Rites of Passage in Ancient Greece

Rites of Passage in Ancient Greece PDF Author: Mark William Padilla
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
ISBN: 9780838754184
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
This volume reflects on liminality as it relates to initiatory themes in Greek literature and on literary works, especially tragedy, that represent heroes and heroines undergoing rites of passage. Featured works include Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, Euripides' Ion and Iphigenia in Tauris, and Sophocles' Antigone and Women of Trachis.

Rites of Passage in Ancient Greece

Rites of Passage in Ancient Greece PDF Author: Mark William Padilla
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
ISBN: 9780838754184
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume reflects on liminality as it relates to initiatory themes in Greek literature and on literary works, especially tragedy, that represent heroes and heroines undergoing rites of passage. Featured works include Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, Euripides' Ion and Iphigenia in Tauris, and Sophocles' Antigone and Women of Trachis.

Witnesses and Evidence in Ancient Greek Literature

Witnesses and Evidence in Ancient Greek Literature PDF Author: Andreas Markantonatos
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110751976
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
The fact that aspects of witnesses and evidence put them in the centre of the institutional and cultural (e.g. religious, literary) construction of ancient societies indicates that it is important to keep offering nuanced approaches to the topic of this volume. To advance knowledge of the processes of presenting witnesses and gathering, or constructing, evidence is, in fact, to better and more fully understand the ways in which deliberative Athenian democracy functions, what the core elements of political life and civic identity are, and how they relate to the system of using logos to make decisions. For, witnesses and evidence were important prerequisites of getting the Athenian citizenship and exerting the civic/political identity as a member of the community. It is important, therefore, all the matters that relate to information-gathering and decision-making to be examined anew. Emphasis can be placed on a variety of genres to allow scholars recreate the fullest and clearest possible image about the witnessing and evidencing in antiquity. Chapters in this volume include considerations of social, political, literary, and moral theory, alongside studies of the impact of information-gathering and decision-making in oratory and drama, with a steady focus on the application of key ideas and values in social and political justice to issues of pressing ethical concern.

Groaning Tears

Groaning Tears PDF Author: E.P. Garrison
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004329528
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Groaning Tears examines suicide in Greek tragedy in light of the fifth-century ethical climate. No full-scale work has previously been devoted to this pervasive topic. The particular focus of identifying suicide as a response to the expectations of popular ethics and social demands makes it useful for scholars and students of drama, ethics and sociology. Chapter one establishes the ethical background of audiences in the fifth century while chapters two through five examine suicide in the context of whole plays based on motivational distinctions: to avoid disgrace and preserve an honorable reputation; to avoid further suffering; to end grief; and to sacrifice oneself for a greater good. The final chapter considers a drama of lighter tone that presents suicide in all of its ethical and theatrical aspects.

From Homer to Tragedy

From Homer to Tragedy PDF Author: Richard Garner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317694716
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
The role of poetic allusion in classical Greek poetry, to Homer especially, has often largely been neglected or even almost totally ignored. This book, first published in 1990, clarifies the place of Homer in Greek education, as well as adding to the interpretation of many important tragedies. Focussing on the dramatic masterpieces of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and how these writers imitated and alluded to other poetry, the author reveals the immense dependence on Homer which can be seen throughout the corpus of Attic tragedy. It is argued that the practice of the art of allusion indicates certain conventions in fifth-century Athenian education, and perhaps also suggests something in the way of public, political, and historical self-awareness. Invaluable to anyone interested in the reception of Homer in the classical age, and to students of comparative literature and linguistic theory.

Greek Tragedy

Greek Tragedy PDF Author: Thomas Gould
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521211123
Category : Classical literature
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
The essays in volume 25 of Yale Classical Studies were specially commissioned by the editors to provide a cross-section of contemporary approaches to the interpretation of Greek tragedy. All three Attic dramatists receive attention, some essays being studies of a play as a whole, others concentrating on some particular passage or theme. Greek passages are translated so this volume should be of use and interest not only to classical specialists but also to students in any literary field.

Translations of Greek Tragedy in the Work of Ezra Pound

Translations of Greek Tragedy in the Work of Ezra Pound PDF Author: Peter Liebregts
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350084166
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Turning the tables on the misconception that Ezra Pound knew little Greek, this volume looks at his work translating Greek tragedy and considers how influential this was for his later writing. Pound's work as a translator has had an enormous impact on the theory and practice of translation, and continues to be a source of heated debate. While scholars have assessed his translations from Chinese, Latin, and even Provençal, his work on Greek tragedy remains understudied. Pound's versions of Greek tragedy (of Aeschylus' Agamemnon, and of Sophocles' Elektra and Women of Trachis) have received scant attention, as it has been commonly assumed that Pound knew little of the language. Liebregts shows that the poet's knowledge of Greek was much more comprehensive than is generally assumed, and that his renderings were based on a careful reading of the source texts. He identifies the works Pound used as the basis for his translations, and contextualises his versions with regard to his biography and output, particularly The Cantos. A wealth of understudied source material is analysed, such as Pound's personal annotations in his Loeb edition of Sophocles, his unpublished correspondence with classical scholars such as F. R. Earp and Rudd Fleming, as well as manuscript versions and other as-yet-unpublished drafts and texts which illuminate his working methodology.

