Download or read book Sophocles Women of Trachis written by Brad Levett and published by Bristol Classical Press. This book was released on 2004-08-27 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sophocles' "Women of Trachis" tells the tragic tale of Herakles return home from his labours. This companion to the play provides the social and historical background and employs a number of critical approaches to interpret the major thematic and dramatic issues of the play.
Download or read book When Heroes Sing written by Sarah Nooter and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-31 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the lyrical voice of Sophocles' heroes and argues that their identities are grounded in poetic identity and power. It begins by looking at how voice can be distinguished in Greek tragedy and by exploring ways that the language of tragedy was influenced by other kinds of poetry in late fifth-century Athens. In subsequent chapters, Professor Nooter undertakes close readings of Sophocles' plays to show how the voice of each hero is inflected by song and other markers of lyric poetry. She then argues that the heroes' lyrical voices set them apart from their communities and lend them the authority and abilities of poets. Close analysis of the Greek texts is supplemented by translations and discussions of poetic features more generally, such as apostrophe and address. This study offers new insight into the ways that Sophoclean tragedy inherits and refracts the traditions of other poetic genres.
Download or read book Sophocles Tragic World written by Charles Segal and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much has been written about the heroic figures of Sophocles' powerful dramas. Now Charles Segal focuses our attention not on individual heroes and heroines, but on the world that inspired and motivated their actions--a universe of family, city, nature, and the supernatural. He shows how these ancient masterpieces offer insight into the abiding question of tragedy: how one can make sense of a world that involves so much apparently meaningless violence and suffering. In a series of engagingly written interconnected essays, Segal studies five of Sophocles' seven extant plays: Ajax, Oedipus Tyrannus, Philoctetes, Antigone, and the often neglected Trachinian Women. He examines the language and structure of the plays from several interpretive perspectives, drawing both on traditional philological analysis and on current literary and cultural theory. He pays particular attention to the mythic and ritual backgrounds of the plays, noting Sophocles' reinterpretation of the ancient myths. His delineation of the heroes and their tragedies encompasses their relations with city and family, conflicts between men and women, defiance of social institutions, and the interaction of society, nature, and the gods. Segal's analysis sheds new light on Sophocles' plays--among the most widely read works of classical literature--and on their implications for Greek views on the gods, moral life, and sexuality. Table of Contents: Preface Introduction Drama and Perspective in Ajax Myth, Poetry, and Heroic Values in the Trachinian Women Time, Oracles, and Marriage in the Trachinian Women Philoctetes and the Imperishable Piety Lament and Closure in Antigone Time and Knowledge in the Tragedy of Oedipus Freud, Language, and the Unconscious The Gods and the Chorus: Zeus in Oedipus Tyrannus Earth in Oedipus Tyrannus Abbreviations Notes Index Reviews of this book: "Sophocles' Tragic World is...a lucidly written work of great theoretical sophistication and learning, offering many new insights into the fundamental meaning of the plays." DD--Victor Bers, Bryn Mawr Classical Review "[Segal] refutes reductionist attempts to derive from a Sophoclean tragedy a unitary moral or message. The dramas, Segal argues, present insoluble dilemmas that require the audience to engage with the situations the characters face, the choices the characters make, and the consequences of those choices...This book will be of interest to anyone who wants a fuller appreciation of Sophocles' dramatic art." DD--Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, New England Classical Journal "Segal's strengths as a critic are sensitivity to detail, breadth of cultural reference, and open-mindedness; these qualities make his writing rich...This is a book which could enhance any reader's understanding of Sophocles." DD--Greece and Rome "A fine collection of nine essays...A richly rewarding collection amply illustrated with specific detailed reference to the texts that one always tries to inculcate in one's pupils: for them, this will be invaluable." DD--Jim Neville, JACT Review "Sophocles' Tragic World is an organized collection of nine essays (plus introduction) on five plays, Ajax, Trachiniae, Philoctetes, Antigone, and--especially--OT, to which four of the chapters are devoted. The introduction