Dramatic Suspense in Euripides' and Seneca's Medea

Dramatic Suspense in Euripides' and Seneca's Medea PDF Author: Stephen Ohlander
Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Comparative literature
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
This study is an investigation of suspense in two highly influential Medea plays, presents a complete re-reading of these plays, and offers a comparative study of the dramas, particularly with regard to their capacity to evoke suspense in the authors' audience. The principal focus, however, is Euripides' «Medea» in which the playwright manipulates audience reaction by his original handling of the source material - in all probability his audience would have expected the Korinthians to kill her children, or, at most, were unsure who would do it or why.

Dramatic Suspense in Euripides' and Seneca's Medea

Dramatic Suspense in Euripides' and Seneca's Medea PDF Author: Stephen Ohlander
Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Comparative literature
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Get Book Here

Book Description
This study is an investigation of suspense in two highly influential Medea plays, presents a complete re-reading of these plays, and offers a comparative study of the dramas, particularly with regard to their capacity to evoke suspense in the authors' audience. The principal focus, however, is Euripides' «Medea» in which the playwright manipulates audience reaction by his original handling of the source material - in all probability his audience would have expected the Korinthians to kill her children, or, at most, were unsure who would do it or why.

Seneca: Medea

Seneca: Medea PDF Author: Helen Slaney
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 147425862X
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Composed in early imperial Rome by Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Stoic philosopher and tutor to the emperor Nero, the tragedy Medea is dominated by the superhuman energy of its protagonist: diva, killer, enchantress, force of nature. Seneca's treatment of the myth covers an episode identical to that of Euripides' Greek version, enabling instructive comparisons to be drawn. Seneca's Medea has challenged and fascinated theatre-makers across cultures and centuries and should be regarded as integral to the classical heritage of European theatre. This companion volume sketches the essentials of Seneca's play and at the same time situates it within an interpretive tradition. It also uses Medea to illustrate key features of Senecan dramaturgy, the way in which language functions as a mode of theatrical representation and the way in which individuals are embedded in their surrounding conditions, resonating dissonantly with the principles of Roman Stoicism. By interweaving some of the play's subsequent receptions, theatrical and textual, into critical analysis of Medea as dramatic poetry, this companion volume will encourage the student to come to grips immediately with the ancient text's inherent multiplicity. In this way, reception theory informs not only the content of the volume but also, fundamentally, the way in which it is presented.

Seneca: Medea

Seneca: Medea PDF Author: Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199602085
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 633

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Book Description
A full-scale critical edition of Seneca's Medea which offers a substantial introduction, a new Latin text, an English verse translation, and a detailed commentary. Boyle locates the play firmly in its contemporary, historical, and theatrical context and in the ensuing literary and dramatic tradition.

The Facts on File Companion to Classical Drama

The Facts on File Companion to Classical Drama PDF Author: John E. Thorburn
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
ISBN: 0816074984
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 689

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Book Description
Surveys important Greek and Roman authors, plays, characters, genres, historical figures and more.

Suspense in Ancient Greek Literature

Suspense in Ancient Greek Literature PDF Author: Ioannis M. Konstantakos
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 311071552X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
The use of suspense in ancient literature attracts increasing attention in modern scholarship, but hitherto there has been no comprehensive work analysing the techniques of suspense through the various genres of the Classical literary canon. This volume aspires to fill such a gap, exploring the phenomenon of suspense in the earliest narrative writings of the western world, the literature of the ancient Greeks. The individual chapters focus on a wide range of poetic and prose genres (epic, drama, historiography, oratory, novel, and works of literary criticism) and examine the means by which ancient authors elicited emotions of tense expectation and fearful anticipation for the outcome of the story, the development of the plot, or the characters' fate. A variety of theoretical tools, from narratology and performance studies to psychological and cognitive approaches, are exploited to study the operation of suspense in the works under discussion. Suspenseful effects are analysed in a double perspective, both in terms of the artifices employed by authors and with regard to the responses and experiences of the audience. The volume will be useful to classical scholars, narratologists, and literary historians and theorists.

