Aeschylus

One of the most powerful ways to remedy the forgetfulness that obscures ancient fragmentary drama, in other words to “establish remedies for forgetfulness” as Palamedes claims to have done for the Greeks in the fr. 578 from the homonymous but lost tragedy by Euripides, is to expose the ancient material to the circumstances of contemporary performance. The surviving fragments of ancient Greek dramas are pieces of text which by definition are out of context since they are dislocated parts of a traumatised ancient play: the connection between text and Trauma is considered to be both literal and metaphorical. Yet, there are elements of theatricality inherent to these fragments and this is why they have been used in contemporary performances in various ways and approaches. Theodoros Terzopoulos has used fragments of lost tragedies by Aeschylus to create the performance Epigonoi in 2003 which was first presented in Germany and then toured internationally. From a chorus of five men the suffering bodies of Achilles, Actaeon, Ajax, Heracles and Philoctetes stand out and expose the tragic fate of those who collide with the divine, while the female character of Europe watches the consequences of war, herself a victim of it. In this paper the use of ancient tragic fragments for the creation of contemporary performances will be discussed and evaluated whether it is an appropriate pathway to follow against letting ancient fragmentary drama be forgotten. After presenting and analysing Terzopoulos' Epigonoi, the performativity of fragments will be argued along with their suitability as theatrical material for contemporary dramaturgy that explores the issue of fragmentation in life and in the narrative and also the issue of Trauma itself.

This article offers a new interpretation of Athenian tragedy, in which the poets competed for their audience's favour by constructing stories in which the protagonists suffer and die because they act within a world which lacks the institutional compensations of which fifth-century Athenians were so proud. Far from being a subversive or apolitical art form (the most popular current poles of scholarly interpretation), Athenian tragedy was heavily and positively involved in its contemporary social and political discourse.

PROMETEO INCATENATO
di Eschilo | traduzione di Monica Centanni.

Con Sebastiano lo Monaco, Gianluigi Fogacci, Melania Giglio, Massimiliano Vado, Claudio Mazzenga, Mirko Rizzotto.
E con Silvia Giuliano, Angela Rafanelli, Giada Prandi, Diana Manea, Alessandra Guazzini e Maria Teresa Pintus.

scene: Piero Guicciardini
costumi: Giuseppe Avallone
musiche: Dario Arcidiacono
luci: Lucilla Baroni
regia: Roberto Guicciardini

This essay argues that the methodological advantages and disadvantages that Hegel’s Natural Law essay (1802-03)  generated for the development of critical social theory become clearest in carefully reconstructing its analyses of the “tragedy of the ethical” and Aeschylus’s The Eumenides. The essay maintains that Hegel’s use of both is ambivalent. On the one hand, immediately preceding the introduction of The Eumenides, Hegel’s analysis prioritizes historical method: it develops an account of the potentially destructive processes at the core of modern European social life between the dictates of law, morality, and “absolute ethical life” by proceeding historically. On the other hand, the analysis’ introduction of “the absolute” and The Eumenides as “instruments of reconciliation” undermines its methodological commitment to developing these contradictory tensions and their resolution historically. Hegel’s methodological breakthrough insists on the priority of historical development but capitulates in the final analysis proposing resolution in terms of metaphor, knowledge, the perspective of “the absolute.” Tragedy and The Eumenides, consequently, offer us a precise sense of what is most valuable and problematic in the Natural Law essay, revealing the utmost limits of what this exploratory essay offered in the advancement of critical social analysis. Despite this setback, in concluding, the essay outlines a lasting advantage that follows from Hegel’s innovative methodology. It argues that The Natural Law essay remains significant for the history of critical social theory insofar as it remains open to the possibility of real overcoming. While its appeal to tragedy and the Eumenides might fail the very appeal itself indicates a commitment to the principle of overcoming. This commitment has potential insofar as it is pursued in terms of historical actuality: bypassing problematic structural instabilities at the core of the modern European nation state.

