Author: Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786451593
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 276
Book Description
Many playwrights, authors, poets and historians have used images, metaphors and references to and from Greek tragedy, myth and epic to describe the African experience in the New World. The complex relationship between ancient Greek tragedy and modern African American theatre is primarily rooted in America, where the connection between ancient Greece and ancient Africa is explored and debated the most. The different ways in which Greek tragedy has been used by playwrights, directors and others to represent and define African American history and identity are explored in this work. Two models are offered for an Afro-Greek connection: Black Orpheus, in which the Greek connection is metaphorical, expressing the African in terms of the European; and Black Athena, in which ancient Greek culture is "reclaimed" as part of an Afrocentric tradition. African American adaptations of Greek tragedy on the continuum of these two models are then discussed, and plays by Peter Sellars, Adrienne Kennedy, Lee Breuer, Rita Dove, Jim Magnuson, Ernest Ferlita, Steve Carter, Silas Jones, Rhodessa Jones and Derek Walcott are analyzed. The concepts of colorblind and nontraditional casting and how such practices can shape the reception and meaning of Greek tragedy in modern American productions are also covered.
Black Dionysus
Author: Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786451593
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 276
Book Description
Many playwrights, authors, poets and historians have used images, metaphors and references to and from Greek tragedy, myth and epic to describe the African experience in the New World. The complex relationship between ancient Greek tragedy and modern African American theatre is primarily rooted in America, where the connection between ancient Greece and ancient Africa is explored and debated the most. The different ways in which Greek tragedy has been used by playwrights, directors and others to represent and define African American history and identity are explored in this work. Two models are offered for an Afro-Greek connection: Black Orpheus, in which the Greek connection is metaphorical, expressing the African in terms of the European; and Black Athena, in which ancient Greek culture is "reclaimed" as part of an Afrocentric tradition. African American adaptations of Greek tragedy on the continuum of these two models are then discussed, and plays by Peter Sellars, Adrienne Kennedy, Lee Breuer, Rita Dove, Jim Magnuson, Ernest Ferlita, Steve Carter, Silas Jones, Rhodessa Jones and Derek Walcott are analyzed. The concepts of colorblind and nontraditional casting and how such practices can shape the reception and meaning of Greek tragedy in modern American productions are also covered.
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786451593
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 276
Book Description
Many playwrights, authors, poets and historians have used images, metaphors and references to and from Greek tragedy, myth and epic to describe the African experience in the New World. The complex relationship between ancient Greek tragedy and modern African American theatre is primarily rooted in America, where the connection between ancient Greece and ancient Africa is explored and debated the most. The different ways in which Greek tragedy has been used by playwrights, directors and others to represent and define African American history and identity are explored in this work. Two models are offered for an Afro-Greek connection: Black Orpheus, in which the Greek connection is metaphorical, expressing the African in terms of the European; and Black Athena, in which ancient Greek culture is "reclaimed" as part of an Afrocentric tradition. African American adaptations of Greek tragedy on the continuum of these two models are then discussed, and plays by Peter Sellars, Adrienne Kennedy, Lee Breuer, Rita Dove, Jim Magnuson, Ernest Ferlita, Steve Carter, Silas Jones, Rhodessa Jones and Derek Walcott are analyzed. The concepts of colorblind and nontraditional casting and how such practices can shape the reception and meaning of Greek tragedy in modern American productions are also covered.
African Dionysus
Author: Muata Ashby
Publisher: Sema Institute
ISBN: 9781884564475
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Book Description
33. AFRICAN DIONYSUS: FROM EGYPT TO GREECE: The Kamitan Origins of Greek Culture and Religion ISBN: 1-884564-47-X FROM EGYPT TO GREECE This insightful manual is a reference to Ancient Egyptian mythology and philosophy and its correlation to what later became known as Greek and Rome mythology and philosophy. It outlines the basic tenets of the mythologies and shoes the ancient origins of Greek culture in Ancient Egypt. This volume also documents the origins of the Greek alphabet in Egypt as well as Greek religion, myth and philosophy of the gods and goddesses from Egypt from the myth of Atlantis and archaic period with the Minoans to the Classical period. This volume also acts as a resource for Colleges students who would like to set up fraternities and sororities based on the original Ancient Egyptian principles of Sheti and Maat philosophy.
