Aristophanes and His Tragic Muse

Aristophanes and His Tragic Muse PDF Author: Stephanie Nelson
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004310916
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Book Description
Despite the many studies of Greek comedy and tragedy separately, scholarship has generally neglected the relation of the two. And yet the genres developed together, were performed together, and influenced each other to the extent of becoming polar opposites. In Aristophanes and His Tragic Muse, Stephanie Nelson considers this opposition through an analysis of how the genres developed, by looking at the tragic and comic elements in satyr drama, and by contrasting specific Aristophanes plays with tragedies on similar themes, such as the individual, the polis, and the gods. The study reveals that tragedy’s focus on necessity and a quest for meaning complements a neglected but critical element in Athenian comedy: its interest in freedom, and the ambivalence of its incompatible visions of reality.

Aristophanes and His Tragic Muse

Aristophanes and His Tragic Muse PDF Author: Stephanie Nelson
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004310916
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 394

Get Book Here

Book Description
Despite the many studies of Greek comedy and tragedy separately, scholarship has generally neglected the relation of the two. And yet the genres developed together, were performed together, and influenced each other to the extent of becoming polar opposites. In Aristophanes and His Tragic Muse, Stephanie Nelson considers this opposition through an analysis of how the genres developed, by looking at the tragic and comic elements in satyr drama, and by contrasting specific Aristophanes plays with tragedies on similar themes, such as the individual, the polis, and the gods. The study reveals that tragedy’s focus on necessity and a quest for meaning complements a neglected but critical element in Athenian comedy: its interest in freedom, and the ambivalence of its incompatible visions of reality.

Philosophy, Poetry, and Power in Aristophanes's Birds

Philosophy, Poetry, and Power in Aristophanes's Birds PDF Author: Daniel Holmes
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498590772
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
Aristophanes was clearly anxious about the role of the sophists and the “new” education in Athens. After the perceived failure of Clouds in 423 and its subsequent, unperformed revision, Aristophanes, this book argues, returned in 414 with Birds, a continuation and deepening of his critique found in Clouds. Peisetaerus or “persuader of his comrades,” the protagonist of Birds, though an old man, is clearly a student of Socrates’ phrontisterion. Unlike Socrates, however, he is political and ambitious and he understands the whole of human nature, both rational and irrational. Peisetaerus employs the various deconstructive techniques of Socrates and his allies (which is summed up on the comic sage in the image of “father-beating”) to overturn not just human society, but, with the help of his new allies, the divine and musical birds, the cosmos. After his new gods and bird city, Cloudcuckooland, are actually established, however, the hero re-introduces the “old” ways - justice, moderation, and obedience to law – but now under his personal authority, and thereby becomes “the highest of the gods.” Thus, the author postulates, in 414 Aristophanes has come to acknowledge the potency of the apparent civic-minded turn (or element) of the sophists, while aware of the self-aggrandizing nature of their ambition. Peisetaerus, unlike Socrates, is successful: he is establishing a just polis and cosmos and, therefore, must be victorious. But the consequence or cost of this success is illustrated through the Bird Chorus. After the polis is founded, the birds never again sing of their musical reciprocity with the Muses, the source of melodies for men. The birds are now political and the policemen of human beings. The sophist-run cosmos has lost its music. The new Zeus is an ugly bird-mutant. The gods and all nomoi have lost their beauty, honor, and reverential nature. Birds, in its finale, hilariously, but boldlyilluminates the inherent tension between philosophy (reason) and poetry (divinely-inspired tradition).

The Rhetoric of Unity and Division in Ancient Literature

The Rhetoric of Unity and Division in Ancient Literature PDF Author: Andreas N. Michalopoulos
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110611163
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
This volume, comprising 24 essays, aims to contribute to a developing appreciation of the capacity of rhetoric to reinforce affiliation or disaffiliation to groups. To this end, the essays span a variety of ancient literary genres (i.e. oratory, historical and technical prose, drama and poetry) and themes (i.e. audience-speaker, laughter, emotions, language, gender, identity, and religion).

Tragedy on the Comic Stage

Tragedy on the Comic Stage PDF Author: Matthew C. Farmer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190492074
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
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.

