The audience of the epitaphios logos assembled to hear a leading politician recount the earlier m... more The audience of the epitaphios logos assembled to hear a leading politician recount the earlier military exploits of the Athenians and how they had shaped the contemporary exploits of the war dead. The funeral oration upheld an idealised image of Athenian action in which Athens excelled in war and undertook warmaking only for noble ends. This focus attempted to reconcile the mourners to loss and grief by appealing to common and unquestionably good outcomes. By contrast, it is now orthodox to state that Athenian tragedy encouraged questioning and self-critique among the Athenians. Although the funeral speeches intimately connected past and present, at another level they clearly distinguished between them, as one speaker on one day showed how the war dead of a particular year had exemplified eternal Athenian superiority. Tragedy, however, avoided explicit coverage of the present, operating in a vague space between ancient and contemporary. This vagueness might have offered theatre-goe...
Chiara Thumiger’s book is based on doctoral research carried out between 2004 and 2008 under Mich... more Chiara Thumiger’s book is based on doctoral research carried out between 2004 and 2008 under Michael Silk. Although its main focus is indeed Euripides’ Bacchae, T. ranges more widely than her slightly unwieldy title indicates, and this book, especially its μrst chapter, will be of interest to anyone considering perennial questions concerning the representation of individuals in Greek literature. The central observation of the book, which runs through it, unifying it and illuminating topics well beyond characterisation in tragedy, and which I reduce here to its barest bones, is that since the view of self is indivisible from the view of the surrounding reality, individual characterisation within a piece of literature is tied to the conception of the world within which those characters operate. Chapter 1 o¶ers a crisp summary of the history of scholarship of character in Greek literature, as T. sets cogent criticism of speciμc scholars in the broader context of the di¶erences between ...
In Terence Rattigan’s The Browning Version the crusty old Classics master disdainfully describes ... more In Terence Rattigan’s The Browning Version the crusty old Classics master disdainfully describes interest in elegant translation as mere “collaborating with Aeschylus”. Yet translators must surely collaborate with the author, to create equivalent words that will resonate with their audience as the Greek dramatists’ words resonated with theirs. An added dimension in translating Greek drama is that, unless the translation’s purpose is only to elucidate the Greek, the collaborative net must encompass directors, designers, actors, and audience. Since the translator(s) have agonized over the mot juste or over transforming or removing a Greek expression for greater accessibility, they can view their final version not only as an end product, but also as the best version. In effect, their translation stands almost on the level of the original, at least in the relationship they hope that it will have with an audience. From the perspective of the director and actors, who have probably not bee...
Suzanne Collins' trilogy, The Hunger Games has been one of the great publishing phenomena in ... more Suzanne Collins' trilogy, The Hunger Games has been one of the great publishing phenomena in Young Adult literature in the last five years and the trilogy has also piqued the interest of professional scholars, resulting in some interesting critical readings of Collins' work. Although articles routinely mention the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur and the Roman gladiatorial games as one of the multiple influences on the world imagined by Collins in her work, no article has yet focused exclusively on these classical and mythological motifs or has discussed them in any great depth. This article explores the multiple resonances of mythological paradigms (the Theseus myth being but one of these) and of gladiatorial practices in the first novel of the trilogy, The Hunger Games. I argue that although the classical and mythological references are not the only influences shaping the book (the most dominant being that of the conventions of reality television), when examined carefully,...
It is often suggested that the Greek tragedians present clinically credible pictures of mental di... more It is often suggested that the Greek tragedians present clinically credible pictures of mental disturbance. For instance, some modern interpreters have compared the process by which Cadmus brings Agave back to sanity in Euripides’ Bacchae with modern psychotherapy. But a reading of medical writers’ views on the psychological dimension of medicine offers little evidence for believing that these scenes reflect the practices of late fifth-century Athenian doctors, for whom verbal cures are associated with older traditions of non-rational thought, and thus are scorned in favor of more “scientific cures” based on diet or medication. This paper will argue that Athenian tragedians, working from older traditions that advocated verbal cures for some mental ailments, do understand the potential psychological effects that their work can have on audiences, since tragedy requires psychological interaction with its audience in order to be effective. From a close reading of select scenes in Euripi...
