Poet, Public, and Performance in Ancient Greece

Poet, Public, and Performance in Ancient Greece PDF Author: Lowell Edmunds
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780801867354
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Poetry in archaic and classical Greece was a practical art that arose from specific social or political circumstances. The interpretation of a poem or dramatic work must therefore be viewed in the context of its performance. In Poetry, Public, and Performance in Ancient Greece, Lowell Edmunds and Robert W. Wallace bring together a distinguished group of contributors to reconstruct the performance context of a wide array of works, including epic, tragedy, lyric, elegy, and proverb. Analyzing the passage in the Odyssey in which a collective delirium comes over the suitors, Giulio Guidorizzi reveals how the poet describes a scene that lies outside the narrative themes and diction of epic. Antonio Aloni offers a reading of Simonides' elegy for the Greeks who fell at Plataea. Lowell Edmunds interprets the so-called seal of Theognis as lying on a borderline between the performed and the textual. Taking up proverbs, maxims, and apothegms, Joseph Russo examines "the performance of wisdom." Charles Segal focuses on the unusual role played by the chorus in Euripides' Bacchae. Reading the plot of Euripides' Ion, Thomas Cole concludes that the task of constructing the meaning of the play is to some extent delegated to the public. Robert Wallace describes the "performance" of the Athenian audience and provides a catalog of good and bad behavior: whistling, shouting, and throwing objects of every kind. Finally, Maria Grazia Bonanno stresses the importance of performance in lyric poetry.

Poet, Public, and Performance in Ancient Greece

Poet, Public, and Performance in Ancient Greece PDF Author: Lowell Edmunds
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780801867354
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Get Book Here

Book Description
Poetry in archaic and classical Greece was a practical art that arose from specific social or political circumstances. The interpretation of a poem or dramatic work must therefore be viewed in the context of its performance. In Poetry, Public, and Performance in Ancient Greece, Lowell Edmunds and Robert W. Wallace bring together a distinguished group of contributors to reconstruct the performance context of a wide array of works, including epic, tragedy, lyric, elegy, and proverb. Analyzing the passage in the Odyssey in which a collective delirium comes over the suitors, Giulio Guidorizzi reveals how the poet describes a scene that lies outside the narrative themes and diction of epic. Antonio Aloni offers a reading of Simonides' elegy for the Greeks who fell at Plataea. Lowell Edmunds interprets the so-called seal of Theognis as lying on a borderline between the performed and the textual. Taking up proverbs, maxims, and apothegms, Joseph Russo examines "the performance of wisdom." Charles Segal focuses on the unusual role played by the chorus in Euripides' Bacchae. Reading the plot of Euripides' Ion, Thomas Cole concludes that the task of constructing the meaning of the play is to some extent delegated to the public. Robert Wallace describes the "performance" of the Athenian audience and provides a catalog of good and bad behavior: whistling, shouting, and throwing objects of every kind. Finally, Maria Grazia Bonanno stresses the importance of performance in lyric poetry.

Poetry and Its Public in Ancient Greece

Poetry and Its Public in Ancient Greece PDF Author: Bruno Gentili
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
Brilliantly applying insights and methodologies from anthropology, literary theory, and the social sciences to the historical study of archaic lyric, Poetry and Its Public in Ancient Greece, winner of Italy's prestigious Viareggio Prize, develops a new Picture of the literary history of Greece. An essentially practical art, ancient Greek poetry was clocely linked to the realities of social and political life and to the actual behavior of individuals within a community. Its mythological content was didactic and pedagogical. But Greek poetry differs radically from modern forms in its mode of communication: it was designed not for reading but for performance, with musical accompaniment, before an audience. In analyzing the formal and social aspects of this performance context, Gentili illuminates such topics as oral composition and improvisation, oral transmission and memory, the connections betweek poetry and music, the changing socioeconomic situation of the artist, and the relations among poets, patrons, and the public.

Performance and Gender in Ancient Greece

Performance and Gender in Ancient Greece PDF Author: Eva Stehle
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400864291
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
"Like love, Greek poetry was not for hereafter," writes Eva Stehle, "but shared in the present mirth and laughter of festival, ceremony, and party." Describing how men and women, young and adult, sang or recited in public settings, Stehle treats poetry as an occasion for the performer's self-presentation. She discusses a wide range of pre-Hellenistic poetry, including Sappho's, compares how men and women speak about themselves, and constructs an innovative approach to performance that illuminates gender ideology. After considering the audience and the function of different modes of performance--community, bardic, and closed groups--Stehle explores this poetry as gendered speech, which interacts with performers' bodily presence to create social identities for the speakers. Texts for female choral performers reveal how women in public spoke in order to disavow the power of their speech and their sexual power. Male performers, however, could manipulate gender as an ideological system: they sometimes claimed female identity in addition to male, associated themselves with triumph over a defeated (mythical) female figure, or asserted their disconnection from women, thereby creating idealized social identities for themselves. A final chapter concentrates on the written poetry of Sappho, which borrows the communicative strategy of writing in order to create a fictional speaker distinct from the singer, a "Sappho" whom others could re-create in imagination. Originally published in 1997. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Anthropology of Performance

