Athenian democracy, breaking new ground by showing the importance of the mask for understanding Sophoclean tragedy and redefining the notion of skenographia, or setting the scene. He concludes that Sophocles revolutionized the concept of dramatic space. The Athenian tragic theatre was deeply political and played an important and active role in the life of Athenian democracy. This book presents an introduction to the political nature of Greek tragedy and Sophoclean tragedy in an effort to shed new light on the dramatic works of the 5th century playwright. As Aristotle noted, Sophocles' two most important innovations were the introduction of the third actor and skenographia, which brought tragedy to its fully evolved form. Beer argues that although his use of the third actor has been widely understood, his use of skenographia has not. Carefully exploring the true sense of this method of using dramatic space, Beer brings a new understanding to the works of this old master.
The latest volume in the Classical World series, this book offers a much-needed up-to-date introduction to Greek tragedy, and covers the most important thematic topics studied at school or university level. After a brief analysis of the genre and main figures, it focuses on the broader questions of what defines tragedy, what its particular preoccupations are, and what makes these texts so widely studied and performed more than 2,000 years after they were written. As such, the book will be of interest to students taking broad courses on Greek tragedy, while also being suitable for the general reader who wants an overview of the subject. All passages of tragedy discussed are translated by the author and supplementary information includes a chronology of all the surviving tragedies, a glossary, and guidance on further reading.
The core of the book focuses on tragic costume in its original performance context of fifth-century Athens, but the implications of subsequent uses in Roman and more recent performances are also taken into consideration.Most importantly, the reader is invited to think about how tragic costume worked as a language in ancient performance and was manipulated physically and verbally in order to create meaning. Elements of this language are shown through a series of test cases from a range of ancient tragedies. All ancient passages are given in translation and the book includes a glossary of terms.
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.