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
A pair of Athenians unite with the birds to found a utopia in this comic masterpiece of antiquity. Aristophanes' finest work, this imaginative farce abounds in wit and vitality.
Written by one of the best-known interpreters of classical literature today, Sophocles and the Language of Tragedy presents a revolutionary take on the work of this great classical playwright and on h
This book further develops Professor Seaford's innovative work on the study of ritual and money in the developing Greek polis. It employs the concept of the chronotope, which refers to the phenomenon whereby the spatial and temporal frameworks explicit or implicit in a text have the same structure, and uncovers various such chronotopes in Homer, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Presocratic philosophy and in particular the tragedies of Aeschylus. Mikhail Bakhtin's pioneering use of the chronotope was in literary analysis. This study by contrast derives the variety of chronotopes manifest in Greek texts from the variety of socially integrative practices in the developing polis - notably reciprocity, collective ritual and monetised exchange. In particular, the Oresteia of Aeschylus embodies the reassuring absorption of the new and threatening monetised chronotope into the traditional chronotope that arises from collective ritual with its aetiological myth. This argument includes the first eve
The collision of politics and claims of political intervention with the fantastic, absurd, and impossible is characteristic of the Athenian comic drama of the late fifth and early fourth century BCE,
Oaths were ubiquitous rituals in ancient Athenian legal, commercial, civic and international spheres. Their importance is reflected by the fact that much of surviving Greek drama features a formal oath sworn before the audience. This is the first comprehensive study of that phenomenon. The book explores how the oath can mark or structure a dramatic plot, at times compelling characters like Euripides' Hippolytus to act contrary to their best interests. It demonstrates how dramatic oaths resonate with oath rituals familiar to the Athenian audiences. Aristophanes' Lysistrata and her accomplices, for example, swear an oath that blends protocols of international treaties with priestesses' vows of sexual abstinence. By employing the principles of speech act theory, this book examines how the performative power of the dramatic oath can mirror the status quo, but also disturb categories of gender, social status and civic identity in ways that redistribute and confound social authority.
Most readers nowadays encounter the plays of Aristophanes in the classroom, not the theater. Yet the “father of comedy” wrote his plays for the stage, not as literary texts. Many English translations
Scholars have often focused on understanding Aristotle's poetic theory, and particularly the concept of catharsis in the Poetics, as a response to Plato's critique of pity in the Republic. However, this book shows that, while Greek thinkers all acknowledge pity and some form of fear as responses to tragedy, each assumes for the two emotions a different purpose, mode of presentation and, to a degree, understanding. This book reassesses expressions of the emotions within different tragedies and explores emotional responses to and discussions of the tragedies by contemporary philosophers, providing insights into the ethical and social implications of the emotions.
This book provides new views of longstanding structural questions in the Oresteia, of its repeated language for time, and of its rich ritual constructions. Its wider appeal may well lie in being thoro
This volume explores the relationships between masterworks of Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes and critical events of Athenian history, by bringing together international scholars with expertise
Sophocles' Ajax describes the fall of a mighty warrior denied the honour which he believed was his due. This edition of the play presents a text and critical apparatus which take full advantage of advances in our understanding of Sophoclean manuscripts and scholarship. The introduction and commentary scrutinise all important aspects of the drama - from detailed analysis of style, language, and metre to consideration of wider issues such as ethics, rhetoric, and characterisation. Notorious dramaturgical problems, including the staging of Ajax's suicide, receive particular attention; so too do questions of literary history, such as the date of the play and Sophocles' creative interaction with previous accounts of the myth. The translation which accompanies the commentary ensures that this edition will be accessible to Hellenists of all levels of experience, as well as to readers with a general interest in the history of drama.
Antigone on the Contemporary World Stage is the first book to analyse what happens to Sophocles' play as it is adapted and (re)produced around the world, and the first to focus specifically on Antigon
The most celebrated plays of ancient Athens in vivid and dynamic new translations by award-winning poets Robert Bagg and James Scully The dominant Athenian playwright in fifth-century-BCE Athens, So
One of Chanter's (philosophy, DePaul U.) goals here, she says, is to reread Sophocles' Oedipal cycle, challenging some of the fundamental tenets that have come to specify its founding role in literatu
The past pervades Greek tragedy, says Kyriakou (Greek, Aristotle U. of Thessaloniki, Greece), because with few exceptions the stories and characters were already ancient then and had been treated many
Norman Austin brings both keen insight and a life-long engagement with his subject to this study of Sophocles’ late tragedy Philoctetes, a fifth-century BCE play adapted from an infamous incident duri
David Mulroy’s brilliant verse translation of Oedipus Rex recaptures the aesthetic power of Sophocles’ masterpiece while also achieving a highly accurate translation in clear, contemporary English.
Sophocles' Antigone comes alive in this new translation that will be useful for academic study and stage production. Diane Rayor's accurate yet accessible translation reflects the play's inherent theatricality. She provides an analytical introduction and comprehensive notes, and the edition includes an essay by director Karen Libman. Antigone begins after Oedipus and Jocasta's sons have killed each other in battle over the kingship. The new king, Kreon, decrees that the brother who attacked with a foreign army remain unburied and promises death to anyone who defies him. The play centers on Antigone's refusal to obey Kreon's law and Kreon's refusal to allow her brother's burial. Each acts on principle colored by gender, personality and family history. Antigone poses a conflict between passionate characters whose extreme stances leave no room for compromise. The highly charged struggle between the individual and the state has powerful implications for ethical and political situations tod
Aaron Poochigian’s new translations of Aeschylus’s earliest extant plays provide the clearest rendering yet of their formal structure. The distinction between spoken and sung rhythms is as sharp as it