The Anthropology of Performance PDF Author: Frank J. Korom
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118493095
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 505

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Book Description
The Anthropology of Performance is an invaluable guide to this exciting and growing area. This cutting-edge volume on the major advancements in performance studies presents the theories, methods, and practices of performance in cultures around the globe. Leading anthropologists describe the range of human expression through performance and explore its role in constructing identity and community, as well as broader processes such as globalization and transnationalism. Introduces new and advanced students to the task of studying and interpreting complex social, cultural, and political events from a performance perspective Presents performance as a convergent field of inquiry that bridges the humanities and social sciences, with a distinctive cross-cultural perspective in anthropology Demonstrates the range of human expression and meaning through performance in related fields of religious & ritual studies, folkloristics, theatre, language arts, and art & dance Explores the role of performance in constructing identity, community, and the broader processes of globalization and transnationalism Includes fascinating global case studies on a diverse range of phenomena Contributions from leading scholars examine verbal genres, ritual and drama, public spectacle, tourism, and the performances embedded in everyday selves, communities and nations

Wandering Poets in Ancient Greek Culture

Wandering Poets in Ancient Greek Culture PDF Author: Richard Hunter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521898781
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
Explores the phenomenon of wandering poets, setting them within the wider context of ancient networks of exchange, patronage and affiliation.

Public Spending and Democracy in Classical Athens

Public Spending and Democracy in Classical Athens PDF Author: David M. Pritchard
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 029277205X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
In his On the Glory of Athens, Plutarch complained that the Athenian people spent more on the production of dramatic festivals and “the misfortunes of Medeas and Electras than they did on maintaining their empire and fighting for their liberty against the Persians.” This view of the Athenians’ misplaced priorities became orthodoxy with the publication of August Böckh’s 1817 book Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener [The Public Economy of Athens], which criticized the classical Athenian dēmos for spending more on festivals than on wars and for levying unjust taxes to pay for their bloated government. But were the Athenians’ priorities really as misplaced as ancient and modern historians believed? Drawing on lines of evidence not available in Böckh’s time, Public Spending and Democracy in Classical Athens calculates the real costs of religion, politics, and war to settle the long-standing debate about what the ancient Athenians valued most highly. David M. Pritchard explains that, in Athenian democracy, voters had full control over public spending. When they voted for a bill, they always knew its cost and how much they normally spent on such bills. Therefore, the sums they chose to spend on festivals, politics, and the armed forces reflected the order of the priorities that they had set for their state. By calculating these sums, Pritchard convincingly demonstrates that it was not religion or politics but war that was the overriding priority of the Athenian people.

Public Space and Democracy

Public Space and Democracy PDF Author: Marcel Hénaff
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816633883
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Moving from classical Greece to the present, Public Space and Democracy provides both historical accounts and a comparative analytical framework for understanding public space both as a place and as a product of various media, from speech to the Internet. These essays make a powerful case for thinking of modern technological developments not as the end of public space, but as an opportunity for reframing the idea of the public and of the public space as the locus of power.

Performance and Culture in Plato's Laws

Performance and Culture in Plato's Laws PDF Author: Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107067308
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 473

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Book Description
This volume is dedicated to an intriguing Platonic work, the Laws. Probably the last dialogue Plato wrote, the Laws represents the philosopher's most fully developed views on many crucial questions that he had raised in earlier works. Yet it remains a largely unread and underexplored dialogue. Abounding in unique and valuable references to dance and music, customs and norms, the Laws seems to suggest a comprehensive model of culture for the entire polis - something unparalleled in Plato. This exceptionally rich discussion of cultural matters in the Laws requires the scrutiny of scholars whose expertise resides beyond the boundaries of pure philosophical inquiry. The volume offers contributions by fourteen scholars who work in the broader areas of literary, cultural and performance studies.

Authorship and Greek Song: Authority, Authenticity, and Performance

Authorship and Greek Song: Authority, Authenticity, and Performance PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004339701
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Authorship and Greek Song is a collection of papers dealing with various aspects of authorship in the song culture of Ancient Greece. In this cultural context the idea of the poet as author of his poems is complicated by the fact that poetry in archaic Greece circulated as songs performed for a variety of audiences, both local and “global” (Panhellenic). The volume’s chapters discuss questions about the importance of the singers/performers; the nature of the performance occasion; the status of the poet; the authority of the poet/author and/or that of the performer; and the issues of authenticity arising when poems are composed under a given poet’s name. The volume offers discussions of major authors such as Pindar, Sappho, and Theognis.

A Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Music

A Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Music PDF Author: Tosca A. C. Lynch
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119275490
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 565

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Book Description
"This chapter provides an overview of the Muses in Greek mythology and argues that their multiplicity, their indefinite number, their lack of fixed personalities and their metapoetic status make them highly unusual members of the Olympian pantheon. As the embodiment of music and the means by which music is channelled to human beings they are essential to our understanding of the meaning of mousikē in Greek culture. Above all their origins in an oral society foregrounds the performative nature of music which has characterised it as an art form throughout the ages"--