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The article offers information about "Pericles, Prince of Tyre" a Jacobean play written at least in part by William Shakespeare and included in modern editions of his collected works despite questions over its authorship. Topics discussed include acknowledgement of and critical engagement with English poet William Shakespeare's self-reflexivity; distinct genre of metatheatre different from tragedy; and forms and functions of early modern metatheatre.

The article discusses how book historians and bibliographers rarely discuss metatheatre, while playbooks offered early readers opportunities for theatrical self-reflexivity that were exclusive to the medium of print. Topics discussed include acknowledgement of and critical engagement with English poet William Shakespeare's self-reflexivity; distinct genre of metatheatre different from tragedy; and forms and functions of early modern metatheatre.

The article offers information about "Cymbeline," a play by William Shakespeare set in Ancient Britain and based on legends that formed part of the Matter of Britain concerning the early Celtic British King Cunobeline. Topics discussed include acknowledgement of and critical engagement with Shakespeare's self-reflexivity; and forms and functions of early modern metatheatre.

The author highlight the shift of the tragic generic boundaries and performance texts by focusing on the centrality of the discourse on tragedy to formulations of modernity. Topics discussed include philosophical texts associated with German Idealism which utilize tragedy to model ethical and political problems; and need of developing a dialogue between modern approaches and ancient texts in order to establish the value of a more interpenetrative approach.

The article critiques author Frances Burney's depiction of a Gothic heroine in the tragedy "Camilla." Other topics explored include scenes with elements of horror and supernatural space, the influence of author Ann Radcliffe on the tone of the novel, and the manner in which Burney relates the supernatural into domestic space.

This chapter analyses the impact of reperformance traditions on the transmission of the texts of classical drama, including, but not limited to, the question of actors' interpolations and adaptations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter surveys the evidence for the reperformances of the works of Aeschylus from as early as the fifth century. Through a discussion of testimonies from the ancient biographers, ancient scholiasts, Herodotus, Philostratus, but also the fifth-century comedians, I attempt to highlight the (re)performative importance of Aeschylean tragedy in theatrical history and to show that restagings of drama started occurring during Aeschylus' lifetime and were systematically developed after his death in 456. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the two prologues that prefaced the Rhesus according to an ancient Hypothesis to the play (both are missing in our manuscripts). In particular, it highlights the literary ambitions of these prologues as texts probably composed to serve fourth- or early third-century reperformances of the play, and explores the disparaging opinion of the author of the Hypothesis, who considered one of the prologues bad enough to have been 'composed by actors'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented regarding the attributes to fake death scene in European drama focusing on the fake death in the play "Romeo and Juliet" by playwright William Shakespeare. It offers an overview on the attributes of fake death scenes in drama. The author also explores the presence of necrophilia inside the play and the logic of the play relating to the establishment of a new tragic method in drama.

There is a widespread practice of spelling the forms κεχρώσμεθα in Euripides' Medea 497 and ϕώζειν in Strattis, fr. 9 K.–A. with the long diphthong omega–iota, that is, κεχρώισμεθα or κεχρῴσμεθα and ϕώιζειν or ϕῴζειν. These spellings are not correct from the etymological point of view, but are recommended by ancient grammarians. In this note I identify the foundation on which these recommendations rest, and provide an assessment of its philological solidness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tragedy is Man’s heroic vision, signifying the triumph of intellect against the measures of the material [ύλη], against the defeat and death of the human body. Tragedy, through the Aristotelean περιπέτεια, άναγνώρισις and περιωόυνίες, extols the morally autonomous individual who envies, endeavors, and reaches the divine and lays a mirror before human nature. Tragedy, the art of nostos, emanates from the alluring union between customs and rituals and it denotes the abrogation of the interval between divine and human. The ideological and political content of (ancient) drama is a spring of inspiration and moral speculation for the educator - theatre - pedagogue and the student at the time of crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on ceremonial theater and tragedy with regards to French and German classicism. It discusses the four major phases of the relationship between ceremonial and tragedy theater, the interaction between politics and aesthetics, and ceremonial theater's semiotics. Other topics include dramatist Jean Racine's tragedy that counteracted ceremonial theater, tragedy of ceremonial theater, and the decline of ceremonial theater.