Após estudo sobre  as condições de performance do teatro grego antigo, segue-se a análise das peças Os Persas, Sete Contra Tebas, As Suplicantes e a trilogia Orestéia ( Agamênon, Coéforas e Eumênides).
Link para a compra
https://lojavirtual.giostrieditora.com.br/Esquilo-O-dramaturgo-guerreiro


This is a book on Aeschylus'plays: It presents basic material and analysis on The Persians, Suppliants, Seven against Thebes and Oresteia.
This book has 234 pages and it was written in Portuguese.
Link: https://lojavirtual.giostrieditora.com.br/Esquilo-O-dramaturgo-guerreiro

“Periphery” and “centre” are two concepts which could be examined in terms of geographic, linguistic, or cultural variations and constants at different periods of human history. If world literature is a united system, with an unequal center and periphery, the interlinguistic translation of Aeschylusʼ tragedies into French by Olivier Py in the twenty-first century will serve as an example in order to highlight the various facets of this multidimensional relationship. Olivier Py, an award-winning prose and theatre writer, poet, director, actor, translator, director of the Avignon Festival since 2013, translated and directed all seven surviving Aeschylean tragedies between 2008 and 2017. He thus played the role of a cultural mediator who ensured the transition from the source language to the target language by creating texts designed to be presented on stage, and following the priorities of the codified theatrical discourse of tragedy. Based on this process, the author exam-ines the various spatio-temporal and cultural relationships between periphery and centre in order to present the main points of Olivier Py’s translation strategy.

La proposition consiste à rechercher les catégories indiquées dans le cadre de conditions déterminées d’énonciation. Il s’agit de réfléchir autour de la notion d’agent en considérant deux figures singulières : le héros tragique et le citoyen démocratique, dont les caractères nous conduisent à la situation de l’Athènes du Ve siècle. En conséquence, le problème de la volonté et la constitution d’une notion d’agent responsable seront analysés à partir de l’intersection entre le domaine du discours tragique et le domaine de l’activité politique. Dans la conjonction de ces deux domaines, le problème crucial réside en la décision comme un processus subjectif. Notre idée centrale est que la figure du héros tragique évoque, avec ambiguïté, une antithèse politique mais aussi une métaphore du citoyen démocratique. Le héros tragique est une antithèse du citoyen démocratique parce que celui-ci prend uniquement des décisions comme partie d’une organisation collective, tandis que celui-là se présente en général sous une forme tyrannique. Mais le héros tragique est aussi métaphore du citoyen démocratique dans la mesure dans laquelle le processus subjectif réalisé par le héros opère comme recours de pensée des facteurs impliqués dans la prise de décision des citoyens réunis dans l’assemblée athénienne.

Ancient greek tragedy notoriously provided director Luchino Visconti and his screenwriters with invaluable inspiration while they were writing "Vaghe stelle dell'Orsa..." ("Sandra"). Working on unpublished documents and collating six different versions of the screenplay, this essay aims to establish when and in which ways the three versions of the Atridis’s myth by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides exactly influenced Visconti’s project and how they contributed to its basic ambiguity. At the same time, it shows the relevance of others suggestions of the antiquity, and in particular that of Etruscans inspired by Gabriele D’Annunzio’s novel "Forse che sì forse che no".

