Download or read book Tragic Heroines in Ancient Greek Drama written by Hanna M. Roisman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The heroines of Greek tragedy presented in the plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides have long captivated audiences and critics. In this volume each of the eleven chapters discusses one of the heroines: Clytemnestra, Hecuba, Medea, Iphigenia, Alcestis, Antigone Electra, Deianeira, Phaedra, Creusa and Helen. The book focuses on characterisation and the motivations of the women, as well as on those of the male playwrights, and offers multiple viewpoints and critiques that enable readers to understand the context of each play and form their own views. Four core themes bridge the depictions of the heroines: the socio-political dynamic of ancient Greek expectations of women and their roles in society, the conflict of masculinity versus femininity, the alternation of defiance and submission, and the interplay between deceit and rhetoric. Each chapter offers clear descriptions of plot and mythical background, and builds on the text of the plays to enable reflections on language and performance. All technical terms are explained and key topics or references are pulled out into box features that provide further background information. Discussion points at the ends of chapters enable readers to explore various topics more deeply.
Download or read book Female Acts in Greek Tragedy written by Helene P. Foley and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-10 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although Classical Athenian ideology did not permit women to exercise legal, economic, and social autonomy, the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides often represent them as influential social and moral forces in their own right. Scholars have struggled to explain this seeming contradiction. Helene Foley shows how Greek tragedy uses gender relations to explore specific issues in the development of the social, political, and intellectual life in the polis. She investigates three central and problematic areas in which tragic heroines act independently of men: death ritual and lamentation, marriage, and the making of significant ethical choices. Her anthropological approach, together with her literary analysis, allows for an unusually rich context in which to understand gender relations in ancient Greece. This book examines, for example, the tragic response to legislation regulating family life that may have begun as early as the sixth century. It also draws upon contemporary studies of virtue ethics and upon feminist reconsiderations of the Western ethical tradition. Foley maintains that by viewing public issues through the lens of the family, tragedy asks whether public and private morality can operate on the same terms. Moreover, the plays use women to represent significant moral alternatives. Tragedy thus exploits, reinforces, and questions cultural clichés about women and gender in a fashion that resonates with contemporary Athenian social and political issues.
Download or read book Greek Tragic Women on Shakespearean Stages written by Tanya Pollard and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The book argues that rediscovered ancient Greek plays exerted a powerful and uncharted influence on sixteenth-century England's dramatic landscape, not only in academic and aristocratic settings, but also at the heart of the developing commercial theaters."--Introduction, p. 2.
Download or read book Rebel Women written by Stephen Wilmer and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-07-04 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays by many distinguished contributors, focused on the portrayal of rebel women in ancient Greek drama. Ancient Greek drama provides the modern stage with a host of powerful female characters who stand in opposition to the patriarchal structures that seek to limit and define them. For contemporary theatre directors their representation serves as a vehicle for examining and illuminating issues of gender, power, family and morality, as germane today as when the plays were first written. Rebel Women brings together essays by leading writers from across different disciplines examining the representation of ancient Greek heroines in their original contexts and on today's stage. Divided into three sections, it considers in turn international productions, Irish versions, and studies of the original texts. The articles explore how such characters as Iphigenia, Medea, Antigone and Clytemnestra have been portrayed in recent times and the challenges and provocation they offer to both contemporary audiences and dramatists alike. 'Seamus Heaney and Athol Fugard are brought together as contributors by the inspiration that ancient Greek tragedy has offered to them both. There are offerings here on Iphigenia, edea, Antigone, Clytemnestra, film, drama, Greece, Russia ... and especially Ireland. Amidst all this variety, the level of interest and of scholarship are consistently high.' Oliver Taplin, Professor of Classical Languages and Literature, Oxford University
Download or read book Female Characters in Fragmentary Greek Tragedy written by P. J. Finglass and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-02 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How were women represented in Greek tragedy? This question lies at the heart of much modern scholarship on ancient drama, yet it has typically been approached using evidence drawn only from the thirty-two tragedies that survive complete - neglecting tragic fragments, especially those recently discovered and often very substantial fragmentary papyri from plays that had been thought lost. Drawing on the latest research on both gender in tragedy and on tragic fragments, the essays in this volume examine this question from a fresh perspective, shedding light on important mythological characters such as Pasiphae, Hypsipyle, and Europa, on themes such as violence, sisterhood, vengeance, and sex, and on the methodology of a discipline which needs to take fragmentary evidence to heart in order to gain a fuller understanding of ancient tragedy. All Greek is translated to ensure wide accessibility.