and three of the essays (one on Ant., two on OT) are new; the others are revisions of published articles, dating originally from 1976 to 1993. For several decades now, [Segal] has been so articulate about Greek tragedy, and so productive in his articulations, that one has acquired an unusually sharp sense...of the changing shape and direction that his readings have taken over the years." DD--M.S. Silk, Classical Review "Charles Segal has written a superb critical study of five of the seven extant plays by Sophocles...Segal's analytical interests go beyond the usual discussion of the nature of heroic greatness of tragic stature. He is principally concerned with the 'tragic world' which Sophocles depicts...Segal writes in a lucid, jargon-free prose that is also dramaturgy of the highest order...Segal's strength as a critic issues directly from a wide-ranging sensitivity to the epic tradition and a nuanced awareness of the dramatic use of temporal shifts and poetic displacements. Segal's terrific, lucid book should also be required reading for anyone interested in the tragic stature of women in Greek tragedy. His complex thinking on the subject gives justice to the basic intractability of Sophocles's views on the nature of feminine sensibility." DD--Randy Gener, New York Theatre Wire "This work includes five previously published essays and four new essays. Once more, Segal brings his considerable scholarship to bear on the plays of Sophocles, addressing five of the seven extant tragedies." DD--Choice
Download or read book Sophocles An Interpretation written by R. P. Winnington-Ingram and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1980-02-28 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A series of interconnected studies which analyze the seven surviving tragedies by Sophocles.
Download or read book Eating of the Gods written by Jan Kott and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 1987-06 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Eating of the Gods the distinguished Polish critic Jan Kott reexamines Greek tragedy from the modern perspective. As in his earlier acclaimed Shakespeare Our Contemporary, Kott provides startling insights and intuitive leaps which link our world to that of the ancient Greeks. The title refers to the Bacchae of Euripides, that tragedy of lust, revenge, murder, and "the joy of eating raw flesh" which Kott finds paradigmatic in its violence and bloodshed.
Download or read book Exchange and the Maiden written by Kirk Ormand and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2014-08-27 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marriage is a central concern in five of the seven extant plays of the Greek tragedian Sophocles. In this pathfinding study, Kirk Ormand delves into the ways in which these plays represent and problematize marriage, thus offering insights into how Athenians thought about the institution of marriage. Ormand takes a two-fold approach. He first explores the legal and economic underpinnings of Athenian marriage, an institution designed to guarantee the legitimate continuation of patrilineal households. He then shows how Sophocles' plays Trachiniae, Electra, Antigone, Ajax, and Oedipus Tyrannus both reinforce and critique this ideology by representing marriage as a homosocial exchange between men, in which women are objects who may attempt—but always fail—to become self-acting subjects. These fresh readings provide the first systematic study of marriage in Sophocles. They draw important connections between drama and marriage as rituals concerned with controlling potentially disruptive female subjectivities.
Download or read book Killing Hercules written by Richard Rowland and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-12-08 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers an entirely new reception history of the myth of Hercules and his wife/killer Deianira. The book poses, and attempts to answer, two important and related questions. First, why have artists across two millennia felt compelled to revisit this particular myth to express anxieties about violence at both a global and domestic level? Secondly, from the moment that Sophocles disrupted a myth about the definitive exemplar of masculinity and martial prowess and turned it into a story about domestic abuse, through to a 2014 production of Handel’s Hercules that was set in the context of the ‘war on terror’, the reception history of this myth has been one of discontinuity and conflict; how and why does each culture reinvent this narrative to address its own concerns and discontents, and how does each generation speak to, qualify or annihilate the certainties of its predecessors in order to understand, contain or exonerate the aggression with which their governors – of state and of the household – so often enforce their authority, and the violence to which their nations, and their homes, are perennially vulnerable?
