Die Unfähigkeit, sich zu erkennen: Sophokles' Tragödien

Die Unfähigkeit, sich zu erkennen: Sophokles' Tragödien PDF Author: Eckard Lefèvre
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004350950
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
This book interprets all seven Sophoclean tragedies (5th century B.C.) as a whole, focussing on the aspect of individuals being guilty of not reaching proper conclusions about their own selves and their situation, although they possess the means and ability to do so. Chapter I offers exact definitions of the concepts employed in analyzing the tragedies. Chapters II-VIII each contain a detailed interpretation of one of Sophocles’ seven tragedies. Chapter IX ('Tableau’) presents the dramatic works within the context of Greek history of thought and politics of their time, while Chapter X sheds some light on how Sophoclean concepts were continued in the comedies of Menander. This study should not only prove helpful to scholars in the field of literary studies, but also to historians, philosophers and all those interested in history of thought and cultural history, since it examines in a fundamental way the thought of one of the most important poets of ancient Europe.

Die Unfähigkeit, sich zu erkennen: Sophokles' Tragödien

Die Unfähigkeit, sich zu erkennen: Sophokles' Tragödien PDF Author: Eckard Lefèvre
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004350950
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
This book interprets all seven Sophoclean tragedies (5th century B.C.) as a whole, focussing on the aspect of individuals being guilty of not reaching proper conclusions about their own selves and their situation, although they possess the means and ability to do so. Chapter I offers exact definitions of the concepts employed in analyzing the tragedies. Chapters II-VIII each contain a detailed interpretation of one of Sophocles’ seven tragedies. Chapter IX ('Tableau’) presents the dramatic works within the context of Greek history of thought and politics of their time, while Chapter X sheds some light on how Sophoclean concepts were continued in the comedies of Menander. This study should not only prove helpful to scholars in the field of literary studies, but also to historians, philosophers and all those interested in history of thought and cultural history, since it examines in a fundamental way the thought of one of the most important poets of ancient Europe.

Oedipus and the Sphinx

Oedipus and the Sphinx PDF Author: Almut-Barbara Renger
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022604811X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 133

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Book Description
When Oedipus met the Sphinx on the road to Thebes, he did more than answer a riddle—he spawned a myth that, told and retold, would become one of Western culture’s central narratives about self-understanding. Identifying the story as a threshold myth—in which the hero crosses over into an unknown and dangerous realm where rules and limits are not known—Oedipus and the Sphinx offers a fresh account of this mythic encounter and how it deals with the concepts of liminality and otherness. Almut-Barbara Renger assesses the story’s meanings and functions in classical antiquity—from its presence in ancient vase painting to its absence in Sophocles’s tragedy—before arriving at two of its major reworkings in European modernity: the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud and the poetics of Jean Cocteau. Through her readings, she highlights the ambiguous status of the Sphinx and reveals Oedipus himself to be a liminal creature, providing key insights into Sophocles’s portrayal and establishing a theoretical framework that organizes evaluations of the myth’s reception in the twentieth century. Revealing the narrative of Oedipus and the Sphinx to be the very paradigm of a key transition experienced by all of humankind, Renger situates myth between the competing claims of science and art in an engagement that has important implications for current debates in literary studies, psychoanalytic theory, cultural history, and aesthetics.

A Companion to Sophocles

A Companion to Sophocles PDF Author: Kirk Ormand
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119025532
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 624

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Book Description
A Companion to Sophocles presents the first comprehensive collection of essays in decades to address all aspects of the life, works, and critical reception of Sophocles. First collection of its kind to provide introductory essays to the fragments of his lost plays and to the remaining fragments of one satyr-play, the Ichneutae, in addition to each of his extant tragedies Features new essays on Sophoclean drama that go well beyond the current state of scholarship on Sophocles Presents readings that historicize Sophocles in relation to the social, cultural, and intellectual world of fifth century Athens Seeks to place later interpretations and adaptations of Sophocles in their historical context Includes essays dedicated to issues of gender and sexuality; significant moments in the history of interpreting Sophocles; and reception of Sophocles by both ancient and modern playwrights

The Greeks and Their Past

The Greeks and Their Past PDF Author: Jonas Grethlein
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521110777
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
Investigates literary memory in the fifth century BCE, covering poetry and oratory as well as the first Greek historians.

Tragedy and Redress in Western Literature

Tragedy and Redress in Western Literature PDF Author: Richard Gaskin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351017012
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
This book offers a unique interpretation of tragic literature in the Western tradition, deploying the method and style of Analytic philosophy. Richard Gaskin argues that tragic literature seeks to offer moral and linguistic redress (compensation) for suffering. Moral redress involves the balancing of a protagonist’s suffering with guilt (and vice versa): Gaskin contends that, to a much greater extent than has been recognized by recent critics, traditional tragedy represents suffering as incurred by avoidable and culpable mistakes of a cognitive nature. Moral redress operates in the first instance at the level of the individual agent. Linguistic redress, by contrast, operates at a higher level of generality, namely at the level of the community: its fundamental motor is the sheer expressibility of suffering in words. Against many writers on tragedy, Gaskin argues that language is competent to express pain and suffering, and that tragic literature has that expression as one its principal purposes. The definition of tragic literature in this book is expanded to include more than stage drama: the treatment stretches from the Classical and Medieval periods through to the early twentieth century. There is a special focus on Sophocles, but Gaskin takes account of most other major tragic authors in the European tradition, including Homer, Aeschylus, Euripides, Virgil, Seneca, Chaucer, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Corneille, Racine, Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, Büchner, Ibsen, Hardy, Kafka, and Mann; lesser-known areas, such as Renaissance neo-Latin tragedy, are also covered. Among theorists of tragedy, Gaskin concentrates on Aristotle and Bradley; but the contributions of numerous contemporary commentators are also assessed. Tragedy and Redress in Western Literature: A Philosophical Perspective offers a new and genuinely interdisciplinary perspective on tragedy that will be of considerable interest both to philosophers of literature and to literary critics.