A Companion to Euripides

A Companion to Euripides PDF Author: Laura K. McClure
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119257506
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 642

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Book Description
A COMPANION TO EURIPIDES A COMPANION TO EURIPIDES Euripides has enjoyed a resurgence of interest as a result of many recent important publications, attesting to the poet’s enduring relevance to the modern world. A Companion to Euripides is the product of this contemporary work, with many essays drawing on the latest texts, commentaries, and scholarship on the man and his oeuvre. Divided into seven sections, the companion begins with a general discussion of Euripidean drama. The following sections contain essays on Euripidean biography and the manuscript tradition, and individual essays on each play, organized in chronological order. Chapters offer summaries of important scholarship and methodologies, synopses of individual plays and the myths from which they borrow their plots, and conclude with suggestions for additional reading. The final two sections deal with topics central to Euripidean scholarship, such as religion, myth, and gender, and the reception of Euripides from the 4th century BCE to the modern world. A Companion to Euripides brings together a variety of leading Euripides scholars from a wide range of perspectives. As a result, specific issues and themes emerge across the chapters as central to our understanding of the poet and his meaning for our time. Contributions are original and provocative interpretations of Euripides’ plays, which forge important paths of inquiry for future scholarship.

Discourses of Anger in the Early Modern Period

Discourses of Anger in the Early Modern Period PDF Author: Karl A.E. Enenkel
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900430083X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 510

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Book Description
Early modern anger is informed by fundamental paradoxes: qualified as a sin since the Middle Ages, it was still attributed a valuable function in the service of restoring social order; at the same time, the fight against one’s own anger was perceived as exceedingly difficult. And while it was seen as essential for the defence of an individual’s social position, it was at the same time considered a self-destructive force. The contributions in this volume converge in the aim of mapping out the discursive networks in which anger featured and how they all generated their own version, assessment, and semantics of anger. These discourses include philosophy and theology, poetry, medicine, law, political theory, and art. Contributors: David M. Barbee, Maria Berbara, Tamás Demeter, Jan-Frans van Dijkhuizen, Betül Dilmac, Karl Enenkel, Tilman Haug, Michael Krewet, Johannes F. Lehmann, John Nassichuk, Jan Papy, Christian Peters, Bernd Roling, Paolo Santangelo, Barbara Sasse Tateo, Anita Traninger, Jakob Willis, and Zeynep Yelçe.

Children in Greek Tragedy

Children in Greek Tragedy PDF Author: Emma M. Griffiths
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192560573
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Astyanax is thrown from the walls of Troy; Medeia kills her children as an act of vengeance against her husband; Aias reflects with sorrow on his son's inheritance, yet kills himself and leaves Eurysakes vulnerable to his enemies. The pathos created by threats to children is a notable feature of Greek tragedy, but does not in itself explain the broad range of situations in which the ancient playwrights chose to employ such threats. Rather than casting children in tragedy as simple figures of pathos, this volume proposes a new paradigm to understand their roles, emphasizing their dangerous potential as the future adults of myth. Although they are largely silent, passive figures on stage, children exert a dramatic force that transcends their limited physical presence, and are in fact theatrically complex creations who pose a danger to the major characters. Their multiple projected lives create dramatic palimpsests which are paradoxically more significant than their immediate emotional effects: children are never killed because of their immediate weakness, but because of their potential strength. This re-evaluation of the significance of child characters in Greek tragedy draws on a fresh examination of the evidence for child actors in fifth-century Athens, which concludes that the physical presence of children was a significant factor in their presentation. However, child roles can only be fully appreciated as theatrical phenomena, utilizing the inherent ambiguities of drama: as such, case studies of particular plays and playwrights are underpinned by detailed analysis of staging considerations, opening up new avenues for interpretation and challenging traditional models of children in tragedy.

Female Acts in Greek Tragedy

Female Acts in Greek Tragedy PDF Author: Helene P. Foley
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691094922
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
Although classical Athenian ideology did not permit women to exercise legal, economic or social autonomy, the tragedies often represent them as influential social and moral forces. This work studies this apparent contradiction, showing how Greek tragedy uses gender relations to explore issues.

Granddaughter of the Sun

Granddaughter of the Sun PDF Author: Cecelia Eaton Luschnig
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047420144
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
This book attempts to view Medea in a positive light: looking not just at her failed relationships, but also at her successful ones and commenting on her intellect rather than just her clever manipulations of men. It tries to see her (or her author, who brings Medea home to Athens), as something of a political hero. The work considers the multiple facets of Medea, as the ideal wife, as a loving mother, as a woman among women, and how Medea becomes the author of her own story. The author asks what Medea is in the last scene: a demon or one of us; how she relates to the city-state; why this heroic drama is presented through the voices of two slaves.