The depiction of monarchy in Athenian drama has puzzled many commentators, who have argued that the figure of the ‘democratic king’ is an anachronism. Other critics have taken a historicising approach, and interpreted the presence of the democratic king in tragedy as the retrojection of debate about the quality of contemporary democratic political leaders such as Pericles into the mythical environment of tragedy.
However, I shall argue that the tragedians manipulate Athenian foundation myths to present the city’s mythical monarchs, Theseus and Erechtheus, as the focus and origin of political power, and to question the democracy’s claim to political legitimacy. The mythical king is reconfigured to query the legitimacy of the Athenian constitution and the construction of Athenian ideology.
The role of the good king in the Athenian political imaginary seems to be to represent and embody the political unity of Athens, and the city’s orderly relationship with the gods and cosmic order. Their narratives show the difficulties in maintaining this order, specifically in handling crises such as supplication by outsiders whose religious or political status is problematic; good kingship is demonstrated by making the correct responses to military, political and religious challenges to the order and unity of the city, such as the arrival of Oedipus, the Heracleidae, and the Argives. Should Euripides’ and Sophocles’ manipulations of myths be read as authorising the transfer to democracy, or undermining its claims to power?
Tragedy clearly rejects the ‘bad’ form of single-person rule, tyranny; the audience at the City Dionysia could assess potentially tyrannical rulers (such as Creon in Sophocles’ Antigone and other Theban plays) against the recognised (though contested) category of tyrant.
In contrast, the tragedians create the category of good kingship through linking monarchy to Athenian democratic political values, a sophisticated manipulation of the political imaginary. As the fifth century BCE reaches a close, and Athenian democracy falters, the values exhibited by the good king begin to match those idealised by the struggling city (for example in the public funeral speeches) as democracy’s opponents gain ascendance in Athenian political debate.

In recent years, one of the two fully preserved ancient Greek tragic plays of disputed authorship, "Rhesus", traditionally attributed to Euripides, has been the object of a quite lively scholarly interest. The rather extreme number, for the standards of classical philology, of four published commentaries in 10 years, by Athanasios D. Stefanis, [Euripides’]: "Rhesus", Athens: Academy of Athens, 2004, Arne Feickert, Euripidis: "Rhesus", Frankfurt: Lang, 2005, Vayos Liapis, A Commentary on the "Rhesus" Attributed to Euripides, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, and Almut Fries, Pseudo-Euripides: "Rhesus", Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014 (two of them in English), and one forthcoming by Marco Fantuzzi (also in English), tangibly prove the great vogue this drama enjoys nowadays. Its doubtful nature, as far as the fusion of tragic and comic elements is concerned (see further Burnett, Directions in Euripidean Criticism: A Collection of Essays, Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 13–51, 177–88, 1985), and, most of all, its controversial authorship and date still render it a riddle—even though its non-Euripidean origin is widely accepted. Our research is an attempt to unveil the authorial status of this play, employing traditional and non-traditional authorship attribution techniques. In fact, as it will become clear in the course of this work, the latter kind of methodology allows us to approach the author of "Rhesus" in a way that was not even thought possible until the present day.

Il faut sauver la tragédie grecque de toute la gnose philosophique et tragique qui l'accable depuis près de trois siècles. Il faut la sauver de notre conception moderne de la littérature et du théâtre. Il faut la sauver de nous-mêmes pour la retrouver ailleurs, très loin, dans les lieux les plus improbables : le nô japonais, la messe catholique, la psychanalyse freudienne… À moins qu'elle ne soit déjà plus nulle part.
Car la tragédie est aussi introuvable que le tombeau d’Œdipe, ce tombeau que Sophocle prit pour thème de sa pièce ultime, laquelle est également la dernière tragédie grecque connue.
Avec Œdipe à Colone pour fil conducteur, ce livre raconte l’histoire édifiante d’une incompréhension à laquelle nous sommes voués. Il révèle les incroyables trahisons et mutilations dont ces chefs-d’oeuvre furent les victimes et propose en retour quelques thèses - ou hérésies – susceptibles de bouleverser non seulement notre vision de la tragédie, mais notre conception même de la littérature et de ses pouvoirs – sur les lieux, les corps et les dieux.
Nul détour n’est aujourd’hui si troublant ni si salutaire.

One of the key aspects of the story of the Oresteia is the notion of the bloodshed of a blood relative leading to retributive bloodshed. From this notion springs a wealth of expressions using the word blood. Like the veins flowing through a body there is an elaborate, full, and complex variety woven throughout the fibre of the three plays like motifs in a Wagnerian opera. Blood imagery is used to punctuate various key ideas.

Additionally, various shades of red in relation to various fabric materials are possibly used to create further allusions to blood imagery (Goheen 115). These elements generally appear in the context of scenes with sacrifice rituals and ceremony (or allusions thereof); as Walter Burkert has observed of the Agamemnon, ''through it the language of sacrificial ritual runs like a leitmotiv'' .