Download or read book Intimate Commerce written by Victoria Wohl and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exchanges of women between men occur regularly in Greek tragedy—and almost always with catastrophic results. Instead of cementing bonds between men, such exchanges rend them. They allow women, who should be silent objects, to become monstrous subjects, while men often end up as lifeless corpses. But why do the tragedies always represent the transferal of women as disastrous? Victoria Wohl offers an illuminating analysis of the exchange of women in Sophocles' Trachiniae, Aeschylus' Agamemnon, and Euripides' Alcestis. She shows how the attempts of women in these plays to become active subjects rather than passive objects of exchange inevitably fail. While these failures seem to validate male hegemony, the women's actions, however futile, blur the distinction between male subject and female object, calling into question the very nature of the tragic self. What the tragedies thus present, Wohl asserts, is not only an affirmation of Athens' reigning ideologies (including its gender hierarchy) but also the possibility of resistance to them and the imagination of alternatives.
Download or read book Brill s Companion to Sophocles written by Andreas Markantonatos and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-03-20 with total page 759 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brill's Companion to Sophocles offers 32 specially commissioned essays from leading international scholars which give critical examinations of the progress and direction of numerous wide-ranging debates about various aspects of Sophoclean drama. Each chapter offers an authoritative and state-of-the-art survey of current thinking and research in a particular subject area, as well as covering a wide variety of thematic angles. Recent advances in scholarship have raised new questions about Sophocles and Greek tragedy, and have overturned some long-standing assumptions. Besides presenting a comprehensive and authoritative guide to understanding Sophocles, this companion provides scholars and students with compelling fresh perspectives upon a broad range of issues in the field of Sophoclean studies.
Download or read book Suppliant Women written by Euripides and published by Greek Tragedy in New Translations. This book was released on 1995 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Tragedy and Civilization written by Charles Segal and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on comprehensive analyses of all of Sophocles' plays, on structuralist anthropology, and on other extensive work on myth and tragedy, Charles Segal examines Sophocles both as a great dramatic poet and as a serious thinker. He shows how Sophoclean tragedy reflects the human condition in its constant and tragic struggle for order and civilized life against the ever-present threat of savagery and chaotic violence, both within society and within the individual. Tragedy and Civilization begins with a study of these themes and then proceeds to detailed discussions of each of the seven plays. For this edition Segal also provides a new preface discussing recent developments in the study of Sophocles.
Download or read book The Greek Plays written by Sophocles and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 866 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark anthology of the masterpieces of Greek drama, featuring all-new, highly accessible translations of some of the world’s most beloved plays, including Agamemnon, Prometheus Bound, Bacchae, Electra, Medea, Antigone, and Oedipus the King Featuring translations by Emily Wilson, Frank Nisetich, Sarah Ruden, Rachel Kitzinger, Mary Lefkowitz, and James Romm The great plays of Ancient Greece are among the most enduring and important legacies of the Western world. Not only is the influence of Greek drama palpable in everything from Shakespeare to modern television, the insights contained in Greek tragedy have shaped our perceptions of the nature of human life. Poets, philosophers, and politicians have long borrowed and adapted the ideas and language of Greek drama to help them make sense of their own times. This exciting curated anthology features a cross section of the most popular—and most widely taught—plays in the Greek canon. Fresh translations into contemporary English breathe new life into the texts while capturing, as faithfully as possible, their original meaning. This outstanding collection also offers short biographies of the playwrights, enlightening and clarifying introductions to the plays, and helpful annotations at the bottom of each page. Appendices by prominent classicists on such topics as “Greek Drama and Politics,” “The Theater of Dionysus,” and “Plato and Aristotle on Tragedy” give the reader a rich contextual background. A detailed time line of the dramas, as well as a list of adaptations of Greek drama to literature, stage, and film from the time of Seneca to the present, helps chart the history of Greek tragedy and illustrate its influence on our culture from the Roman Empire to the present day. With a veritable who’s who of today’s most renowned and distinguished classical translators, The Greek Plays is certain to be the definitive text for years to come. Praise for The Greek Plays “Mary Lefkowitz and James Romm deftly have gathered strong new translations from Frank Nisetich, Sarah Ruden, Rachel Kitzinger, Emily Wilson, as well as from Mary Lefkowitz and James Romm themselves. There is a freshness and pungency in these new translations that should last a long time. I admire also the introductions to the plays and the biographies and annotations provided. Closing essays by five distinguished classicists—the brilliant Daniel Mendelsohn and the equally skilled David Rosenbloom, Joshua Billings, Mary-Kay Gamel, and Gregory Hays—all enlightened me. This seems to me a helpful light into our gathering darkness.”—Harold Bloom
Download or read book The Style of Sophocles written by F. R. Earp and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-09 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1944, this book examines how Sophocles' inventive use of the ancient Greek language and style justifies his place as, arguably, the greatest Athenian tragedian. Earp analyses in great detail Sophocles' use of Greek words by listing those words used in the plays that appear nowhere else in the canon of ancient literature, as well as linguistic overlap between Sophocles and other ancient authors, and his use of idiom and metre. This thoroughly-researched book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Sophoclean tragedy and textual criticism.