Publisher: Sema Institute
ISBN: 9781884564475
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Book Description
33. AFRICAN DIONYSUS: FROM EGYPT TO GREECE: The Kamitan Origins of Greek Culture and Religion ISBN: 1-884564-47-X FROM EGYPT TO GREECE This insightful manual is a reference to Ancient Egyptian mythology and philosophy and its correlation to what later became known as Greek and Rome mythology and philosophy. It outlines the basic tenets of the mythologies and shoes the ancient origins of Greek culture in Ancient Egypt. This volume also documents the origins of the Greek alphabet in Egypt as well as Greek religion, myth and philosophy of the gods and goddesses from Egypt from the myth of Atlantis and archaic period with the Minoans to the Classical period. This volume also acts as a resource for Colleges students who would like to set up fraternities and sororities based on the original Ancient Egyptian principles of Sheti and Maat philosophy.
African Athena
Author: Daniel Orrells
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191618799
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 480
Book Description
The appearance of Martin Bernal's Black Athena: The Afro-Asian Roots of Classical Civilization in 1987 sparked intense debate and controversy in Africa, Europe, and North America. His detailed genealogy of the 'fabrication of Greece' and his claims for the influence of ancient African and Near Eastern cultures on the making of classical Greece, questioned many intellectuals' assumptions about the nature of ancient history. The transportation of enslaved African persons into Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean, brought African and diasporic African people into contact in significant numbers with the Greek and Latin classics for the first time in modern history. In African Athena, the contributors explore the impact of the modern African disapora from the sixteenth century onwards on Western notions of history and culture, examining the role Bernal's claim has played in European and American understandings of history, and in classical, European, American and Caribbean literary production. African Athena examines the history of intellectuals and literary writers who contested the white, dominant Euro-American constructions of the classical past and its influence on the present. Martin Bernal has written an Afterword to this collection.
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191618799
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 480
Book Description
The appearance of Martin Bernal's Black Athena: The Afro-Asian Roots of Classical Civilization in 1987 sparked intense debate and controversy in Africa, Europe, and North America. His detailed genealogy of the 'fabrication of Greece' and his claims for the influence of ancient African and Near Eastern cultures on the making of classical Greece, questioned many intellectuals' assumptions about the nature of ancient history. The transportation of enslaved African persons into Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean, brought African and diasporic African people into contact in significant numbers with the Greek and Latin classics for the first time in modern history. In African Athena, the contributors explore the impact of the modern African disapora from the sixteenth century onwards on Western notions of history and culture, examining the role Bernal's claim has played in European and American understandings of history, and in classical, European, American and Caribbean literary production. African Athena examines the history of intellectuals and literary writers who contested the white, dominant Euro-American constructions of the classical past and its influence on the present. Martin Bernal has written an Afterword to this collection.
