The Political Background to Aeschylean Tragedy PDF Download

Author: A.J. Podlecki
Publisher: Bristol Classical Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
An analysis of the plays of Aeschylus, this study examines each play against the political and military background of Aeschylus' time, attempting to cast light on both the period and the dramatist.

Author: Alan H. Sommerstein
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1849667950
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 397

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Book Description
Aeschylus was the dramatist who made Athenian tragedy one of the world's great art-forms. In this completely revised and updated edition of his book Alan H. Sommerstein, analysing the seven extant plays of the Aeschylean corpus (one of them probably in fact the work of another author) and utilising the knowledge we have of the seventy or more whose scripts have not survived, explores Aeschylus' poetic, dramatic, theatrical and musical techniques, his social, political and religious ideas, and the significance of his drama for our own day. Special attention is paid to the "Oresteia" trilogy, and the other surviving plays are viewed against the background of the four-play productions of which they formed part. There are chapters on Aeschylus' theatre, on his satyr-dramas, and on his dramatisations of Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey", and a detailed chapter-by-chapter guide to further reading. No knowledge of Greek is assumed, and all texts are quoted in translation.

Author: Thomas G. Rosenmeyer
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520044401
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Author: Euripides
Publisher: Greek Tragedy in New Translations
ISBN: 9780195045536
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 100

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Book Description
Based on the conviction that only translators who write poetry themselves can properly recreate the celebrated and timeless tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the Greek Tragedy in New Translations series offers new translations that go beyond the literal meaning of the Greek in order to evoke the poetry of the originals. Under the editorship of Peter Burian and Alan Shapiro, each volume includes a critical introduction, commentary on the text, full stage directions, and a glossary of the mythical and geographical references in the plays. Already tested in performance on the stage, this translation shows for the first time in English the striking interplay of voices in Euripides' Suppliant Women. Torn between the mothers' lament over the dead and proud civic eulogy, between calls for a just war and grief for the fallen, the play captures with unremitting force the competing poles of the human psyche. The translators, Rosanna Warren and Stephen Scully, accentuate the contrast between female lament and male reasoned discourse in this play where the silent dead hold, finally, center stage.

Author: Matthew Shipton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474295096
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
This bold new set of interpretations of tragedy offers innovative analyses of the dynamic between politics and youth in the ancient world. By exploring how tragedy responded to the fluctuating attitudes to young people at a highly turbulent time in the history of Athens, Shipton sheds new light on ancient attitudes to youth. Focusing on famous plays, such as Sophocles' Antigone and Euripides' Bacchae, alongside lesser known tragedies such as Euripides' Heraclidae and Orestes, Shipton uncovers compelling evidence to show that the complex and often paradoxical views we hold about youth today can also be found in the ancient society of classical Athens. Shipton argues that the prominence of young people in tragedy throughout the fifth century reflects the persistent uncertainty as to what their role in society should be. As the success of Athens rose and then fell, young characters were repeatedly used by tragic playwrights as a way to explore political tensions and social upheaval in the city. Throughout his text, Shipton reflects on how negative conceptualisations of youth, often expressed via the socially constructed 'gang' are formed as a way in which paradoxical views on youth can be contained.

Author: David M. Carter
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 9781904675167
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Part of the 'Greece and Rome Live' series, which aims to introduce figures and aspects of the ancient world to the general reader, this is a guide to the political aspect of Greek tragedy using close examination of specific plays. A handy combined index/glossary and a bibliography are included.