The blood-soaked net used to kill Agamemnon, which is equated to a robe, very significantly reappears in the scene where Orestes kills Clytemnestra and Aegysthus (Cho. 972-1043).  In his impassioned speech prior to the arrival of the Furies, it becomes the key symbol of his father's murder.  Post-Freudian psychoanalytical theorist Melanie Klein equates this episode with a paranoid-psychotic disturbance.  Following Freud, she develops a suggestive theory based on the Orestes trilogy, designating it an ''inverted Oedipus Complex''. 

The play ends with a procession of women (Eum. 1015-1045).  Tellingly, the members are wearing robes of a red (phoenix) colour,  which can be linked with the purple tapestry, metaphorically indicating a ''conversion of the (darkly ) lethal carpet into a (perhaps more brightly tinted) symbol of blessing '' (Goheen  125).  The examples here then conceivably give an indication of how Aeschylus uses elements of ritual and colour, as well as organic natural elements such as blood that resonate at several levels, from the concrete to the psychological to the metaphysical, thus giving into the complexity of human nature.

Lecture notes on Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound: with an emphasis on the different modes of speech highlighted in the play -- as threat (from Force), as persuasion (from Rational thought), as deceptive, oracular utterance. The play seems to point to language as the factor that can bridge and bring together the world of brute force and the world of rational calculation.  Aeschylus' own philosophic poetry is a type of speech marrying reason and force (mere word an action).

Crises--such as COVID-19, the Great Recession, and 9/11--are often triggered by low-probability, high-consequence events. Tragedy can help us model the impact of the highly improbable because tragedy is the art form that dramatizes low-probability, high-consequence events. In this book chapter, I demonstrate how tragedy dramatizes the highly improbable in Aeschylus' SEVEN AGAINST THEBES, Sophocles' OEDIPUS REX, and Euripides' BACCHAE. By looking at theatre from the perspective of chance and uncertainty, we may increase our awareness of how risk works in both art and in life, and, in so doing, protect ourselves by becoming antifragile.

RESUMO: Apresenta-se a tradução do texto anônimo Vida de Ésquilo, que se encontra nos manuscritos medievais que nos transmitiram a obra restante de Ésquilo. Fruto da colagem de diversas fontes como Aristófanes e as próprias tragédias de Ésquilo, Vida de Ésquilo contribui tanto para reforçar alguns estereótipos da dramaturgia de Ésquilo, quanto para fornecer informações sobre o dramaturgo e seus contextos histórico e cênico. Palavras-chave: Ésquilo; biografia; dramaturgia; teatro grego. ABSTRACT: We present here the translation of the anonymous text Life of Aeschylus, found in the medieval manuscripts that transmitted the surviving works of Aeschylus. Fruit of a collage of diverse sources like Aristophanes and Aeschylus' own tragedies, Life of Aeschylus contributes not only to reinforce some stereotypes of Aeschylus's dramaturgy, but also to provide information on the playwright and its historical and performative contexts.

This paper aims at collecting and investigating, from a rhetorical point of view, the speeches of the Achaemenid kings (from Cyrus to Xerxes) mentioned in Greek sources, with a special focus on Herodotus' Histories. The many and heterogeneous discourses which this historian attributes to the different Persian kings (dialogues, private conversations, messages, letters and simple speech acts) are analysed and compared, and the research seems to point to some recurrent – and probably well-devised – patterns. The paper also takes into account the poetic speeches of Darius and Xerxes in Aeschylus' Persians, and the scant evidence (a letter from Xerxes to Pausanias) transmitted by Thucydides.

O objetivo deste artigo é, a partir da observação de uma recepção, pela tragédia Ifigênia em Áulida, de Eurípides, da Ilíada de Homero e do Agamêmnon, de Ésquilo, procurar demonstrar em que medida e sob quais aspectos essa tragédia euripidiana se articula no entrecruzamento de uma tradição homérica, sobretudo iliádica – silenciosa a respeito do sacrifício da filha de Agamêmnon – e uma herança da tragédia esquiliana, em que não apenas se narra o sacrifício de Ifigênia, mas também se evidenciam suas amargas consequências.