Ulysses in Black
Author: Patrice D. Rankine
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0299220036
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
In this groundbreaking work, Patrice D. Rankine asserts that the classics need not be a mark of Eurocentrism, as they have long been considered. Instead, the classical tradition can be part of a self-conscious, prideful approach to African American culture, esthetics, and identity. Ulysses in Black demonstrates that, similar to their white counterparts, African American authors have been students of classical languages, literature, and mythologies by such writers as Homer, Euripides, and Seneca. Ulysses in Black closely analyzes classical themes (the nature of love and its relationship to the social, Dionysus in myth as a parallel to the black protagonist in the American scene, misplaced Ulyssean manhood) as seen in the works of such African American writers as Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and Countee Cullen. Rankine finds that the merging of a black esthetic with the classics—contrary to expectations throughout American culture—has often been a radical addressing of concerns including violence against blacks, racism, and oppression. Ultimately, this unique study of black classicism becomes an exploration of America’s broader cultural integrity, one that is inclusive and historic. Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Magazine
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0299220036
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
In this groundbreaking work, Patrice D. Rankine asserts that the classics need not be a mark of Eurocentrism, as they have long been considered. Instead, the classical tradition can be part of a self-conscious, prideful approach to African American culture, esthetics, and identity. Ulysses in Black demonstrates that, similar to their white counterparts, African American authors have been students of classical languages, literature, and mythologies by such writers as Homer, Euripides, and Seneca. Ulysses in Black closely analyzes classical themes (the nature of love and its relationship to the social, Dionysus in myth as a parallel to the black protagonist in the American scene, misplaced Ulyssean manhood) as seen in the works of such African American writers as Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and Countee Cullen. Rankine finds that the merging of a black esthetic with the classics—contrary to expectations throughout American culture—has often been a radical addressing of concerns including violence against blacks, racism, and oppression. Ultimately, this unique study of black classicism becomes an exploration of America’s broader cultural integrity, one that is inclusive and historic. Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Magazine
Dionysus Resurrected
Author: Erika Fischer-Lichte
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405175788
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Book Description
Dionysus Resurrected analyzes the global resurgence since the late 1960s of Euripides’ The Bacchae. By analyzing and contextualizing these modern day performances, the author reveals striking parallels between transformational events taking place during the era of the play’s revival and events within the play itself. Puts forward a lively discussion of the parallels between transformational eventsduring the era of the play’s revival and events within the play itself The first comparative study to analyse and contextualize performances of The Bacchae that took place between 1968 and 2009 from the United States, Africa, Latin America, Europe and Asia Argues that presentations of the play not only represent liminal states but also transfer the spectators into such states Contends that the play’s reflection on various stages of globalization render the tragedy a contemporary play Establishes the importance of The Bacchae within Euripides’ work as the only extant tragedy in which the god Dionysus himself appears, not just as a character but as the protagonist
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405175788
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Book Description
Dionysus Resurrected analyzes the global resurgence since the late 1960s of Euripides’ The Bacchae. By analyzing and contextualizing these modern day performances, the author reveals striking parallels between transformational events taking place during the era of the play’s revival and events within the play itself. Puts forward a lively discussion of the parallels between transformational eventsduring the era of the play’s revival and events within the play itself The first comparative study to analyse and contextualize performances of The Bacchae that took place between 1968 and 2009 from the United States, Africa, Latin America, Europe and Asia Argues that presentations of the play not only represent liminal states but also transfer the spectators into such states Contends that the play’s reflection on various stages of globalization render the tragedy a contemporary play Establishes the importance of The Bacchae within Euripides’ work as the only extant tragedy in which the god Dionysus himself appears, not just as a character but as the protagonist
The Politics of Adaptation
Author: Astrid Van Weyenberg
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 940120957X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 263
Book Description
This book explores contemporary African adaptations of classical Greek tragedies. Six South African and Nigerian dramatic texts – by Yael Farber, Mark Fleishman, Athol Fugard, Femi Osofisan, and Wole Soyinka – are analysed through the thematic lens of resistance, revolution, reconciliation, and mourning. The opening chapters focus on plays that mobilize Greek tragedy to inspire political change, discussing how Sophocles’ heroine Antigone is reconfigured as a freedom fighter and how Euripides’ Dionysos is transformed into a revolutionary leader. The later chapters shift the focus to plays that explore the costs and consequences of political change, examining how the cycle of violence dramatized in Aeschylus’ Oresteia trilogy acquires relevance in post-apartheid South Africa, and how the mourning of Euripides’ Trojan Women resonates in and beyond Nigeria. Throughout, the emphasis is on how playwrights, through adaptation, perform a cultural politics directed at the Europe that has traditionally considered ancient Greece as its property, foundation, and legitimization. Van Weyenberg additionally discusses how contemporary African reworkings of Greek tragedies invite us to reconsider how we think about the genre of tragedy and about the cultural process of adaptation. Against George Steiner’s famous claim that tragedy has died, this book demonstrates that Greek tragedy holds relevance today. But it also reveals that adaptations do more than simply keeping the texts they draw on alive: through adaptation, playwrights open up a space for politics. In this dynamic between adaptation and pre-text, the politics of adaptation is performed.
