Ritual Poetics in the Plays of Sophocles

Ritual Poetics in the Plays of Sophocles PDF Author: Adriana Elisabet Brook
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Ritual Poetics in the Plays of Sophocles

Ritual Poetics in the Plays of Sophocles PDF Author: Adriana Elisabet Brook
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Tragic Rites

Tragic Rites PDF Author: Adriana E. Brook
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN: 0299313808
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
An analysis of the literary and dramatic function of ritual within the world of Sophocles' plays, for scholars of Greek tragedy, ancient theater, and poetics.

Ritual Irony

Ritual Irony PDF Author: Helene P. Foley
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501740636
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
Ritual Irony is a critical study of four problematic later plays of Euripides: the Iphigenia in Aulis, the Phoenissae, the Heracles, and the Bacchae. Examining Euripides' representation of sacrificial ritual against the background of late fifth-century Athens, Helene P. Foley shows that each of these plays confronts directly the difficulty of making an archaic poetic tradition relevant to a democratic society. She explores the important mediating role played by choral poetry and ritual in the plays, asserting that Euripides' sacrificial metaphors and ritual performances link an anachronistic mythic ideal with a world dominated by "chance" or an incomprehensible divinity. Foley utilizes the ideas and methodology of contemporary literary theory and symbolic anthropology, addressing issues central to the emerging dialogue between the two fields. Her conclusions have important implications for the study of Greek tragedy as a whole and for our understanding of Euripides' tragic irony, his conception of religion, and the role of his choral odes. Assuming no specialized knowledge, Ritual Irony is aimed at all readers of Euripidean tragedy. It will prove particularly valuable to students and scholars of classics, comparative literature, and symbolic anthropology.

Gendered Politics in Sophocles’ Trachiniae

Gendered Politics in Sophocles’ Trachiniae PDF Author: Gesthimani Seferiadi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350260339
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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This is the first book-length examination of the notion of gendered politics in Sophocles' Trachiniae. Making use of feminist theory and tackling the political nature of the categories of identity, culture and sexuality, Seferiadi brings the interpretation of Sophocles' play up-to-date with the most recent scholarly developments. She discusses the play in the light of its Amazonian and monstrous background and touches upon topics such as marriage and the exchange of women; reciprocity within a corroded system of gift-exchanges; and the dynamics of female silence and the 'impaired' hegemonic masculinity. Contributing to the topic of rape in the ancient world, this book focuses on sexual violence and the intertwinement of marriage and rape from the perspective of tragedy. With an Amazon being placed within the civilized arrangement of an oikos, the play negotiates the position of the female and advocates the need to expel the monstrous sexualities from the polis. Differing from previous analyses, this study is a reminder that female subjectivity was less foreclosed than is often tacitly assumed.

Mythogenesis, Interdiscursivity, Ritual

Mythogenesis, Interdiscursivity, Ritual PDF Author: Burkhard Fehr
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900467974X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
The studies included in Mythogenesis, Interdiscursivity, Ritual —offered to Professor Demetrios Yatromanolakis, a pioneering scholar— shed new light on a variety of areas: the encounters of ancient Greece with other societies and cultures in antiquity; the interplay between art (vase-painting and sculpture) and broader ideological developments/mentalities in antiquity; ritual in ancient Greek contexts; political ideologies and religion; history of scholarship, textual criticism/critical editing, and hermeneutics; the reception of myth and of archaic and classical Greek culture and philosophy in diverse discursive, mediatic, and sociocultural contexts — from impressionist painting, to modernism and the avant-garde, to Foucauldian thought.

From Agent to Spectator

From Agent to Spectator PDF Author: Emily Allen-Hornblower
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110430096
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
This book looks at witnesses to suffering and death in ancient Greek epic (Homer’s Iliad) and tragedy. Internal spectators abound in both genres, and have received due scholarly attention. The present monograph covers new ground by dealing with a specific subset of characters: those who are put in the position of spectator to (and, often, commentator on) their own deed(s). By their very nature, protagonists are confined to the role of witness to the suffering (or deaths) they have caused only for brief stretches of time — often a single scene or even just the length of a speech — but every instance is of central importance, not just to our understanding of the characters in question, but also to the articulation of fundamental themes within the poetic works under examination. As they shift from the status of agent to that of witness, these protagonists, qua spectators to the consequences of their actions, give voice to, dramatize, and enact the tragic motifs of human helplessness and mortal fallibility that lie at the core of Homeric epic and Greek tragedy and that define the human condition, in a manner that leads the audience looking on to ponder their own.