The audience of the epitaphios logos assembled to hear a leading politician recount the earlier m... more The audience of the epitaphios logos assembled to hear a leading politician recount the earlier military exploits of the Athenians and how they had shaped the contemporary exploits of the war dead. The funeral oration upheld an idealised image of Athenian action in which Athens excelled in war and undertook warmaking only for noble ends. This focus attempted to reconcile the mourners to loss and grief by appealing to common and unquestionably good outcomes. By contrast, it is now orthodox to state that Athenian tragedy encouraged questioning and self-critique among the Athenians. Although the funeral speeches intimately connected past and present, at another level they clearly distinguished between them, as one speaker on one day showed how the war dead of a particular year had exemplified eternal Athenian superiority. Tragedy, however, avoided explicit coverage of the present, operating in a vague space between ancient and contemporary. This vagueness might have offered theatre-goe...
Chiara Thumiger’s book is based on doctoral research carried out between 2004 and 2008 under Mich... more Chiara Thumiger’s book is based on doctoral research carried out between 2004 and 2008 under Michael Silk. Although its main focus is indeed Euripides’ Bacchae, T. ranges more widely than her slightly unwieldy title indicates, and this book, especially its μrst chapter, will be of interest to anyone considering perennial questions concerning the representation of individuals in Greek literature. The central observation of the book, which runs through it, unifying it and illuminating topics well beyond characterisation in tragedy, and which I reduce here to its barest bones, is that since the view of self is indivisible from the view of the surrounding reality, individual characterisation within a piece of literature is tied to the conception of the world within which those characters operate. Chapter 1 o¶ers a crisp summary of the history of scholarship of character in Greek literature, as T. sets cogent criticism of speciμc scholars in the broader context of the di¶erences between ...
In Terence Rattigan’s The Browning Version the crusty old Classics master disdainfully describes ... more In Terence Rattigan’s The Browning Version the crusty old Classics master disdainfully describes interest in elegant translation as mere “collaborating with Aeschylus”. Yet translators must surely collaborate with the author, to create equivalent words that will resonate with their audience as the Greek dramatists’ words resonated with theirs. An added dimension in translating Greek drama is that, unless the translation’s purpose is only to elucidate the Greek, the collaborative net must encompass directors, designers, actors, and audience. Since the translator(s) have agonized over the mot juste or over transforming or removing a Greek expression for greater accessibility, they can view their final version not only as an end product, but also as the best version. In effect, their translation stands almost on the level of the original, at least in the relationship they hope that it will have with an audience. From the perspective of the director and actors, who have probably not bee...
Suzanne Collins' trilogy, The Hunger Games has been one of the great publishing phenomena in ... more Suzanne Collins' trilogy, The Hunger Games has been one of the great publishing phenomena in Young Adult literature in the last five years and the trilogy has also piqued the interest of professional scholars, resulting in some interesting critical readings of Collins' work. Although articles routinely mention the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur and the Roman gladiatorial games as one of the multiple influences on the world imagined by Collins in her work, no article has yet focused exclusively on these classical and mythological motifs or has discussed them in any great depth. This article explores the multiple resonances of mythological paradigms (the Theseus myth being but one of these) and of gladiatorial practices in the first novel of the trilogy, The Hunger Games. I argue that although the classical and mythological references are not the only influences shaping the book (the most dominant being that of the conventions of reality television), when examined carefully,...
It is often suggested that the Greek tragedians present clinically credible pictures of mental di... more It is often suggested that the Greek tragedians present clinically credible pictures of mental disturbance. For instance, some modern interpreters have compared the process by which Cadmus brings Agave back to sanity in Euripides’ Bacchae with modern psychotherapy. But a reading of medical writers’ views on the psychological dimension of medicine offers little evidence for believing that these scenes reflect the practices of late fifth-century Athenian doctors, for whom verbal cures are associated with older traditions of non-rational thought, and thus are scorned in favor of more “scientific cures” based on diet or medication. This paper will argue that Athenian tragedians, working from older traditions that advocated verbal cures for some mental ailments, do understand the potential psychological effects that their work can have on audiences, since tragedy requires psychological interaction with its audience in order to be effective. From a close reading of select scenes in Euripi...
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