The classical tragedies relate conflicts, choices and dilemmas that have meaningful parallels in our own experience. Many of the normative dimensions of tragedy, however, rely critically on the causal and motivational efficacy of divine forces. In particular, these narratives present supernatural interventions invading their characters’ practical deliberations and undermining their claims to autonomous agency. Does this dynamic find any analogy in a contemporary, secular conception of moral agency? It does, but it is an analogy that challenges certain standard philosophical accounts of agentive self-governance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of CEDRUS is the property of Mediterranean Civilisations Research Institute and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of the Cukurova University Institute of Social Sciences is the property of Cukurova University Institute of Social Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The resolution at the end of Sophokles' Aias is brought about through a collaborative rhetorical strategy between Odysseus and Agamemnon. They agree to redirect their agôn away from the deliberative question of whether to bury Aias toward an interrogation of Odysseus' philia, so that Agamemnon can eventually grant the burial publicly as a favor to Odysseus. In Aristotelian terms, the debate takes the unusual form of developing the character pistis in isolation from the logical pistis. This mutual avoidance of a demand for theoretical agreement is analogous to democratic practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents Information on several papers discussed at the 35th Comparative Drama Conference (CDC) held in Los Angeles, California, March 24-26, 2011. The topics focused on classical drama and plays, including the use of Greek tragedy as a model for Black Classicism and the idea and meaning of Greek tragedies. The conference featured keynoter Emily Greenwood and several staged readings and panels including those presented by Stratos E. Constantinidis, Ruby Blondell, and Sarah H. Nooter.

The article discusses the ideas of German philosophers Friedrich Schiller and Johann Gottfried Herder on the introduction of music into Greek tragedy. It suggests that Schiller saw music as a threat to the listener's aesthetic experience and drew on the tradition of French tragedy, while Herder believed in music's expressive and romantic aspects and drew on the tradition of the English epic. The author comments on the philosophers' different beliefs concerning antiquity and the Enlightenment. He explores the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, or the union of gesture, speech, and music.

Amongst the most troublesome of classical tragedies is the Heracles by Euripides. Interpreters are puzzled by its form, its structure, its jarring transition, and its ending. However, not only are its innovative meta-theatrical devices instructive of Euripides' experimentation with the tragic genre; recently, Katherine Riley (2008) has revisited its performance history, and her comment that it resurfaces at pivotal moments of historical importance may engender a proposal that it contains a message that is significant for our time, if not, indeed, for all time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the silences of four characters in "Trachiniae," a dramatic play by Sophocles. It explains that silences in a theatrical production draw attention to how tragedy communicates through both sight and sound. It notes that a silence is identified when another character in a play talks about it and draws attention to it. Also included are a discussion on the silences of the characters including Iole, Deianeira, Aphrodite, and Heracles.

This article discusses the views of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche on the relationship of the pre-Socratic philosophers and the genesis of Greek tragedy. It explores the possibility of a textual interpretation of Nietzsche's analysis of the origins of tragedy, and analyses whether Nietzsche's first book—"The Birth of Tragedy"—would have been more coherent if he had written it later in life. It uses the essay "Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks" as a basis for its analysis.

The article discusses the artistic representation of tragic emotion, in the context of accounts provided by the classical Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle. It focuses on the questions of whether tragic emotions have moral significance and, if so, whether a non-utilitarian theory of tragedy in art can be justified. Aristotle's opinion, that the rational cultivation of appropriate emotions is necessary for virtue, is described. This view is said to be important for the theory of tragedy, and an advance over Plato's opinion that emotions are hostile to reason. An argument is presented that the Aristotelian perspective does not reduce all tragedies to merely didactic works, since their effectiveness still depends in large part on their aesthetic power, which is a separate issue.

The article explores the human figure as illustrated by theatrical anthropocentricism. The roles of human action alongside speech in the mutation of anthropocentricism on the stage is discussed as it relates to classical philosophical texts and modernism. Guidelines for the critique of anthropocentricism, which include theatricality, are set forth and the Western interpretation of scene are examined. The author comments on Aristotle's notion of tragedy in light of Aristotelian drama and Dramatic Platonism.

The article presents an analysis of the theatrical play "The Suppliants," by Aeschylus. It highlights the play's supplication scene wherein the Danaids persuade the Argive assembly and demand protection from king Peslagus of Argos from being married to their cousins. The analysis focuses on the argument that the deviant features in the suppliant scene indirectly refer to and contrasts the themes of nymph cult, which links the themes of fertility and marriage in the scenes. It exerts that these themes are important to the Aeschylus' tetralogy, including the satyr play "Amymone." It also explores its similarity to Aeschylus fr. 168, which is often referred to "Semele," in which the Danaids' role alluded to the Argive nymphs.

