Download or read book Slaves Masters and the Art of Authority in Plautine Comedy written by Kathleen McCarthy and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-10 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What pleasures did Plautus' heroic tricksters provide their original audience? How should we understand the compelling mix of rebellion and social conservatism that Plautus offers? Through a close reading of four plays representing the full range of his work (Menaechmi, Casina, Persa, and Captivi), Kathleen McCarthy develops an innovative model of Plautine comedy and its social effects. She concentrates on how the plays are shaped by the interaction of two comic modes: the socially conservative mode of naturalism and the potentially subversive mode of farce. It is precisely this balance of the naturalistic and the farcical that allows everyone in the audience--especially those well placed in the social hierarchy--to identify both with and against the rebel, to feel both the thrill of being a clever underdog and the complacency of being a securely ensconced authority figure. Basing her interpretation on the workings of farce and naturalism in Plautine comedy, McCarthy finds a way to understand the plays' patchwork literary style as well as their protean social effects. Beyond this, she raises important questions about popular literature and performance not only on ancient Roman stages but in cultures far from Plautus' Rome. How and why do people identify with the fictional figures of social subordinates? How do stock characters, happy endings, and other conventions operate? How does comedy simultaneously upset and uphold social hierarchies? Scholars interested in Plautine theater will be rewarded by the detailed analyses of the plays, while those more broadly interested in social and cultural history will find much that is useful in McCarthy's new way of grasping the elusive ideological effects of comedy.

Download or read book A Companion to Plautus written by Dorota Dutsch and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 551 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An important addition to contemporary scholarship on Plautus and Plautine comedy, provides new essays and fresh insights from leading scholars A Companion to Plautus is a collection of original essays on the celebrated Old Latin period playwright. A brilliant comic poet, Plautus moved beyond writing Latin versions of Greek plays to create a uniquely Roman cultural experience worthy of contemporary scholarship. Contributions by a team of international scholars explore the theatrical background of Roman comedy, the theory and practice of Plautus’ dramatic composition, the relation of Plautus’ works to Roman social history, and his influence on later dramatists through the centuries. Responding to renewed modern interest in Plautine studies, the Companion reassesses Plautus’ works—plays that are meant to be viewed and experienced—to reveal new meaning and contemporary relevance. Chapters organized thematically offer multiple perspectives on individual plays and enable readers to gain a deeper understanding of Plautus’ reflection of, and influence on Roman society. Topics include metatheater and improvisation in Plautus, the textual tradition of Plautus, trends in Plautus Translation, and modern reception in theater and movies. Exploring the place of Plautus and Plautine comedy in the Western comic tradition, the Companion: Addresses the most recent trends in the study of Roman comedy Features discussions on religion, imperialism, slavery, war, class, gender, and sexuality in Plautus’ work Highlights recent scholarship on representation of socially vulnerable characters Discusses Plautus’ work in relation to Roman stages, actors, audience, and culture Examines the plot construction, characterization, and comic techniques in Plautus’ scripts Part of the acclaimed Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World series, A Companion to Plautus is an important resource for scholars, instructors, and students of both ancient and modern drama, comparative literature, classics, and history, particularly Roman history.

Download or read book A Companion to Plautus written by Dorota Dutsch and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-03-24 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An important addition to contemporary scholarship on Plautus and Plautine comedy, provides new essays and fresh insights from leading scholars A Companion to Plautus is a collection of original essays on the celebrated Old Latin period playwright. A brilliant comic poet, Plautus moved beyond writing Latin versions of Greek plays to create a uniquely Roman cultural experience worthy of contemporary scholarship. Contributions by a team of international scholars explore the theatrical background of Roman comedy, the theory and practice of Plautus’ dramatic composition, the relation of Plautus’ works to Roman social history, and his influence on later dramatists through the centuries. Responding to renewed modern interest in Plautine studies, the Companion reassesses Plautus’ works—plays that are meant to be viewed and experienced—to reveal new meaning and contemporary relevance. Chapters organized thematically offer multiple perspectives on individual plays and enable readers to gain a deeper understanding of Plautus’ reflection of, and influence on Roman society. Topics include metatheater and improvisation in Plautus, the textual tradition of Plautus, trends in Plautus Translation, and modern reception in theater and movies. Exploring the place of Plautus and Plautine comedy in the Western comic tradition, the Companion: Addresses the most recent trends in the study of Roman comedy Features discussions on religion, imperialism, slavery, war, class, gender, and sexuality in Plautus’ work Highlights recent scholarship on representation of socially vulnerable characters Discusses Plautus’ work in relation to Roman stages, actors, audience, and culture Examines the plot construction, characterization, and comic techniques in Plautus’ scripts Part of the acclaimed Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World series, A Companion to Plautus is an important resource for scholars, instructors, and students of both ancient and modern drama, comparative literature, classics, and history, particularly Roman history.

