Amid Our Troubles PDF Download

Author: Marianne McDonald
Publisher: Methuen Drama
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
This collection of provocative essays reveals how some of the great Irish poets and dramatists of the past and present, have drawn on Greek myths and used these stories to bring new insights on the world in which we now live.

Author: Simon Goldhill
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022679072X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
From the stages of Broadway and London to university campuses, Paris, and the bourgeoning theaters of Africa, Greek tragedy remains constantly in production. This global revival, in addition to delighting audiences, has highlighted both the promise and the pitfalls of staging ancient masterpieces in the modern age. Addressing the issues and challenges these performances pose, renowned classicist Simon Goldhill responds here to the growing demand for a comprehensive guide to staging Greek tragedy today. In crisp and spirited prose, Goldhill explains how Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles conceived their works in performance and then summarizes everything we know about how their tragedies were actually staged. The heart of his book tackles the six major problems facing any company performing these works today: the staging space and concept of the play; the use of the chorus; the actor’s role in an unfamiliar style of performance; the place of politics in tragedy; the question of translation; and the treatment of gods, monsters, and other strange characters of the ancient world. Outlining exactly what makes each of these issues such a pressing difficulty for modern companies, Goldhill provides insightful solutions drawn from his nimble analyses of some of the best recent productions in the United States, Britain, and Continental Europe. One of the few experts on both Greek tragedy and contemporary performance, Goldhill uses his unique background and prodigious literary skill to illuminate brilliantly what makes tragedy at once so exciting and so tricky to get right. The result will inspire and enlighten all directors and performers—not to mention the growing audiences—of ancient Greek theater.

Author: Tina Chanter
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438437560
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
In this groundbreaking book, Tina Chanter challenges the philosophical and psychoanalytic reception of Sophocles' Antigone, which has largely ignored the issue of slavery. Drawing on textual and contextual evidence, including historical sources, she argues that slavery is a structuring theme of the Oedipal cycle, but one that has been written out of the record. Chanter focuses in particular on two appropriations of Antigone: The Island, set in apartheid South Africa, and Tègònni, set in nineteenth-century Nigeria. Both plays are inspired by the figure of Antigone, and yet they rework her significance in important ways that require us to return to Sophocles' "original" play and attend to some of the motifs that have been marginalized. Chanter explores the complex set of relations that define citizens as opposed to noncitizens, free men versus slaves, men versus women, and Greeks versus barbarians. Whose Antigone? moves beyond the narrow confines critics have inherited from German idealism to reinvigorate debates over the meaning and significance of Antigone, situating it within a wider argument that establishes the salience of slavery as a structuring theme.

Author: Chris Murray
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317008359
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
To Samuel Taylor Coleridge, tragedy was not solely a literary mode, but a philosophy to interpret the history that unfolded around him. Tragic Coleridge explores the tragic vision of existence that Coleridge derived from Classical drama, Shakespeare, Milton and contemporary German thought. Coleridge viewed the hardships of the Romantic period, like the catastrophes of Greek tragedy, as stages in a process of humanity’s overall purification. Offering new readings of canonical poems, as well as neglected plays and critical works, Chris Murray elaborates Coleridge’s tragic vision in relation to a range of thinkers, from Plato and Aristotle to George Steiner and Raymond Williams. He draws comparisons with the works of Blake, the Shelleys, and Keats to explore the factors that shaped Coleridge’s conception of tragedy, including the origins of sacrifice, developments in Classical scholarship, theories of inspiration and the author’s quest for civic status. With cycles of catastrophe and catharsis everywhere in his works, Coleridge depicted the world as a site of tragic purgation, and wrote himself into it as an embattled sage qualified to mediate the vicissitudes of his age.