Download or read book Greek Tragedy written by H. D. F. Kitto and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-19 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This classic work not only records developments in the form and style of Greek drama, it also analyses the reasons for these changes. It provides illuminating answers to questions that have confronted generations of students, such as: * why did Aeschylus introduce the second actor? * why did Sophocles develop character drawing? * why are some of Euripides' plots so bad and others so good? Greek Tragedy is neither a history nor a handbook, but a penetrating work of criticism which all students of literature will find suggestive and stimulating.
Download or read book Antigone Oedipus the King Electra written by Sophocles and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-08-14 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Love and loyalty, hatred and revenge, fear, deprivation, and political ambition: these are the motives which thrust the characters portrayed in these three Sophoclean masterpieces on to their collision course with catastrophe. Recognized in his own day as perhaps the greatest of the Greek tragedians, Sophocles' reputation has remained undimmed for two and a half thousand years. His greatest innovation in the tragic medium was his development of a central tragic figure, faced with a test of will and character, risking obloquy and death rather than compromise his or her principles: it is striking that Antigone and Electra both have a woman as their intransigent 'hero'. Antigone dies rather neglect her duty to her family, Oedipus' determination to save his city results in the horrific discovery that he has committed both incest and parricide, and Electra's unremitting anger at her mother and her lover keeps her in servitude and despair. These vivid translations combine elegance and modernity, and are remarkable for their lucidity and accuracy. Their sonorous diction, economy, and sensitivity to the varied metres and modes of the original musical delivery make them equally suitable for reading or theatrical peformance. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Download or read book Rites of Passage in Ancient Greece written by Mark William Padilla and published by Bucknell University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume reflects on liminality as it relates to initiatory themes in Greek literature and on literary works, especially tragedy, that represent heroes and heroines undergoing rites of passage. Featured works include Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, Euripides' Ion and Iphigenia in Tauris, and Sophocles' Antigone and Women of Trachis.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Neo Latin written by Stefan Tilg and published by Oxford Handbooks. This book was released on 2015 with total page 633 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the dawn of the early modern period around 1400 until the eighteenth century, Latin was still the European language and its influence extended as far as Asia and the Americas. At the same time, the production of Latin writing exploded thanks to book printing and new literary and cultural dynamics. Latin also entered into a complex interplay with the rising vernacular languages. This Handbook gives an accessible survey of the main genres, contexts, and regions of Neo-Latin, as we have come to call Latin writing composed in the wake of Petrarch (1304-74). Its emphasis is on the period of Neo-Latin's greatest cultural relevance, from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Its chapters, written by specialists in the field, present individual methodologies and focuses while retaining an introductory character. The Handbook will be valuable to all readers wanting to orientate themselves in the immense ocean of Neo-Latin literature and culture. It will be particularly helpful for those working on early modern languages and literatures as well as to classicists working on the culture of ancient Rome, its early modern reception and the shifting characteristics of post-classical Latin language and literature. Political, social, cultural and intellectual historians will find much relevant material in the Handbook, and it will provide a rich range of material to scholars researching the history of their respective geographical areas of interest.