Author: Peter Burian
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405188049
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 596

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Book Description
A COMPANION TO AESCHYLUS A COMPANION TO AESCHYLUS In A Companion to Aeschylus, a team of eminent Aeschyleans and brilliant younger scholars delivers an insightful and original multi-authored examination—the first comprehensive one in English—of the works of the earliest surviving Greek tragedian. This book explores Aeschylean drama, and its theatrical, historical, philosophical, religious, and socio-political contexts, as well as the receptions and influence of Aeschylus from antiquity to the present day. This companion offers readers thorough examinations of Aeschylus as a product of his time, including his place in the early years of the Athenian democracy and his immediate and ongoing impact on tragedy. It also provides comprehensive explorations of all the surviving plays, including Prometheus Bound, which many scholars have concluded is not by Aeschylus. A Companion to Aeschylus is an ideal resource for students encountering the work of Aeschylus for the first time as well as more advanced scholars seeking incisive treatment of his individual works, their cultural context and their enduring significance. Written in an accessible format, with the Greek translated into English and technical terminology avoided as much as possible, the book belongs in the library of anyone looking for a fresh and authoritative account of works of continuing interest and importance to readers and theatre-goers alike.

Author: Rebecca Futo Kennedy
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9781433104541
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
Athena is recognized as an allegory or representative of Athens in most Athenian public art except in tragedy. Perhaps this is because tragedy is rarely studied as a public art form or, perhaps, because her character is not static in tragedy. Although Athena's characterization changes to fit the needs of a particular drama, her clear connection with justice remains true throughout and suggests that she is always the representative of the city and its institutions. Athens, the city Athena protected, experienced a dramatic transformation in the fifth century: its political institutions, physical landscape, military power and international prestige underwent dynamic change. Athena, its goddess and its symbol, simultaneously transformed as well, although not always for the better. Athena's Justice follows the question of civic identity and ideology in Athenian tragedy, focusing specifically on the link between tragedy and its influence upon identity creation and promotion during the period when Athens was asserting itself as an imperial power. Through examination of tragedies in which Athena appears, this book traces the process by which Athens came to identify itself with its legal system, symbolized by Athena on stage, and then suffered the corruption of that system by the exercise of imperial power. Athena's Justice is essential reading not just for classicists and ancient historians, but for anyone interested in the interaction between art and politics and the process by which human beings in any period seek to shape their identity as a people.

Author: J. Peter Euben
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069102314X
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
In this book J. Peter Euben argues that Greek tragedy was the context for classical political theory and that such theory read in terms of tragedy provides a ground for contemporary theorizing alert to the concerns of post-modernism, such as normalization, the dominance of humanism, and the status of theory. Euben shows how ancient Greek theater offered a place and occasion for reflection on the democratic culture it helped constitute, in part by confronting the audience with the otherwise unacknowledged principles of social exclusion that sustained its community. Euben makes his argument through a series of comparisons between three dramas (Aeschylus' Oresteia, Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannos, and Euripides' Bacchae) and three works of classical political theory (Thucydides' History and Plato's Apology of Socrates and Republic) on the issues of justice, identity, and corruption. He brings his discussion to a contemporary American setting in a concluding chapter on Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 in which the road from Argos to Athens, built to differentiate a human domain from the undefined outside, has become a Los Angeles freeway desecrating the land and its people in a predatory urban sprawl.

Author: C. W. Marshall
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474255086
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Libation Bearers is the 'middle' play in the only extant tragic trilogy to survive from antiquity, Aeschylus' Oresteia, first produced in 458 BCE. This introduction to the play will be useful for anyone reading it in Greek or in translation. Drawing on his wide experience teaching about performance in the ancient world, C. W. Marshall helps readers understand how the play was experienced by its ancient audience. His discussion explores the impact of the chorus, the characters, theology, and the play's apparent affinities with comedy. The architecture of choral songs is described in detail. The book also investigates the role of revenge in Athenian society and the problematic nature of Orestes' matricide. Libation Bearers immediately entered the Athenian visual imagination, influencing artistic depictions on red-figured vases, and inspiring plays by Euripides and Sophocles. This study looks to the later plays to show how 5th-century audiences understood Libation Bearers. Modern reception of the play is integrated into the analysis. The volume includes a full range of ancillary material, providing a list of relevant red-figure vase illustrations, a glossary of technical terms, and a chronology of ancient and modern theatrical versions.