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 940120957X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 263
Book Description
This book explores contemporary African adaptations of classical Greek tragedies. Six South African and Nigerian dramatic texts – by Yael Farber, Mark Fleishman, Athol Fugard, Femi Osofisan, and Wole Soyinka – are analysed through the thematic lens of resistance, revolution, reconciliation, and mourning. The opening chapters focus on plays that mobilize Greek tragedy to inspire political change, discussing how Sophocles’ heroine Antigone is reconfigured as a freedom fighter and how Euripides’ Dionysos is transformed into a revolutionary leader. The later chapters shift the focus to plays that explore the costs and consequences of political change, examining how the cycle of violence dramatized in Aeschylus’ Oresteia trilogy acquires relevance in post-apartheid South Africa, and how the mourning of Euripides’ Trojan Women resonates in and beyond Nigeria. Throughout, the emphasis is on how playwrights, through adaptation, perform a cultural politics directed at the Europe that has traditionally considered ancient Greece as its property, foundation, and legitimization. Van Weyenberg additionally discusses how contemporary African reworkings of Greek tragedies invite us to reconsider how we think about the genre of tragedy and about the cultural process of adaptation. Against George Steiner’s famous claim that tragedy has died, this book demonstrates that Greek tragedy holds relevance today. But it also reveals that adaptations do more than simply keeping the texts they draw on alive: through adaptation, playwrights open up a space for politics. In this dynamic between adaptation and pre-text, the politics of adaptation is performed.
Questioning African Cinema
Author: Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9781452905822
Category : Motion picture producers and directors
Languages : en
Pages : 358
Book Description
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9781452905822
Category : Motion picture producers and directors
Languages : en
Pages : 358
Book Description
American Journal of Archaeology
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Archaeology
Languages : en
Pages : 440
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Archaeology
Languages : en
Pages : 440
Book Description
Modern Tragedy
Author: James Moran
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350139793
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 185
Book Description
What distinguishes modern tragedy from other forms of drama? How does it relate to contemporary political and social conditions? To what ends have artists employed the tragic form in different locations during the 20th century? Partly motivated by the urgency of our current situation in an age of ecocidal crisis, Modern Tragedy encompasses a variety of drama from throughout the 20th century. James Moran begins this book with John Millington Synge's Riders to the Sea (1904), which shows how environmental awareness might be expressed through tragic drama. Moran also looks at Brecht's reworking of Synge's drama in the 1937 play Señora Carrar's Rifles, and situates Brecht's script in the light of the theatre practitioner's broader ideas about tragedy. Brecht's tragic thinking – informed by Hegel and Marx – is contrasted with the Schopenhauerian approach of Samuel Beckett. The volume goes on to examine theatre makers whose ideas were partly motivated by applying an understanding of the tragic narrative of Synge's Riders to the Sea to postcolonial contexts. Looking at Derek Walcott's The Sea at Dauphin (1954), and J.P. Clark's The Goat (1961), Modern Tragedy explores how tragedy, a form that is often associated with regressive assumptions about hegemony, might be rethought, and how aspects of the tragic may coincide with the experiences and concerns of authors and audiences of colour.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350139793
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 185
Book Description
What distinguishes modern tragedy from other forms of drama? How does it relate to contemporary political and social conditions? To what ends have artists employed the tragic form in different locations during the 20th century? Partly motivated by the urgency of our current situation in an age of ecocidal crisis, Modern Tragedy encompasses a variety of drama from throughout the 20th century. James Moran begins this book with John Millington Synge's Riders to the Sea (1904), which shows how environmental awareness might be expressed through tragic drama. Moran also looks at Brecht's reworking of Synge's drama in the 1937 play Señora Carrar's Rifles, and situates Brecht's script in the light of the theatre practitioner's broader ideas about tragedy. Brecht's tragic thinking – informed by Hegel and Marx – is contrasted with the Schopenhauerian approach of Samuel Beckett. The volume goes on to examine theatre makers whose ideas were partly motivated by applying an understanding of the tragic narrative of Synge's Riders to the Sea to postcolonial contexts. Looking at Derek Walcott's The Sea at Dauphin (1954), and J.P. Clark's The Goat (1961), Modern Tragedy explores how tragedy, a form that is often associated with regressive assumptions about hegemony, might be rethought, and how aspects of the tragic may coincide with the experiences and concerns of authors and audiences of colour.
