Looking at Persians

Looking at Persians PDF

Author: David Stuttard

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2022-10-20

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1350227943

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Aeschylus' Persians is unique in being the only extant Greek tragedy on an historical subject: Greece's victory in 480 BC over the great Persian King, Xerxes, eight years before the play was written and first performed in 472 BC. Looking at Persians examines how Aeschylus responded to such a turning point in Athenian history and how his audience may have reacted to his play. As well as considering the play's relationship with earlier lost tragedies and discussing its central themes, including war, nature and the value of human life, the volume considers how Persians may have been staged in fifth-century Athens and how it has been performed today. The twelve essays presented here are written by prominent international academics and offer insightful analyses of the play from the perspectives of performance, history and society. Intended for readers ranging from school students and undergraduates to teachers and those interested in drama (including practitioners), this volume also includes an accurate, accessible and performance-friendly English translation of Persians by David Stuttard.

Looking at Persians

Looking at Persians PDF

Author: David Stuttard

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2022-10-20

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1350227935

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Aeschylus' Persians is unique in being the only extant Greek tragedy on an historical subject: Greece's victory in 480 BC over the great Persian King, Xerxes, eight years before the play was written and first performed in 472 BC. Looking at Persians examines how Aeschylus responded to such a turning point in Athenian history and how his audience may have reacted to his play. As well as considering the play's relationship with earlier lost tragedies and discussing its central themes, including war, nature and the value of human life, the volume considers how Persians may have been staged in fifth-century Athens and how it has been performed today. The twelve essays presented here are written by prominent international academics and offer insightful analyses of the play from the perspectives of performance, history and society. Intended for readers ranging from school students and undergraduates to teachers and those interested in drama (including practitioners), this volume also includes an accurate, accessible and performance-friendly English translation of Persians by David Stuttard.

Looking at Agamemnon

Looking at Agamemnon PDF

Author: David Stuttard

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-01-14

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1350149551

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Agamemnon is the first of the three plays within the Oresteia trilogy and is considered to be one of Aeschylus' greatest works. This collection of 12 essays, written by prominent international academics, brings together a wide range of topics surrounding Agamemnon from its relationship with ancient myth and ritual to its modern reception. There is a diverse array of discussion on the salient themes of murder, choice and divine agency. Other essays also offer new approaches to understanding the notions of wealth and the natural world which imbue the play, as well as a study of the philosophical and moral questions of choice and revenge. Arguments are contextualized in terms of performance, history and society, discussing what the play meant to ancient audiences and how it is now received in the modern theatre. Intended for readers ranging from school students and undergraduates to teachers and those interested in drama (including practitioners), this volume includes a performer-friendly and accessible English translation by David Stuttard.

Persians

Persians PDF

Author: Aeschylus

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1981

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 9780195070088

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Persians is both Aeschylus' first extant tragedy and the earliest surviving drama in the Western tradition. Because Aeschylus was there at the struggle between Greeks and Persians in the straits of Salamis in 480 B.C., the Persians is not merely a play but a valuable historical document. The description of the battle contained here is in fact the only account of any event in the Great Persian Wars that has been composed by an eyewitness. Lembke and Herington faithfully recreate in modern language Aeschylus' account of the frightful contrast between the human work of butchery and the serene, sunlit natural background of Salamis. Though critics have argued for centuries about the veracity of the historical details, Aeschylus' poetic vision makes the Persians a compelling dramatic experience--Jacket.

