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Author: Eric Csapo
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 311098038X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 582
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Book Description
Why did ancient autocrats patronise theatre? How could ancient theatre – rightly supposed to be an artform that developed and flourished under democracy – serve their needs? Plato claimed that poets of tragic drama "drag states into tyranny and democracy". The word order is very deliberate: he goes on to say that tragic poets are honoured "especially by the tyrants, and secondly by the democracies" (Republic 568c). For more than forty years scholars have explored the political, ideological, structural and economic links between democracy and theatre in ancient Greece. By contrast, the links between autocracy and theatre are virtually ignored, despite the fact that for the first 200 years of theatre's existence more than a third of all theatre-states were autocratic. For the next 600 years, theatre flourished almost exclusively under autocratic regimes. The volume brings together experts in ancient theatre to undertake the first systematic study of the patterns of use made of the theatre by tyrants, regents, kings and emperors. Theatre and Autocracy in the Ancient World is the first comprehensive study of the historical circumstances and means by which autocrats turned a medium of mass communication into an instrument of mass control.
Author: Eric Csapo
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 311098038X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 582
Get Book Here
Book Description
Why did ancient autocrats patronise theatre? How could ancient theatre – rightly supposed to be an artform that developed and flourished under democracy – serve their needs? Plato claimed that poets of tragic drama "drag states into tyranny and democracy". The word order is very deliberate: he goes on to say that tragic poets are honoured "especially by the tyrants, and secondly by the democracies" (Republic 568c). For more than forty years scholars have explored the political, ideological, structural and economic links between democracy and theatre in ancient Greece. By contrast, the links between autocracy and theatre are virtually ignored, despite the fact that for the first 200 years of theatre's existence more than a third of all theatre-states were autocratic. For the next 600 years, theatre flourished almost exclusively under autocratic regimes. The volume brings together experts in ancient theatre to undertake the first systematic study of the patterns of use made of the theatre by tyrants, regents, kings and emperors. Theatre and Autocracy in the Ancient World is the first comprehensive study of the historical circumstances and means by which autocrats turned a medium of mass communication into an instrument of mass control.
Author: Elodie Paillard
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110716550
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 317
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Book Description
The aim of this book is to explore the definition(s) of ‘theatre’ and ‘metatheatre’ that scholars use when studying the ancient Greek world. Although in modern languages their meaning is mostly straightforward, both concepts become problematical when applied to ancient reality. In fact, ‘theatre’ as well as ‘metatheatre’ are used in many different, sometimes even contradictory, ways by modern scholars. Through a series of papers examining questions related to ancient Greek theatre and dramatic performances of various genres the use of those two terms is problematized and put into question. Must ancient Greek theatre be reduced to what was performed in proper theatre-buildings? And is everything was performed within such buildings to be considered as ‘theatre’? How does the definition of what is considered as theatre evolve from one period to the other? As for ‘metatheatre’, the discussion revolves around the interaction between reality and fiction in dramatic pieces of all genres. The various definitions of ‘metatheatre’ are also explored and explicited by the papers gathered in this volume, as well as the question of the distinction between paratheatre (understood as paratragedy/comedy) and metatheatre. Readers will be encouraged by the diversity of approaches presented in this book to re-think their own understanding and use of ‘theatre’ and ‘metatheatre’ when examining ancient Greek reality.
Author: Ewen Bowie
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107058120
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1071
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Book Description
Assembles a major scholar's work on Hellenistic and Imperial Greek poetry and the novels over four decades, illustrating its evolution.
Author: Ewen Bowie
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009353527
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1071
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Book Description
In this book one of the world's leading Hellenists brings together his many contributions over four decades to our understanding of major genres of Greek literature, above all the Greek novel, but also Attic Comedy, fifth-century historiography, and Hellenistic and Imperial Greek poetry. Many are already essential reading, such as the chapter on the figure of Lycidas in Theocritus' Idyll 7, or two chapters on the ancient readership of Greek novels. Discussions of Imperial Greek poetry published three decades ago opened up a world almost entirely neglected by scholars. Several chapters address literary and linguistic issues in Longus' novel Daphnis and Chloe, complementing the author's commentary published in 2019; two contribute to a better understanding of the enigmatic Aethiopica of Heliodorus; and many explore important questions arising from examination of the form of the Greek novel as a whole. This is the second of a planned three-volume collection.