Download or read book Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre 1660 1914 written by Edith Hall and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2005-07-14 with total page 768 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This lavishly illustrated book offers the first full, interdisciplinary investigation of the historical evidence for the presence of ancient Greek tragedy in the post-Restoration British theatre, where it reached a much wider audience - including women - than had access to the original texts. Archival research has excavated substantial amounts of new material, both visual and literary, which is presented in chronological order. But the fundamental aim is to explain why Greek tragedy, which played an elite role in the curricula of largely conservative schools and universities, was magnetically attractive to political radicals, progressive theatre professionals, and to the aesthetic avant-garde. All Greek has been translated, and the book will be essential reading for anyone interested in Greek tragedy, the reception of ancient Greece and Rome, theatre history, British social history, English studies, or comparative literature.
Download or read book The Captive Woman s Lament in Greek Tragedy written by Casey Dué and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The laments of captive women found in extant Athenian tragedy constitute a fundamentally subversive aspect of Greek drama. In performances supported by and intended for the male citizens of Athens, the songs of the captive women at the Dionysia gave a voice to classes who otherwise would have been marginalized and silenced in Athenian society: women, foreigners, and the enslaved. The Captive Woman's Lament in Greek Tragedy addresses the possible meanings ancient audiences might have attached to these songs. Casey Dué challenges long-held assumptions about the opposition between Greeks and barbarians in Greek thought by suggesting that, in viewing the plight of the captive women, Athenian audiences extended pity to those least like themselves. Dué asserts that tragic playwrights often used the lament to create an empathetic link that blurred the line between Greek and barbarian. After a brief overview of the role of lamentation in both modern and classical traditions, Dué focuses on the dramatic portrayal of women captured in the Trojan War, tracing their portrayal through time from the Homeric epics to Euripides' Athenian stage. The author shows how these laments evolved in their significance with the growth of the Athenian Empire. She concludes that while the Athenian polis may have created a merciless empire outside the theater, inside the theater they found themselves confronted by the essential similarities between themselves and those they sought to conquer.
Download or read book Becoming Female written by Katrina Cawthorn and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-11-01 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Becoming Female", the first book-length examination of the body in classical Athenian tragedy, reconsiders the figure of the male tragic hero, making use of both feminist and body theory. The male hero becomes female in the space of tragedy through the experience of suffering, and seems unable to return to any secure expression of masculinity. Katrina Cawthorn concentrates initially on the figure of Heracles in Sophocles' "The Women of Trachis", an exemplary specimen of the tragic process of becoming female, who exhibits many of the central issues considered in the book. The male hero is, in the course of the play, undone and feminised, while the instability of masculine identity is revealed.This theme of becoming female, and the resulting failure to circumscribe the feminine and return to any secure and triumphant concept of masculinity, is argued to be a discernible feature of the genre of tragedy. The inconclusive and disconcerting nature of tragic endings contribute to the dislocation of the tragic male and emphasise the Dionysian disturbance of the male hero.Moreover, this state of the dissolute male hero has textual and theatrical consequences, extending to affect the audience so that it too becomes feminised by the processes of tragedy."Becoming Female" is an important work for scholars and students of Classical Studies, Ancient History, Drama and Theatre Studies, Women's Studies and Cultural Studies.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy written by Martin Revermann and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-12 with total page 523 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a unique panorama of this challenging area of Greek literature, combining literary perspectives with historical issues and material culture.
Download or read book The Trojan Women written by Euripides and published by . This book was released on 1905 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Women in Greek Myth written by Mary R. Lefkowitz and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2007-08-27 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first edition of Women in Greek Myth, Mary R. Lefkowitz convincingly challenged narrow, ideological interpretations of the roles of female characters in Greek mythology. Where some scholars saw the Amazons as the last remnant of a forgotten matriarchy, Clytemnestra as a frustrated individualist, and Antigone as an oppressed revolutionary, Lefkowitz argued that such views were justified neither by the myths themselves nor by the relevant documentary evidence. Concentrating on those aspects of women’s experience most often misunderstood—life apart from men, marriage, influence in politics, self-sacrifice and martyrdom, and misogyny—she presented a far less negative account of the role of Greek women, both ordinary and extraordinary, as manifested in the central works of Greek literature. This updated and expanded edition includes six new chapters on such topics as heroic women in Greek epic, seduction and rape in Greek myth, and the parts played by women in ancient rites and festivals. Revisiting the original chapters as well to incorporate two decades of more recent scholarship, Lefkowitz again shows that what Greek men both feared and valued in women was not their sexuality but their intelligence.