The article analyzes concepts of cannibalism in the play "Titus Andronicus" by William Shakespeare. Lore about the New World was rife with tales of cannibalism. The author identifies two different concepts of the eating of human flesh, one called cannibalism and the other anthropophagy. Anthropophagy is a concept linked with Greco-Roman tragedy and emphasizes the physical act of eating. Representations of New World cannibalism from the time focus on the spectacle of dismemberment and cooking, which displace the actual eating in historic accounts. It notes that in "Titus Andronicus," both kinds of flesh-eating are portrayed and provide a mechanism for mutual debasement of victims and victors yielding no sustenance and thus revealing inhumanity.

A number of individual passages in Rhesus, a tragedy whose attribution to Euripides has repeatedly been questioned, evince extensive familiarity with institutions and mentalities prevalent in fourth-century Macedonia. The paper argues that Rhesus was composed and produced for a Macedonian performance context, probably between the late 350s and the late 330s BC, by an author who, while familiar with Athenian tragedy and conceivably of Athenian origin, may have lived in the court of Philip II or Alexander III. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article comments on the book "Heracles," by Euripides. The author argues that unlike the study of Trachiniae, interpretations of the book have neglected the hero's body. He implies that it examines the eruption of that body midway through the tragedy as a part of Heracles that is daemonic and strange, but also integral to his identity. He adds that the symptoms were contested sites of interpretation in the late fifth century, supporting both conventional narratives about human suffering and new stories advanced by contemporary medicine and ethics.

The influence exerted by tragedy on the comedies of Aristophanes has attracted much attention and this article examines one of its manifestations—his preoccupation with tragic lamentation. Focusing, in particular, on Acharnians 1069-142 and 1174-234, I attempt to examine how he exploits some of the basic features of tragic laments in the context of the comic plot and to discuss how this parodic juxtaposition of the polar worlds of tragedy and comedy functions within the play. A detailed consideration of parallels from tragedy suggests that Aristophanes had in mind specific tragic patterns, in the exaggeration and/or distortion of which the audience would no doubt have recognized some of the most striking characteristics of tragic lamentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brutus the Liberator paid dearly for his success. Fear of a Tarquin resurgence led him to force his consular colleague Collatinus into exile, to preside over the public execution of his own sons, and to share a ferocious death in single combat with Arruns, the Tarquin heir. Livy made history of this story (2.1-6), but it could easily have become the tragedy of a man trapped in an ideology of his own making, who discovers only through a series of increasingly painful choices what it really means to be "Brutus." Euripides wrote such a play about Agamemnon (Iphigeneia at Aulis), but there was never a comparable play at Rome about Brutus. Though Romans celebrated his expulsion of the Tarquins on the stage as well as in their histories, no dramatist explored the moral ambiguities of his ensuing consulship. The price humans pay for greatness was not a Roman preoccupation: their literature shows little evidence of what we would call a tragic sensibility.1 Yet the Romans had plays they called tragedies, and Roman tragedies enjoyed a considerable following. The many Plautine jokes and parodies at tragedy's expense confirm its ubiquity at the festivals.2 In Cicero's day, connoisseurs could recognize famous tragic arias by their opening notes, and whole audiences wept for Pacuvius' Deiphilus and rose to applaud the nobility of his Orestes. Tragedies in Latin were also taught in schools and read in studies, adding to the "cultural capital" of the elite and enriching the poetry of subsequent generations.3 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines issues within the study and teaching of literary translations. The author says that many translations are designed to domesticate the text but he feels the alienness of the original should be preserved. He contends that this is the best way to force students to grapple with the ways in which the drama is familiar and identifiable.

This publication is subdivided into two major parts. Part I brings to attention and analyzes a hitherto undiscovered set-piece of Euripidean stichomythic dialogue. This dialogue occurs most regularly and most powerfully in the Euripidean tragedies up to the year 415, in situations when bad news is revealed to an unknowing character. This small pattern—for which film theory offers the suitable term 'microstructure'—consists of one speaker's false guess (or guesses) before he (or she) learns the truth. In Part II of this contribution the earlier findings are set within a larger context by means of comparison, by tentatively tracing the pattern's origin and determining what Euripides' specific achievement may be, and, finally, by pointing out fundamental similarities between the production of ancient Greek tragedy and the production of modern popular film. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article considers portrayals of war in Ancient Greek tragedy. The author examines how war is depicted in the work of Greek tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. She suggests that the views of war demonstrated by these playwrights mark a shift from a cultural veneration war to a general feeling that the Greek people have grown tired of fighting. The role of Athenian tragedy as a democratic art is highlighted.