Sophocles and Alcibiades

Sophocles and Alcibiades PDF Author: Michael Vickers
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317492919
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
Literary historians have long held the view that the plays of the Greek dramatist, Sophocles deal purely with archetypes of the heroic past and that any resemblance to contemporary events or individuals is purely coincidental. In this book, Michael Vickers challenges this view and argues that Sophocles makes regular and extensive allusion to Athenian politics in his plays, especially to Alcibiades, one of the most controversial Athenian politicians of his day.Vickers shows that Sophocles was no closeted intellectual but a man deeply involved in politics and he reminds us that Athenian politics was intensely personal. He argues cogently that classical writers employed hidden meanings and that consciously or sub-consciously, Sophocles was projecting onto his plays hints of contemporary events or incidents, mostly of a political nature, hoping that his audience's passion for politics would enhance the popularity of his plays. Vickers strengthens his case about Sophocles by discussing other authors - Thucydides, Plato and Euripides - in whom he also demonstrates a body of allusions to Alcibiades and others.

Oedipus at Colonus

Oedipus at Colonus PDF Author: Andreas Markantonatos
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110920484
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
This book aims to offer a contemporary literary interpretation of the play, including a readable discussion of its underlying historical, religious, moral, social, and mythical issues. Also, it discusses the most recent interpretative scholarship on the play, the main intertextual affiliations with earlier Thebes-related tragedies, especially focusing on Sophocles’ Antigone and Oedipus Tyrannus, and the literature and performance reception of the play; it contains an up-to-date bibliography and detailed indices. The book won the Academy of Athens Great Award for the Best Monograph in Classical Philology for 2008.

Pollution and Crisis in Greek Tragedy

Pollution and Crisis in Greek Tragedy PDF Author: Fabian Meinel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316240169
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
Pollution is ubiquitous in Greek tragedy: matricidal Orestes seeks purification at Apollo's shrine in Delphi; carrion from Polyneices' unburied corpse fills the altars of Thebes; delirious Phaedra suffers from a 'pollution of the mind'. This book undertakes the first detailed analysis of the important role which pollution and its counterparts - purity and purification - play in tragedy. It argues that pollution is central in the negotiation of tragic crises, fulfilling a diverse array of functions by virtue of its qualities and associations, from making sense of adversity to configuring civic identity in the encounter of self and other. While primarily a literary study providing close readings of several key plays, the book also provides important new perspectives on pollution. It will appeal to a broad range of scholars and students not only in classics and literary studies, but also in the study of religions and anthropology.

Sophocles

Sophocles PDF Author: Jacques Jouanna
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069124040X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 892

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Book Description
Here, for the first time in English, is celebrated French classicist Jacques Jouanna's magisterial account of the life and work of Sophocles. Exhaustive and authoritative, this acclaimed book combines biography and detailed studies of Sophocles' plays, all set in the rich context of classical Greek tragedy and the political, social, religious, and cultural world of Athens's greatest age, the fifth century. Sophocles was the commanding figure of his day. The author of Oedipus Rex and Antigone, he was not only the leading dramatist but also a distinguished politician, military commander, and religious figure. And yet the evidence about his life has, until now, been fragmentary. Reconstructing a lost literary world, Jouanna has finally assembled all the available information, culled from inscriptions, archaeological evidence, and later sources. He also offers a huge range of new interpretations, from his emphasis on the significance of Sophocles' political and military offices (previously often seen as honorary) to his analysis of Sophocles' plays in the mythic and literary context of fifth-century drama. Written for scholars, students, and general readers, this book will interest anyone who wants to know more about Greek drama in general and Sophocles in particular. With an extensive bibliography and useful summaries not only of Sophocles' extant plays but also, uniquely, of the fragments of plays that have been partially lost, it will be a standard reference in classical studies for years to come.

Death on the Nile

Death on the Nile PDF Author: Walter Scheidel
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004350942
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
A pioneering comparative and multidisciplinary study of the interaction between local disease environments and demographic structure, this book breaks new ground in reconstructing the population history of Egypt during the Roman period and beyond. Drawing on a wide range of sources from ancient census data and funerary commemorations to modern medical accounts, statistics and demographic models, the author explores the nature of premodern disease patterns, challenges existing assumptions about ancient age structure, and develops a new methodology for the assessment of Egyptian poplation size. Contextualising the study of Roman Egypt within the broader framework of premodern demography, ecology and medical history, this is the first attempt to interpret and explain demographic conditions in antiquity in terms of the underlying causes of disease and death.