Religion in the Plays of Sophocles (Classic Reprint)

Religion in the Plays of Sophocles (Classic Reprint) PDF Author: Margaret Brown O'Connor
Publisher: Forgotten Books
ISBN: 9780267974658
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
Excerpt from Religion in the Plays of Sophocles In Our study of the religious side of the Greeks we find that there is very little direct evidence in the way of ritual formulae or prayers extant. So our main source of information lies in their art, their inscriptions, and, most of all, in their literature. Aside from its other interesting aspects, then, Greek literature, particularly the drama, should be studied for the constructive evidence it affords on contemporary religious conceptions. Now the importance of the great fifth century dramatists, as witnesses and as exponents of the religious thought of their age, can hardly be overestimated. Their public was far less limited than that to which the other writers addressed their works. Furthermore, we may safely assume that Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes dealt, to a large extent, with ideas familiar to their audience. For the fact these dramatists were always competing for a prize would naturally lead them to express ideas compatible with those prevalent among the people; that is, we may expect to find these poets usmg names and phrases adapted to the current views, so as to be quite intelligible to the masses, as well as to the classes. Caution is necessary, therefore, in ascribing primitive or far stretched views to these writers. For example, we should try to discover, not What Zeus or Ceres signified originally, but what they stood for at the time these plays were in vogue; and we should believe that, when the poet Speaks of Helios and Ares, these names represent the anthropomorphic deity and not a kind of lurid Setting Sun, - unless there is some definite reason for such an interpretation, either in the particular context or in the popular contemporary belief. In brief, it is the acquired meaning, rather than the primitive superstition underlying ritual words and practice, that helps us most to understand Greek religion and Greek thought. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Towards a Ritual Poetics

Towards a Ritual Poetics PDF Author: Dimitrios Yatromanolakis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Anthropology
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Objects as Actors

Objects as Actors PDF Author: Melissa Mueller
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022631300X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
Objects as Actors charts a new approach to Greek tragedy based on an obvious, yet often overlooked, fact: Greek tragedy was meant to be performed. As plays, the works were incomplete without physical items—theatrical props. In this book, Melissa Mueller ingeniously demonstrates the importance of objects in the staging and reception of Athenian tragedy. As Mueller shows, props such as weapons, textiles, and even letters were often fully integrated into a play’s action. They could provoke surprising plot turns, elicit bold viewer reactions, and provide some of tragedy’s most thrilling moments. Whether the sword of Sophocles’s Ajax, the tapestry in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, or the tablet of Euripides’s Hippolytus, props demanded attention as a means of uniting—or disrupting—time, space, and genre. Insightful and original, Objects as Actors offers a fresh perspective on the central tragic texts—and encourages us to rethink ancient theater as a whole.

Selected Poems

Selected Poems PDF Author: Sophocles
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691190410
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
Sophocles' tragedies--from Antigone to Oedipus Tyrannus--are filled with highly wrought, vivid, and emotionally powerful poetry. Yet most translations sacrifice the poetry to convey only the sense of the lines as dramatic speech. This is the first book in English to present Sophocles exclusively as a poet, and the only volume to reveal the full force and beauty of his verse. With a fresh and consistent attention to structure, language, and rhythm across Sophocles' writings, Reginald Gibbons has translated a selection of odes from Sophocles' surviving plays as well as fragments from his lost works. What emerges is a genuinely new sense of a Sophocles who was as much poet as dramatist. Bringing the Greek poet and his world surprisingly close to us, these translations also restore a sense of the long continuity of poetry. Complete with an introduction, this edition reveals Sophocles' poetic brilliance as never before.