Author: Stuart Douglas Olson
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111248615
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 219
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Book Description
Our knowledge of the ancient theatre is limited by the textual and iconographic character of the evidence available to us: we cannot watch or otherwise experience an Athenian tragedy or comedy. These essays, by a distinguished group of international scholars, bridge the gap between the surviving literary and iconographic evidence and the realities of performance on the ancient Greek stage. This ambitious goal is reached by means of a detailed examination of several case-studies: the construction of dramatic space in Sophocles’ Antigone; the significance of the use of deictic pronouns in Sophocles’ Trachiniae; the theatrical and religious dynamics of the appearance of divine figures on stage; the relationship between the victory celebrations at the end of Aristophanic comedies and their counterparts in the after-performance real world; the investigation of nude or semi-nude female characters in Aristophanes; the staging of Clouds and the opening scene of Acharnians; the meditation on the metapoetics of the use of props in 5th-century comedy; the relationship between performance context and text through a close reading of a number of Aristophanic fragments; the way the scholia vetera on Frogs imagine and use questions of staging practice; and the potential Aeschylean authorship of some of stage-direction traceable in Aeschylus’ Eumenides and Diktoulkoi.
Author: Courtney J. P. Friesen
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000910296
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 184
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Book Description
While many ancient Jewish and Christian leaders voiced opposition to Greek and Roman theater, this volume demonstrates that by the time the public performance of classical drama ceased at the end of antiquity the ideals of Jews and Christians had already been shaped by it in profound and lasting ways. Readers are invited to explore how gods and heroes famous from Greek drama animated the imaginations of ancient individuals and communities as they articulated and reinvented their religious visions for a new era. In this study, Friesen demonstrates that Greek theater’s influence is evident within Jewish and Christian intellectual formulations, narrative constructions, and practices of ritual and liturgy. Through a series of interrelated case studies, the book examines how particular plays, through texts and performances, scenes, images, and heroic personae, retained appeal for Jewish and Christian communities across antiquity. The volume takes an interdisciplinary approach involving classical, Jewish, and Christian studies, and brings together these separate avenues of scholarship to produce fresh insights and a reevaluation of theatrical drama in relation to ancient Judaism and Christianity. Acting Gods, Playing Heroes, and the Interaction between Judaism, Christianity, and Greek Drama in the Early Common Era allows students and scholars of the diverse and evolving religious landscapes of antiquity to gain fresh perspectives on the interplay between the gods and heroes—both human and divine—of Greeks and Romans, Jews and Christians as they were staged in drama and depicted in literature.
Author: Andrea Capra
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110795523
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 357
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Book Description
Intertextuality is a well-known tool in literary criticism and has been widely applied to ancient literature, with, perhaps surprisingly, classical scholarship being at the frontline in developing new theoretical approaches. By contrast, the seemingly parallel notion of intervisuality has only recently begun to appear in classical studies. In fact, intervisuality still lacks a clear definition and scope. Unlike intertextuality, which is consistently used with reference to the interrelationship between texts, the term ‘intervisuality’ is used not only to trace the interrelationship between images in the visual domain, but also to explore the complex interplay between the visual and the verbal. It is precisely this hybridity that interests us. Intervisuality has proved extremely productive in fields such as art history and visual culture studies. By bringing together a diverse team of scholars, this project aims to bring intervisuality into sharper focus and turn it into a powerful tool to explore the research field traditionally referred to as ‘Greek literature’.
Author: Lucio del Corso
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111334678
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 539
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Book Description
This book investigates some aspects of the cultural consequences of the settlement of Greeks in Egypt during the Hellenistic period, through a discussion of papyrological material, archaeological evidence, and literary sources. It is divided into three sections. The first, Space and Images, reflects on the evolutions and changes in iconography, spatial organization, and landscape. The second, Ethnic Interactions, offers new hints on the long debated topic of ethnicity, relying on a wide range of Greek and Demotic sources. The third, The Literary Experience, shifts the attention from documents to literature, examining the circulation of Greek texts and books in Egypt from different perspectives. Mixing case studies and overviews, the volume offers an updated, multifaceted representation of complex phaenomena which can be understood only going beyond disciplinary boundaries.
Author: Karen Eliot
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252032500
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
The private and performance lives of five female dancers in Western dance history
Author: Miao-ling Lin Hasenkamp
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1788318382
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
What effect is China's successful autocracy having on global politics? Is it leading to the decline of democracy, and the rise of 'strong man' government worldwide? China's success economically, this collection argues, is undermining the post-war consensus that 'liberal democracy is best'. In a multi-polar, Chinese-dominated world, Trump, Putin, Erdogan, and other global leaders no longer criticize China. In fact, they frequently invoke the usefulness of 'strong' and 'united' leadership. At the same time, China seeks to wear the mantle of a great power, and in doing so talks about human rights, climate change, freedom and economic liberalism. This collection examines how China views itself and where reality meets rhetoric on trade, international relations, diplomacy, economics and social policy. The contributors expertly dissect China's autocracy, and show how a ripple effect is altering the political-model consensus around the world.