Download or read book Plautus and the English Renaissance of Comedy written by Richard F. Hardin and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-11-08 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fifteenth-century discovery of Plautus’s lost comedies brought him, for the first time since antiquity, the status of a major author both on stage and page. It also led to a reinvention of comedy and to new thinking about its art and potential. This book aims to define the unique contribution of Plautus, detached from his fellow Roman dramatist Terence, and seen in the context of that European revival, first as it took shape on the Continent. The heart of the book, with special focus on English comedy ca. 1560 to 1640, analyzes elements of Plautine technique during the period, as differentiated from native and Terentian, considering such points of comparison as dialogue, asides, metadrama, observation scenes, characterization, and atmosphere. This is the first book to cover this ground, raising such questions as: How did comedy rather suddenly progress from the interludes and brief plays of the early sixteenth century to longer, more complex plays? What did “Plautus” mean to playwrights and readers of the time? Plays by Shakespeare, Jonson, and Middleton are foregrounded, but many other comedies provide illustration and support.

Download or read book Papers Presented at the Fourteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 2003 written by Frances Margaret Young and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Letters in Plautus written by Emilia A. Barbiero and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-12-15 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The letters in Plautus are potent tools for making and thinking about Plautine comedy inside Plautine comedy. Emilia Barbiero demonstrates that Plautus' embedded letters reify the internal performance and evince its theatricality by means of the epistolary medium's script-like ability to precipitate presence in absence. These missives thus serve as emblems of the dramatic script, and in their onstage composition and recitation they cast a portrait of the plays' textual origins into the plays themselves. But by virtue of their inscription with a premise which is identical to that of the comedies they inhabit, the Plautine letters also reproduce the relationship between the playwright's Greek models and his Latin translations: the mirror effect created by a dramatic text inscribed, read and realized within a dramatic text whose plot it also duplicates generates a mise-en-abyme which ultimately serves to contemplate problems of novelty and literary ownership that beset Plautus' literary endeavor.

Download or read book Plautus Pseudolus written by Titus Maccius Plautus and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-09 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new commentary on Pseudolus provides an excellent introduction to current trends and advances in the study of Roman comedy.

Download or read book Mendacity and the Figure of the Liar in Seventeenth Century French Comedy written by Emilia Wilton-Godberfforde and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-06-14 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book-length study devoted to this topic, Mendacity and the Figure of the Liar in Seventeenth-Century French Comedy offers an important contribution to scholarship on the theatre as well as on early modern attitudes in France, specifically on the subject of lying and deception. Unusually for a scholarly work on seventeenth-century theatre, it is particularly alert to plays as performed pieces and not simply printed texts. The study also distinguishes itself by offering original readings of Molière alongside innovative analyses of other playwrights. The chapters offer fresh insights on well-known plays by Molière and Pierre Corneille but also invite readers to discover lesser-known works of the time (by writers such as Benserade, Thomas Corneille, Dufresny and Rotrou). Through comparative and sustained close readings, including a linguistic and speech act approach, a historical survey of texts with an analysis of different versions and a study of irony, the reader is shown the manifest ways in which different playwrights incorporate the comedic tropes of lying and scheming, confusion and unmasking. Drawing particular attention to the levels of communicative or mis-communicative exchanges on the character-to-character axis and the character-to-audience axis, this work examines the process whereby characters in the comedies construct narratives designed to trick, misdirect, dazzle, confuse or exploit their interlocutors. In the different incarnations of seducer, parasite, cross-dresser, duplicitous narrator/messenger and deluded mythomaniac, the author underscores the way in which the figure of the liar both entertains and troubles, making it a fascinating subject worthy of detailed investigation.

Download or read book Plautus Pseudolus written by David Christenson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-09 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pseudolus of all Plautus' comedies most fully reveals its author's metapoetics. As its eponymous clever slave telegraphs his every move to spectators, Pseudolus highlights the aesthetic, social, and performative priorities of Plautine comedy: brilliant linguistic play, creative appropriation of comic tradition, interrogation of convention and social norms, the projection of an air of improvisation and a fresh comic universe, and exploration of dramatic mimesis itself. The extensive Introduction analyses Plautus' delightful comedy as a stage-performance, the comic playwright's translation and adaptation practices, his innovative deployment of language and metrical and musical virtuosity, as well as the play's transmission and reception. In addition to detailed elucidation of the Latin text, the Commentary examines Pseudolus as a lens into Roman slave society at the time of its debut at the Megalensian festival of 191 BCE. The edition engages throughout with current criticism and issues of interest to both students and scholars.

Download or read book Roman Drama and its Contexts written by Stavros Frangoulidis and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2016-03-21 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roman plays have been well studied individually (even including fragmentary or spurious ones more recently). However, they have not always been placed into their ‘context’, though plays (just like items in other literary genres) benefit from being seen in context. This edited collection aims to address this issue: it includes 33 contributions by an international team of scholars, discussing single plays or Roman dramatic genres (including comedy, tragedy and praetexta, from both the Republican and imperial periods) in contexts such as the literary tradition, the relationship to works in other literary genres, the historical and social situation, the intellectual background or the later reception. Overall, they offer a rich panorama of the role of Roman drama or individual plays in Roman society and literary history. The insights gained thereby will be of relevance to everyone interested in Roman drama or literature more generally, comparative literature or drama and theatre studies. This contextual approach has the potential of changing the way in which Roman drama is viewed.