African Modernity and the Philosophy of Culture in the Works of Femi Euba
Author: Iyunolu Osagie
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 149854567X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 189
Book Description
This book is a significant and original contribution to the ongoing conversation on modernity. It uses the creative and critical works of Nigerian playwright and novelist Femi Euba to demonstrate the place and function of African cultures in modernity and makes the case for the vibrancy of such cultures in the shaping and constitution of the modern world. In addition to a critique of Euba’s fifty-year artistic career, this book offers an account of Euba’s formative relationship with the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature winner Wole Soyinka, during the promising days of the Nigerian theatre in the immediate post-independence period, and the effect of this relationship on Euba’s artistic choices and reflections. Euba contributes to our understanding of Africa’s negotiation of modernity in significant ways, especially in his sensitive reading of Esu, the Yoruba god of fate and chance, as an artistic consciousness whose historical and ideological mobility during New World slavery, during Africa’s colonial period, and in the manifestations in the black diaspora today emblematizes the process we call modernity. By using ritual, myth, and satire as avenues to the debate on modernity, Euba lays emphasis on the transformative possibilities at the crossroads of history. His works engage the psychological interconnections between old gods and new worlds and the dialogic relationship between tradition and modernity. Delineating the philosophical and literary debates that reject an easy division between a stereotypically traditional Africa and a modern West, the author shows how Euba’s plays and novel engage the entwined and intimate relationships between the modern and the traditional in contemporary Africa, and thereby she asserts the global resonance of Euba’s African, and specifically Yoruba, conception of the world. By meticulously collecting, cataloguing, and critiquing Euba’s works, Osagie models a new way of practicing African literary studies and invites us to glimpse narrative genius on the continent that she firmly believes African scholars should both promote and celebrate.
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 149854567X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 189
Book Description
This book is a significant and original contribution to the ongoing conversation on modernity. It uses the creative and critical works of Nigerian playwright and novelist Femi Euba to demonstrate the place and function of African cultures in modernity and makes the case for the vibrancy of such cultures in the shaping and constitution of the modern world. In addition to a critique of Euba’s fifty-year artistic career, this book offers an account of Euba’s formative relationship with the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature winner Wole Soyinka, during the promising days of the Nigerian theatre in the immediate post-independence period, and the effect of this relationship on Euba’s artistic choices and reflections. Euba contributes to our understanding of Africa’s negotiation of modernity in significant ways, especially in his sensitive reading of Esu, the Yoruba god of fate and chance, as an artistic consciousness whose historical and ideological mobility during New World slavery, during Africa’s colonial period, and in the manifestations in the black diaspora today emblematizes the process we call modernity. By using ritual, myth, and satire as avenues to the debate on modernity, Euba lays emphasis on the transformative possibilities at the crossroads of history. His works engage the psychological interconnections between old gods and new worlds and the dialogic relationship between tradition and modernity. Delineating the philosophical and literary debates that reject an easy division between a stereotypically traditional Africa and a modern West, the author shows how Euba’s plays and novel engage the entwined and intimate relationships between the modern and the traditional in contemporary Africa, and thereby she asserts the global resonance of Euba’s African, and specifically Yoruba, conception of the world. By meticulously collecting, cataloguing, and critiquing Euba’s works, Osagie models a new way of practicing African literary studies and invites us to glimpse narrative genius on the continent that she firmly believes African scholars should both promote and celebrate.