Fragmentation in Ancient Greek Drama

Fragmentation in Ancient Greek Drama PDF Author: Anna A. Lamari
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 311062169X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 734

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Book Description
This volume examines whether dramatic fragments should be approached as parts of a greater whole or as self-contained entities. It comprises contributions by a broad spectrum of international scholars: by young researchers working on fragmentary drama as well as by well-known experts in this field. The volume explores another kind of fragmentation that seems already to have been embraced by the ancient dramatists: quotations extracted from their context and immersed in a new whole, in which they work both as cohesive unities and detachable entities. Sections of poetic works circulated in antiquity not only as parts of a whole, but also independently, i.e. as component fractions, rather like quotations on facebook today. Fragmentation can thus be seen operating on the level of dissociation, but also on the level of cohesion. The volume investigates interpretive possibilities, quotation contexts, production and reception stages of fragmentary texts, looking into the ways dramatic fragments can either increase the depth of fragmentation or strengthen the intensity of cohesion.

Reception in the Greco-Roman World

Reception in the Greco-Roman World PDF Author: Marco Fantuzzi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316518582
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 479

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Book Description
Harnesses the insights generated by 30 years of reception studies to enhance the study of classical Greek literature.

A Companion to Aeschylus

A Companion to Aeschylus PDF Author: Peter Burian
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405188049
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 596

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Book Description
A COMPANION TO AESCHYLUS A COMPANION TO AESCHYLUS In A Companion to Aeschylus, a team of eminent Aeschyleans and brilliant younger scholars delivers an insightful and original multi-authored examination—the first comprehensive one in English—of the works of the earliest surviving Greek tragedian. This book explores Aeschylean drama, and its theatrical, historical, philosophical, religious, and socio-political contexts, as well as the receptions and influence of Aeschylus from antiquity to the present day. This companion offers readers thorough examinations of Aeschylus as a product of his time, including his place in the early years of the Athenian democracy and his immediate and ongoing impact on tragedy. It also provides comprehensive explorations of all the surviving plays, including Prometheus Bound, which many scholars have concluded is not by Aeschylus. A Companion to Aeschylus is an ideal resource for students encountering the work of Aeschylus for the first time as well as more advanced scholars seeking incisive treatment of his individual works, their cultural context and their enduring significance. Written in an accessible format, with the Greek translated into English and technical terminology avoided as much as possible, the book belongs in the library of anyone looking for a fresh and authoritative account of works of continuing interest and importance to readers and theatre-goers alike.

Thinking the Greeks

Thinking the Greeks PDF Author: Bruce M. King
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317205774
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
This volume, from an international and interdisciplinary cohort of scholars, offers independent-minded essays about central Greek texts and about the relation of social theory and comparative method to the study of archaic and classical Greek literature. It is in honour of James M. Redfield, whose innovative and theoretically-informed work has been a touchstone for the contributors; it includes an Introduction that discusses Redfield’s work, as well as a complete Bibliography of Redfield’s scholarship. The volume is divided into three parts: on Homer; Plato in conversation with epic, tragedy, and comedy; and finally reception and transmission. An exploration of the dialectical relationship between literary genre and social form animates many of the essays. Drawing on work in anthropology, linguistics, sociology, art history, and philosophy, this volume offers ground-breaking perspectives on the study of Greek literature. It will be an invaluable resource to students and researchers alike.

The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama...

The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama... PDF Author: John William Donaldson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Greek drama
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description


Greek Drama and the Invention of Rhetoric

Greek Drama and the Invention of Rhetoric PDF Author: David Sansone
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118358376
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
GREEK DRAMA and the Invention of Rhetoric “An impressively erudite, elegantly crafted argument for reversing what ‘everybody knows’ about the relation of two literary genres that played before mass audiences in the Athenian city state.” Victor Bers, Yale University “Sansone’s book is first-rate and should be read by any scholar interested in the origins of Greek rhetorical theory or, for that matter, interested in Greek tragedy. That Greek tragedy contains elements properly described as rhetorical is familiar, but Sansone goes far beyond this understanding by putting Greek tragedy at the heart of a counter-narrative of those origins.” Edward Schiappa, The University of Minnesota This book challenges the standard view that formal rhetoric arose in response to the political and social environment of ancient Athens. Instead, it is argued, it was the theater of Ancient Greece, first appearing around 500 BC that prompted the development of formalized rhetoric, which evolved soon thereafter. Indeed, ancient Athenian drama was inextricably bound to the city-state’s development as a political entity, as well as to the birth of rhetoric. Ancient Greek dramatists used mythical conflicts as an opportunity for staging debates over issues of contemporary relevance, civic responsibility, war, and the role of the gods. The author shows how the essential feature of dialogue in drama created a ‘counterpoint’—an interplay between the actor making the speech and the character reacting to it on stage. This innovation spurred the development of other more sophisticated forms of argumentation, which ultimately formed the core of formalized rhetoric.