The Philosophical Stage

The Philosophical Stage PDF Author: Joshua Billings
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691225079
Category : Greek drama
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
A bold new reconception of ancient Greek drama as a mode of philosophical thinking The Philosophical Stage offers an innovative approach to ancient Greek literature and thought that places drama at the heart of intellectual history. Drawing on evidence from tragedy and comedy, Joshua Billings shines new light on the development of early Greek philosophy, arguing that drama is our best source for understanding the intellectual culture of classical Athens. In this incisive book, Billings recasts classical Greek intellectual history as a conversation across discourses and demonstrates the significance of dramatic reflections on widely shared theoretical questions. He argues that neither "literature" nor "philosophy" was a defined category in the fifth century BCE, and develops a method of reading dramatic form as a structured investigation of issues at the heart of the emerging discipline of philosophy. A breathtaking work of intellectual history by one of today's most original classical scholars, The Philosophical Stage presents a novel approach to ancient drama and sets a path for a renewed understanding of early Greek thought.

Intimate Commerce

Intimate Commerce PDF Author: Victoria Wohl
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292774052
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
Exchanges of women between men occur regularly in Greek tragedy—and almost always with catastrophic results. Instead of cementing bonds between men, such exchanges rend them. They allow women, who should be silent objects, to become monstrous subjects, while men often end up as lifeless corpses. But why do the tragedies always represent the transferal of women as disastrous? Victoria Wohl offers an illuminating analysis of the exchange of women in Sophocles' Trachiniae, Aeschylus' Agamemnon, and Euripides' Alcestis. She shows how the attempts of women in these plays to become active subjects rather than passive objects of exchange inevitably fail. While these failures seem to validate male hegemony, the women's actions, however futile, blur the distinction between male subject and female object, calling into question the very nature of the tragic self. What the tragedies thus present, Wohl asserts, is not only an affirmation of Athens' reigning ideologies (including its gender hierarchy) but also the possibility of resistance to them and the imagination of alternatives.

Transforming Warriors

Transforming Warriors PDF Author: Peter Haldén
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317244869
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
This volume offers an interdisciplinary study of how different cultures have sought to transform individuals into warriors. War changes people, however a less explored question is how different societies want people to change as they are turned into warriors. When societies go to war they recognize that a boundary is being crossed. The participants are expected to do things that are otherwise prohibited, or at least governed by different rules. This edited volume analyses how different cultures have conceptualized the transformations of an individual passing from a peacetime to a wartime existence to become an active warrior. Despite their differences, all societies grapple with the same question: how much of the individual’s peace-self should be and can be retained in the state of war? The book explores cases such as the Nordic berserkers, the Japanese samurai, and European knights, as well as modern soldiers in Germany, Liberia, and Sweden. It shows that archaic and modern societies are more similar than we usually think: both kinds of societies use myths, symbols, and rituals to create warriors. Thus, this volume seeks to redefine theories of modernization and secularization. It shows that military organizations need to take myths, symbols, and rituals seriously in order to create effective units. This book will be of much interest to students of military studies, war studies, sociology, religion, and international relations in general.

Physical Pain and Justice

Physical Pain and Justice PDF Author: Gary Rosenshield
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498568467
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
It has been said that all great literature is about suffering. But before the twentieth century, physical pain, one of the most primal forms of human suffering, has rarely been represented on the stage and in fiction. But when it is foregrounded in works of literature, it is not only the most dramatic way of representing human suffering, it is also used to explore, in the most intense form, existential questions regarding the meaning of human existence and the justice of the universe. Perhaps it is not entirely coincidental, then, that imaginative works about physical pain, though few in number, figure prominently among the masterpieces of the western literary tradition. The best were written during two of the west's most astonishing periods of literary creativity, fifth-century-BC Athens and nineteenth-century Russia, and by the most prominent artists of their time: Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus, The Women of Trachis and Philoctetes by Sophocles; Notes from the House of the Dead by Dostoevsky; and The Death of Ivan Ilyich and War and Peace by Tolstoy. In all these works, physical pain is always portrayed as a dynamic process that includes the view point of the victim, the perpetrator (much of the physical pain is in the form of torture), and the onlooker or witness. In the Greek works, physical pain is the main vehicle for exposing the injustice of the gods and the world order, and in the Russian works for questioning the moral legitimacy of the state. In Prometheus Bound, Zeus delegitimizes his rule by torturing Prometheus for his service to mankind. In The Women of Trachis, the gods look indifferently upon the excruciating suffering of Hercules, the greatest Greek hero. In Philoctetes, the gods cruelly exploit the terrible pain of the hero as a means of winning victory at Troy for their Greek wards. In the Russian works, the mechanisms for inflicting the maximum amount of physical pain during corporal punishment undermine the moral foundations of the state and argue for its dissolution. Though the Greek and Russian works are separated by genre (plays vs novels) and by time (over two thousand years), they are united by the way they employ pain to investigate the justice—or rather injustice—of the world order.