Copyright of Byzantion Nea Hellás is the property of Universidad de Chile, Facultad de Filosofia y Humanidades and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Byzantion Nea Hellás is the property of Universidad de Chile, Facultad de Filosofia y Humanidades and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article, the first academic discussion of Greek tragedy on BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) Radio, offers a historical outline of the production of Aeschylus' Oresteia plays from the inaugural Greek tragedy on the Third Programme in 1946 to a landmark experimental production on Radio 3 thirty years later. This case-study demonstrates the importance of the radio medium in the reception history of Greek tragedy in twentieth-century Britain, and attempts to open up the discussion of the social and cultural impact of these productions. The radio medium, in permeating cultural, economic, and geographical boundaries, undoubtedly brought knowledge and experience of Greek tragedy in performance to an audience which was at once massive and diverse, and situated beyond the theatrical and educational spheres usually occupied by Greek tragedy. Attention is focused on the collaborative relationship between radio producers (such as Val Gielgud, Raymond Raikes, and John Theocharis) and translators and writers (such as Louis MacNeice, Philip Vellacott and Gabriel Josipovici), which secured a steady flow of new scripts for production, introductory talks for broadcast, and explanatory articles for publication in the Radio Times. The process also, importantly, encouraged the emerging function of the producer as textual editor for the medium, manipulating the script for realization in the visualizing imagination of the listener. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unforgivability in Euripides' Medea is explored in the context of intra-psychic forces favoring disruption and narcissistic withdrawal and precluding the influence of forces favoring repair of bonds, not necessarily to the betrayer, but to the social and moral order. The forces underlying disruption and withdrawal operate to such an extent that forgiveness and cooperation with the social order become impossible. Euripides' literary insights are explored with the purpose of deepening and extending the psychoanalytic understanding of shame, shame fantasies, projective identification, and vengefulness as they bear on the problem of forgiveness. Three types of shame fantasy are pertinent to the transformation of Medea's mental state from one of anguished and disjointed shame to diabolical vengefulness: anticipatory paranoid shame, the projective identification of shame, and withdrawal as a defense against shame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion on the use of tragedy in literature. The author says that nearly all theorists of drama, from philosopher G.W.F. Hegel to the present dramatists, assume that the advent of modernity increasingly renders classical forms of tragedy aesthetically moribund and politically irrelevant. According to this historicist view, the dramas of Greek writers of tragedies Aeschylus and Sophocles survive, but only as historical artifacts within the culture museum of modernity. They may inspire modern thinkers and artists, but their forms, themes, and contexts cannot be revived except as an exercise in antiquarianism. German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche and Irish playwright W.B. Yeats provide striking, if rare instances of the critic and dramatist who refused to accept the historicist premises underlying the modern view of Attic tragedy. Nietzsche, no less than Hegel, regards the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles as antithetical to many of the values and institutions of European modernity but for that very reason, he looks to the modern operas of German composer Richard Wagner as both marking a genuine rebirth of the spirit of classical tragedy and heralding a revolutionary antimodern turn in the cultural history of modern Europe.

Focuses on the first stasimon of Sophocles' "Antigone." Affinity between objects of analysis and the method of analysis; Writings of Walter Benjamin in "On the Concept of History," about the past and the present; Possibility of transformation through a type of recognition; Interarticulation of place and possibility; Link between Greek tragedy and the present; Differing relations between fate and subjectivity in regards to ancient and modern tragedy.

This article examines motivations for tragic parody in Plautus' Casina, 621 ff. It details how the Casina, and Pardalisca's parodic scene in particular, treat themes common to Greek tragedy—the spatial opposition between male and female worlds, the on-stage struggle for power between men and women, and female madness—and also explores Plautus' comic manipulation of Aristotle's tragic theory. Through her tragic performance, Pardalisca provides a very different perspective on the absent Casina from the one provided thus far in the play and believably represents Casina's possible actions and state of mind. Pardalisca transgresses the conventional boundaries between male/outside and female/inside established early in the play, and she uses the public space outside of the house to externalize and legitimize the private concerns of women inside the house, and to rupture the physical and emotional constraints on women through her paratragic scene. The final 'wedding' scene then comically mirrors Pardalisca's tragic scene and provides a glimpse of the sexual violence Casina might have been compelled to endure had she been forced to comply with Lysidamus' plan, yet neatly turns male violence back on male characters and makes them the comic victims, not just of the women characters, but of themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]