A Cultural History of Tragedy in Antiquity

by Emily Wilson (Editor), Rebecca Bushnell (Editor)

Overview

In this volume, tragedy in antiquity is examined synoptically, from its misty origins in archaic Greece, through its central position in the civic life of ancient Athens and its performances across the Greek-speaking world, to its new and very different instantiations in Republican and Imperial Roman contexts. Lively, original essays by eminent scholars trace the shifting dramatic forms, performance environments, and social meanings of tragedy as it was repeatedly reinvented. Tragedy was consistently seen as the most serious of all dramatic genres; these essays trace a sequence of different visions of what the most serious kind of dramatic story might be, and the most appropriate ways of telling those stories on stage.

Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: forms and media; sites of performance and circulation; communities of production and consumption; philosophy and social theory; religion, ritual, and myth; politics of city and nation; society and family, and gender and sexuality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350154889
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	05/20/2021
Series:	The Cultural Histories Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	232
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Emily Wilson is a Professor of Classical studies and Chair of the Program in Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, USA.
Emily Wilson is a Professor of Classical Studies and Chair of the Program in Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. She is the author of The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca (2014). She was the Classics editor, third edition of the Norton Anthology of World Literature (2012), and translator of Six Tragedies of Seneca (2010). She is also the author of The Death of Socrates: Hero, Villain, Chatterbox, Saint (2007), and Mocked with Death: Tragic Overliving from Sophocles to Milton (2004), which won the Charles Bernheimer Prize of the American Comparative Literature Association, 2003.
Rebecca Bushnell is School of Arts and Sciences Board of Advisors Emerita Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania, USA. Her books include Prophesying Tragedy: Sign and Voice in Sophocles' Theban Plays (1988); Tragedies of Tyrants: Political Thought and Theater in the English Renaissance (1990); A Culture of Teaching: Early Modern Humanism in Theory and Practice (1996); Green Desire: Imagining Early Modern English Gardens (2003); A Companion to Tragedy ( 2005); and Tragedy: A Short Introduction (2007). She is Immediate Past President of the Shakespeare Association of America,

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Series Preface

Introduction, Emily Wilson (University of Pennsylvania, USA)

1. Forms and Media, Naomi Weiss (Harvard University, USA)
2. Sites of Performance and Circulation, Rosa D'Andújar (King's College London, UK)
3. Communities of Production and Consumption, Eirene Visvardi (Wesleyan University, USA)
4. Philosophy and Social Theory, Austin Busch (College at Brockport, USA)
5. Religion, Ritual and Myth, Isabelle Torrance (Aarhus University, Denmark)
6. Politics of City and Nation, Robert Cowan (University of Sydney, Australia)
7. Society and Family, Marcel Widzicz (Southern Virginia University, USA)
8. Gender and Sexuality, Kirk Ormand (Oberlin College, USA)

Notes
Bibliography
Index