Tragedy in Athens

Tragedy in Athens PDF

Author: David Wiles

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1999-08-19

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9780521666152

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This book examines the performance of Greek tragedy in the classical Athenian theatre. David Wiles explores the performance of tragedy as a spatial practice specific to Athenian culture, at once religious and political. After reviewing controversies and archaeological data regarding the fifth-century performance space, Wiles turns to the chorus and shows how dance mapped out the space for the purposes of any given play. The book shows how performance as a whole was organised and, through informative diagrams and accessible analyses, Wiles brings the theatre of Greek tragedy to life.

Tragedy and Athenian Religion

Tragedy and Athenian Religion PDF

Author: Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 580

ISBN-13: 9780739104002

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Stemming from Harvard University's Carl Newell Jackson Lectures, Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood's Tragedy and Athenian Religion sets out a radical reexamination of the relationship between Greek tragedy and religion. Based on a reconstruction of the context in which tragedy was generated as a ritual performance during the festival of the City Dionysia, Sourvinou-Inwood shows that religious exploration had been crucial in the emergence of what developed into fifth-century Greek tragedy. A contextual analysis of the perceptions of fifth-century Athenians suggests that the ritual elements clustered in the tragedies of Euripides, Aeschylus, and Sophocles provided a framework for the exploration of religious issues, in a context perceived to be part of a polis ritual. This reassessment of Athenian tragedy is based both on a reconstruction of the Dionysia and the various stages of its development and on a deep textual analysis of fifth-century tragedians. By examining the relationship between fifth-century tragedies and performative context, Tragedy and Athenian Religion presents a groundbreaking view of tragedy as a discourse that explored (among other topics) the problematic religious issues of the time and so ultimately strengthened Athenian religion even at a time of crisis in very complex ways-- rather than, as some simpler modern readings argue, challenging and attacking religion and the gods.

The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy

The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy PDF

Author: P. E. Easterling

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1997-10-02

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 9780521423519

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As a creative medium, ancient Greek tragedy has had an extraordinarily wide influence: many of the surviving plays are still part of the theatrical repertoire, and texts like Agamemnon, Antigone, and Medea have had a profound effect on Western culture. This Companion is not a conventional introductory textbook but an attempt, by seven distinguished scholars, to present the familiar corpus in the context of modern reading, criticism, and performance of Greek tragedy. There are three main emphases: on tragedy as an institution in the civic life of ancient Athens, on a range of different critical interpretations arising from fresh readings of the texts, and on changing patterns of reception, adaptation, and performance from antiquity to the present. Each chapter can be read independently, but each is linked with the others, and most examples are drawn from the same selection of plays.

Athena's Justice

Athena's Justice PDF

Author: Rebecca Futo Kennedy

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 9781433104541

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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.

Greek Tragedy After the Fifth Century

Greek Tragedy After the Fifth Century PDF

Author: Vayos Liapis

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 431

ISBN-13: 1107038553

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What happened to Greek tragedy after the death of Euripides? This book provides some answers, and a broad historical overview.

Theater outside Athens

Theater outside Athens PDF

Author: Kathryn Bosher

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-08-02

Total Pages: 493

ISBN-13: 1139510339

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This volume brings together archeologists, art historians, philologists, literary scholars, political scientists, and historians to articulate the ways in which western Greek theater was distinct from that of the Greek mainland and, at the same time, to investigate how the two traditions interacted. The chapters intersect and build on each other in their pursuit of a number of shared questions and themes: the place of theater in the cultural life of Sicilian and South Italian 'colonial cities;' theater as a method of cultural self-identification; shared mythological themes in performance texts and theatrical vase-painting; and the reflection and analysis of Sicilian and South Italian theater in the work of Athenian philosophers and playwrights. Together, the essays explore central problems in the study of western Greek theater. By gathering a number of different perspectives and methods, this volume offers the first wide-ranging examination of this hitherto neglected history.

Aeschylus: Eumenides

Aeschylus: Eumenides PDF

Author: Robin Mitchell-Boyask

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2013-12-12

Total Pages: 158

ISBN-13: 1472519639

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The "Eumenides", the concluding drama in Aeschylus' sole surviving trilogy, the "Oresteia", is not only one of the most admired Greek tragedies, but also one of the most controversial and contested, both to specialist scholars and public intellectuals. It stands at the crux of the controversies over the relationship between the fledgling democracy of Athens and the dramas it produced during the City Dionysia, and over the representation of women in the theatre and their implied status in Athenian society. The "Eumenides" enacts the trial of Agamemnon's son Orestes, who had been ordered under the threat of punishment by the god Apollo to murder his mother Clytemnestra, who had earlier killed Agamemnon.In the "Eumenides", Orestes, hounded by the Eumenides (Furies), travels first to Delphi to obtain ritual purgation of his mother's blood, and then, at Apollo's urging, to Athens to seek the help of Athena, who then decides herself that an impartial jury of Athenians should decide the matter. Aeschylus thus presents a drama that shows a growing awareness of the importance of free will in Athenian thought through the mythologized institution of the first jury trial.

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