Philosophy and Religion in Aeschylus revivifies the complex question of fate and freedom in the tragedies of the famous Greek playwright. Starting with Sartre’s insights about radical existential free
In Shared Storytelling in Euripidean Stichomythia Liesbeth Schuren offers pragmatic and narratological approaches to stichomythic dialogue in the tragedies of Euripides.
Hysterical Laughter: Four Ancient Comedies About Women is the first text to uniquely employ comedy as a vehicle to explore women, gender, and sexuality in Greek and Roman antiquity. Featuring new, eng
This book examines the concept of 'nonsense' in ancient Greek thought and uses it to explore the comedies of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. If 'nonsense' (phluaria, lēros) is a type of language felt to be unworthy of interpretation, it can help to define certain aspects of comedy that have proved difficult to grasp. Not least is the recurrent perception that although the comic genre can be meaningful (i.e. contain political opinions, moral sentiments and aesthetic tastes), some of it is just 'foolery' or 'fun'. But what exactly is this 'foolery', this part of comedy which allegedly lies beyond the scope of serious interpretation? The answer is to be found in the concept of 'nonsense': by examining the ways in which comedy does not mean, the genre's relationship to serious meaning (whether it be political, aesthetic, or moral) can be viewed in a clearer light.
Contributors present interconnected studies of some of the most important moments and figures in the history of the comic genre and its reception from Graeco-Roman times to the present. The topics inc
Euripides' Medea is one of the most often read, studied and performed of all Greek tragedies. A searingly cruel story of a woman's brutal revenge on a husband who has rejected her for a younger and r
Euripides' Medea is one of the most often read, studied and performed of all Greek tragedies. A searingly cruel story of a woman's brutal revenge on a husband who has rejected her for a younger and r
"Greek comedy flourished in the fifth and fourth centuries BC, both in and beyond Athens. Aristophanes and Menander are the best-known writers whose work is in part extant, but many other dramatists a
Satyric Play is the first book to offer an integrated analysis of Greek comedy and satyr drama. Using a literary-historical approach, Carl A. Shaw argues that comedy and satyr plays influenced each o
Aristophanes' comic masterpiece Thesmophoriazusae has long been recognized amongst the plays of Old Comedy for its deconstruction of tragic theatricality. This book reveals that this deconstruction is grounded not simply in Aristophanes' wider engagement with tragic realism. Rather, it demonstrates that from its outset Aristophanes' play draws upon Parmenides' philosophical revelations concerning reality and illusion, employing Eleatic strictures and imagery to philosophize the theatrical situation, criticize Aristophanes' poetic rival Euripides as promulgator of harmful deceptions, expose the dangerous complicity of Athenian theatre audiences in tragic illusion, and articulate political advice to an audience negotiating a period of political turmoil characterized by deception and uncertainty (the months before the oligarchic coup of 411 BC). The book thereby restores Thesmophoriazusae to its proper status as a philosophical comedy and reveals hitherto unrecognized evidence of Aristoph
In recent decades literary approaches to drama have multiplied: new historical, intertextual, political, performative and metatheatrical, socio-linguistic, gender-driven, transgenre-driven. New inform
The comedies of the Athenian dramatist Menander (c. 342-291 BC) and his contemporaries were the ultimate source of a Western tradition of light drama that has continued to the present day. Yet for ove
This newly updated second edition features wide-ranging, systematically organized scholarship in a concise introduction to ancient Greek drama, which flourished from the sixth to third century BC.Cove
Dionysus Resurrected analyzes the global resurgence since the late 1960s of Euripides’ The Bacchae. By analyzing and contextualizing these modern day performances, the author reveals striking parallel
The Court of Comedy: Aristophanes, Rhetoric, and Democracy in Fifth-Century Athens, by Wilfred E. Major, analyzes how writers of comedy in Classical Greece satirized the emerging art of rhetoric and i
This book offers a provocative interpretation of a relatively neglected tragedy, Aeschylus's Suppliant Women. Although the play's subject is a venerable myth, it frames the flight of the daughters