Download or read book Greek Tragedy written by Edith Hall and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-01-21 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illustrated introduction to ancient Greek tragedy, written by one of its most distinguished experts, which provides all the background information necessary for understanding the context and content of the dramas. A special feature is an individual essay on every one of the surviving 33 plays.
Download or read book Sisters of Medea written by Domnica Radulescu and published by University Press of the South, Incorporated. This book was released on 2002 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an unprecedented exploration of the tragic heroine from a feminist perspective. It offers a panoramic view of heroines from various historical periods and geographical areas and redefines the tragic in terms of values and predicaments specific to female characters as well as to women outside the area of representation. -- Amazon.com.
Download or read book An Introduction to Greek Tragedy written by Ruth Scodel and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-08-16 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an accessible introduction for students and anyone interested in increasing their enjoyment of Greek tragic plays. Whether readers are studying Greek culture, performing a Greek tragedy, or simply interested in reading a Greek play, this book will help them to understand and enjoy this challenging and rewarding genre. An Introduction to Greek Tragedy provides background information, helps readers appreciate, enjoy and engage with the plays themselves, and gives them an idea of the important questions in current scholarship on tragedy. Ruth Scodel seeks to dispel misleading assumptions about tragedy, stressing how open the plays are to different interpretations and reactions. In addition to general background, the book also includes chapters on specific plays, both the most familiar titles and some lesser-known plays - Persians, Helen and Orestes - in order to convey the variety that the tragedies offer readers.
Download or read book Marriage to Death written by Rush Rehm and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The link between weddings and death—as found in dramas ranging from Romeo and Juliet to Lorca's Blood Wedding—plays a central role in the action of many Greek tragedies. Female characters such as Kassandra, Antigone, and Helen enact and refer to significant parts of wedding and funeral rites, but often in a twisted fashion. Over time the pressure of dramatic events causes the distinctions between weddings and funerals to disappear. In this book, Rush Rehm considers how and why the conflation of the two ceremonies comes to theatrical life in the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophokles, and Euripides. By focusing on the dramatization of important rituals conducted by women in ancient Athenian society, Rehm offers a new perspective on Greek tragedy and the challenges it posed for its audience. The conflation of weddings and funerals, the author argues, unleashes a kind of dramatic alchemy whereby female characters become the bearers of new possibilities. Such as formulation enables the tragedians to explore the limitations of traditional thinking and acting in fifth-century Athens. Rehm finds that when tragic weddings and funerals become confused and perverted, the aftershocks disturb the political and ideological givens of Athenian society, challenging the audience to consider new, and often radically different, directions for their city. Rush Rehm is Assistant Professor of Drama and Classics at Standford University and a free-lance theater director. He is the author of Greek Tragic Theatre (Routledge) and Aeschylus' Oresteia: A Theatre Vision (Hawthorn). Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book Tragedy and Philosophy A Parallel History written by Agnes Heller† and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-03-08 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Completed shortly before her death in 2019, Tragedy and Philosophy. A Parallel History is the sum of Agnes Heller’s reflections on European history and culture, seen through the prism of Europe’s two unique literary creations: tragedy and philosophy.
Download or read book Women in Greek Tragedy written by Synnøve Des Bouvrie and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1990 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work springs from a feminist inquiry into the role of women in Ancient Greece. The author confronts the paradox that while women were nearly invisible in public life, they played a very prominent part on the tragic stage. The book offers a thorough examination of the tragic drama and defines this medium, in an anthropological sense, as a "symbolic phenomenon," concluding that the phenomenon presents the social order and its basic institutions. The special interest of this study lies in its theoretical orientation. Drawing extensively on anthropological literature on symbolism as well as on Aristotle's Poetics, the author offers a model for analysis. Her starting point is the emotional or "tragic" workings of tragic drama, involving an inversion of the symbolic or world order. The method is then applied to eight dramas staging prominent women, providing insights which will prove useful to the study of Greek tragedy in general.