The Persians

The Persians PDF

Author: Geoffrey Parker

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2016-11-15

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1780236980

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During the first and second millennia BCE a swathe of nomadic peoples migrated outward from Central Asia into the Eurasian periphery. One group of these people would find themselves encamped in an unpromising, arid region just south of the Caspian Sea. From these modest and uncertain beginnings, they would go on to form one of the most powerful empires in history: the Persian Empire. In this book, Geoffrey and Brenda Parker tell the captivating story of this ancient civilization and its enduring legacy to the world. The authors examine the unique features of Persian life and trace their influence throughout the centuries. They examine the environmental difficulties the early Persians encountered and how, in overcoming them, they were able to develop a unique culture that would culminate in the massive, first empire, the Achaemenid Empire. Extending their influence into the maritime west, they fought the Greeks for mastery of the eastern Mediterranean—one of the most significant geopolitical contests of the ancient world. And the authors paint vivid portraits of Persian cities and their spectacular achievements: intricate and far-reaching roadways, an astonishing irrigation system that created desert paradises, and, above all, an extraordinary reflection of the diverse peoples that inhabited them. Informed and original, this is a history of an incomparable culture whose influence can still be seen, millennia later, in modern-day Iran and the wider Middle East.

Choral Mediations in Greek Tragedy

Choral Mediations in Greek Tragedy PDF

Author: Renaud Gagné

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-10-17

Total Pages: 441

ISBN-13: 1107033284

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This volume explores how the choruses of Ancient Greek tragedy creatively combined media and discourses to generate their own specific forms of meaning. The contributors analyse choruses as fictional, religious and civic performers; as combinations of text, song and dance; and as objects of reflection in themselves, in relation and contrast to the choruses of comedy and melic poetry. Drawing on earlier analyses of the social context of Greek drama, the non-textual dimensions of tragedy, and the relations between dramatic and melic choruses, the chapters explore the uses of various analytic tools in allowing us better to capture the specificity of the tragic chorus. Special attention is given to the physicality of choral dancing, musical interactions between choruses and actors, the trajectories of reception, and the treatment of time and space in the odes.

The Emptiness of Asia

The Emptiness of Asia PDF

Author: Thomas Harrison

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-05-02

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1350113433

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This is a literary study of Aeschylus' Persians alongside Herodotus' Histories, which offers a comprehensive understanding what actually happened at the battle of Salamis and afterwards. Thomas Harrison examines the political and ideological motivating factors underpinning Persai in the context of the times. Aeschylus' Persians is not only the first surviving Greek drama. It is also the only tragedy to take for its subject historical rather than mythical events: the repulse of the army of Xerxes at Salamis in 480 B.C. It has frequently been mined for information on the tactics of Salamis or the Greeks' knowledge of Persian names or institutions, but it also has a broader value, one that has not often been realised. What does it tell us about Greek representations of Persia, or of the Athenians' self-image? What can we glean from it of the politics of early fifth-century Athens, or of the Athenians' conception of their empire? How, if at all, can such questions be approached without doing violence to the Persians as a drama? What are the implications of the play for the nature of tragedy?

The Epic of Kings, Hero Tales of Ancient Persia

The Epic of Kings, Hero Tales of Ancient Persia PDF

Author: Firdausi

Publisher: Phoemixx Classics Ebooks

Published: 2021-11-16

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 3986778160

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The Epic of Kings, Hero Tales of Ancient Persia Firdausi - The Epic of Kings, Hero Tales of Ancient Persia (The Shahnameh) is an epic poem by the Persian poet Firdausi, written between 966 and 1010 AD. Telling the past of the Persian empire, using a mix of the mythical and historical, it is regarded as a literary masterpiece. Not only important to the Persian culture, it is also important to modern day followers of the Zoroastrianism religion. It is said that the poem was Firdausi's efforts to preserve the memory of Persia's golden days, following the fall of the Sassanid empire. The poem contains, among others, mentions of the romance of Zal and Rudba, Alexander the Great, the wars with Afrsyb, and the romance of Bijan and Manijeh.

Persians

Persians PDF

Author: Aeschylus

Publisher: Hackett Publishing

Published: 2024-05-20

Total Pages: 122

ISBN-13: 1647921813

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The only surviving play of Aeschylus to be based on a historical event—the Greek victory at Salamis just a few years before the play was written—Persians appears in Deborah H. Roberts' brilliant new verse translation accompanied by her Introduction, Notes, Maps, and Chronology. Also included are newly translated excerpts from Herodotus’ Histories that should fascinate any reader of the play.