Author: Carmen Szabo
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443807591
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
“Clearing the Ground”–The Field Day Theatre Company and the Construction of Irish Identities studies the Field Day Theatre Company, with special focus on the plays that they put on stage between 1980 and 1995; it attempts to dissect their policy and observe the way in which this policy influences the discourse of the theatrical productions. Was Field Day simply the “cultural wing” of Sinn Fein and the IRA, or did they try to give voice to a new critical discourse, challenging the traditional frames of representation? This book focuses on a thorough analysis of the way in which Field Day applied the concepts of postcolonial discourse to their own needs of creating a foundation for the ideological manifesto of the company. This study is a critique of the successes and failures of a theatre company that, in a period of political and cultural crisis, engaged in innovative ways of discussing the sensitive issues of identity, memory and history in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

Author: J. Michael Walton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1408143925
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
'In this masterful reevaluation of Euripides, Michael Walton recasts the playwright in light of his resonance for today's translators and directors. Springing from the rehearsal room rather than the page, Walton shows us not only why we are ready for Euripides, but why we so desperately need him.' Mary Louise Hart, Associate Curator of Antiquities, J. Paul Getty Museum 'A useful, reader-friendly introduction aimed at non-specialists, [it] offers detailed summaries of Euripides' plays, along with keen observations on their relevance for today's theater.' Rush Rehm, author of Radical Theatre Euripides Our Contemporary is a major new study of the work of the great classical tragedian that illuminates his work and demonstrates both its vitality and how it continues to speak to us today. Taking a thematic approach to Euripides' plays it provides the reader with a wide-ranging and thorough appreciation of the writer's entire canon. For students, teachers and practitioners this is the best single-volume treatment of the writer's work, considering the plays for their accessibility and for their focus on issues and concerns which are as significant as ever in the modern world. Divided into three sections, the book first examines 'Domesticating Tragedy', the manner in which Euripides gave the world of myth an application to ordinary life. The second section tackles the 'Grand Passions': characters under extraordinary pressure and the extent to which personal responsibility can be absolved through various aspects of circumstance. The third looks at the nature of Euripides' theatre and his acknowledgment of it, the great roles and the playwrights of the last hundred years whose craft seems most influenced by his work. An Appendix at the end of the book provides a short summary of the plots of all nineteen plays.

Author: Kimberly Gibson Johnson
Publisher: WestBow Press
ISBN: 1449789838
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
In my minds eye, a little girl crouches in a dark and cluttered hallway closet. Mountains of stuff fill this tiny room, where she remains hidden from everyone and everything. Besides the stuff of anger and doubt in this small space, the walls have writing on them that names the fears, insecurities, and reasons for shielding herself from the unfamiliar and the unknown. Many times, the little girl tries to exit her safe place. With a mask of self-prescribed extroversion, she determinedly leaves the four walls of her secret domain to be good at things and peoplea good student, wife, even a mother. Hesitantly, she tells herself that hope and joy are within reach. But after a short stay away from the security of the hallway closet, the little girl goes back inside and continues hiding from life. I was that young girl. I did not want to live this way any longer, so I cried out to Godwho had been with me all along. He knew my pain, insecurities, anger, and fear. Bigger than any wall of self-protection I built, God would bring down these walls if I let him. My crying out was the first step.

Author: Mark Giszczak
Publisher: Ignatius Press
ISBN: 1955305595
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
Just as Job was tried, all of us are tested by suffering. It comes to us in many different forms: grief about the past, pain in the present, and sadness about what might have been. The personal dimension of suffering means that it marks our experience and, in some ways, makes us who we are. Coping with suffering as Christians includes certain spiritual practices that lead us to surrender our lives more fully to the Lord. By offering our suffering as a spiritual sacrifice, joined intentionally to the suffering of Christ through prayer, we engage with the most profound Christian teaching about suffering: that it is redemptive. Suffering can transform us to be like God.

Author: Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Sermons, English
Languages : en
Pages : 844

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Book Description

Author: Henry Lew
Publisher: WestBow Press
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
How can the greatest commandments form the paradigm for our lives? How can these two commandments inform and transform our worldview to help us face the challenges of life? What do these commandments tell us about relationship with God, ourselves, and others? This book studies these questions, arriving at many counterintuitive conclusions.