Download or read book A writer s guide to Ancient Rome written by Carey Fleiner and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-28 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘A really fun idea for a book - and full of great stuff.’ Greg Jenner, Public Historian This is the perfect guide for any writer who wants to recreate the Roman world accurately in their fiction. It will aid any novelist, screenwriter, games designer or re-enactor in populating their story with authentic characters and scenes, costumes and locations. Written from a historian’s perspective, this guide pulls back the curtain to show the reader what life in Ancient Rome was really like: what they wore, what they ate, and how they spent their time at work, at home, at war, and at play. Individual chapters focus on different aspects of Romans’ lives, to give you specific knowledge of what they looked like and how they behaved, as well as a broad appreciation of what held their civilisation together, from religion, to the economy, to law and order. You may wish to work your way through the book from cover to cover, or focus specifically on individual chapters as you hone your creative writing skills. Covering the period between 200 BCE and 200 CE, A writer’s guide to Ancient Rome surveys the vast amount of sources and scholarship on the Classical world so you don’t have to! It outlines current scholarly debates and changing interpretations, suggests further reading, and recommends particular resources to mine for each topic. It gives you plenty to consider while you construct your own Roman world.

Download or read book Rome and the Mysterious Orient written by Titus Maccius Plautus and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005-12-12 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description

Download or read book Plautus Poenulus written by Erin Moodie and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first English commentary on Plautus' unabridged text

Download or read book Plautus and Roman Slavery written by Roberta Stewart and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-05-21 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book studies a crucial phase in the history of Roman slavery, beginning with the transition to chattel slavery in the third century bce and ending with antiquity’s first large-scale slave rebellion in the 130s bce. Slavery is a relationship of power, and to study slavery – and not simply masters or slaves – we need to see the interactions of individuals who speak to each other, a rare kind of evidence from the ancient world. Plautus’ comedies could be our most reliable source for reconstructing the lives of slaves in ancient Rome. By reading literature alongside the historical record, we can conjure a thickly contextualized picture of slavery in the late third and early second centuries bce, the earliest period for which we have such evidence. The book discusses how slaves were captured and sold; their treatment by the master and the community; the growth of the conception of the slave as “other than human,” and as chattel; and the problem of freedom for both slaves and society.

Download or read book Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Greek Comic Drama written by Ben Akrigg and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did audiences of ancient Greek comedy react to the spectacle of masters and slaves? If they were expected to laugh at a slave threatened with a beating by his master at one moment but laugh with him when they bantered familiarly at the next, what does this tell us about ancient Greek slavery? This volume presents ten essays by leading specialists in ancient Greek literature, culture and history, exploring the changing roles and representations of slaves in comic drama from Aristophanes at the height of the Athenian Empire to the New Comedy of Menander and the Hellenistic World. The contributors focus variously on individual comic dramas or on particular historical periods, analysing a wide range of textual, material-culture and comparative data for the practices of slavery and their representation on the ancient Greek comic stage.

Download or read book Slaves in the New Testament written by James Albert Harrill and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this exciting new analysis of slaves and slavery in the New Testament, Harrill breaks new ground with his extensive use of Greco-Roman evidence, discussion of hermeneutics, and treatment of the use of the New Testament in antebellum U.S. slavery debates. He examines in detail Philemon, 1 Corinthians, Romans, Luke-Acts, and the household codes.

Download or read book Plautus Mostellaria written by George Fredric Franko and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-01-13 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plautus' Mostellaria is one of ancient Rome's most breezy and amusing comedies. The plot is ridiculously simple: when a father returns home after three years abroad, a clever slave named Tranio devises deceptions to conceal that the son has squandered a fortune partying with pals and purchasing his prized prostitute's freedom. Tranio convinces the gullible father that his house is haunted, that his son has purchased the neighbor's house, and that he must repay a moneylender. Plautus animates this skeletal plot with farcical scenes of Tranio's slapstick abuse of a rustic slave, the young lover's maudlin song lamenting his prodigality, a cross-gender dressing routine, a drunken party, a flustered moneylender, spirited slaves rebuffing the father, and Tranio hoodwinking father and neighbor simultaneously. This is the first book-length study of Mostellaria in its literary and historical contexts. It aims to help readers and theater practitioners appreciate the script as both cultural document and performed comedy. As a cultural document, the play portrays a range of Roman preoccupations, including male ideologies of the acquisition, use and abuse of property, relations between owners and enslaved persons, the traffic in women, tensions between city and country, the appropriation and adaptation of Greek culture, and the specters of ancestry and surveillance. As a performed comedy, the play celebrates the power of creativity, improvisation and metatheater. In Mostellaria's farce, sleek simplicity replaces complexity as Plautus aggrandizes his comic hero by stripping plot to the minimum and leaving Tranio to operate alone with no resources other than his quick wit. A chapter on Mostellaria's reception considers modernity's continuing fascination with Plautine farce and trickery.