Starting from the observation of the reception of Homer’s Iliad and Aeschylus’ Agamemnon in the Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis, this paper aims to show that this Euripidean tragedy articulates itself between a Homeric tradition –which is silent about the sacrifice of Agamemnon’s daughter– and a heritage of the Aeschylean tragedy, in which there is not only the narrative of Iphigenia’s sacrifice but also of its dreadful consequences.

At the beginning of the lyrical parodos of the "Agamemnon", the old men of the chorus declare to possess the authority to speak on behalf of the Achaean army and its king. Once their account of the events at Aulis has reached its emotional peak in the instant preceding Iphigenia's death on the altar of Artemis, the old men give up their authority to narrate. Instead, they choose to be silent. The present article examines this change of plan in light of the previous appearances, in epic and lyric poetry, of the myth of Iphigenia's sacrifice.

In apertura della parodo lirica dell'"Agamennone", il coro di anziani dichiara di essere in possesso dell'autorità per farsi portavoce dell'esercito acheo e del suo re. Una volta che il racconto degli eventi di Aulide, oggetto del canto d'ingresso, è arrivato al suo momento di massima tensione, quello che precede la morte di Ifigenia sull'altare di Artemide, i coreuti rinunciano all'autorità di narrare e scelgono invece il silenzio. L'articolo indaga questo slittamento sulla base delle precedenti attestazioni letterarie (epiche e liriche) del sacrificio di Ifigenia.

Women's mobility is central to understanding cultural constructions of gender. Regarding ancient cultures, including ancient Greece, a re-evaluation of women's mobility within the household and beyond it is currently taking place. This invites an informed analysis of female mobility in Greek myth, under the premise that myth may open a venue to social ideology and the imaginary.

Female Mobility and Gendered Space in Ancient Greek Myth offers the first comprehensive analysis of this topic. It presents close readings of ancient texts, engaging with feminist thought and the 'mobility turn'. A variety of Olympian goddesses and mortal heroines are explored, and the analysis of their myths follows specific chronological considerations. Female mobility is presented in quite diverse ways in myth, reflecting cultural flexibility in imagining mobile goddesses and heroines. At the same time, the out-of-doors spaces that mortal heroines inhabit seem to lack a public or civic quality, with the heroines being contained behind 'glass walls'. In this respect, myth seems to reproduce the cultural limitations of ancient Greek social ideology on mobility, inviting us to reflect not only on the limits of mythic imagination but also on the timelessness of Greek myth.

Cfr. collegamento https://amzn.to/39KqePH
Il presente documento contiene un saggio della parafrasi e del commento del testo euripideo delle Supplici, che comparirà nel volume di prossima pubblicazione :
  LE TRAGEDIE TEBANE – Volume II
  Sofocle. Antigone - Euripide. Supplici
Già pubblicato il volume :
  LE TRAGEDIE TEBANE – Volume I
  Euripide. Fenicie – Eschilo. Sette contro Tebe
Il mio personale progetto è la pubblicazione in tre volumi delle parafrasi - con commento ed introduzione - alle tragedie tebane.

Questo volume rappresenta un piccolo dono offerto da alcuni allievi a Paola Volpe come testimonianza di gratitudine nei confronti di colei che è loro guida nell’attività di studio e di ricerca svolta presso l’Ateneo salernitano. Non a caso gli autori (Eschilo e Plutarco) oggetto dei saggi qui raccolti rappresentano due costanti nell’ampio e variegato campo di indagine della studiosa alla quale sono dedicati. Il volume è arricchito dalla prefazione di Aurelio Pérez Jiménez, legato a Paola Volpe da un lungo rapporto di amicizia e di collaborazione scientifica.

Ulisse è il campione della ragione che trionfa in Occidente, l’eroe dell’intelligenza e dell’avventura. Ma la sua figura non è univoca nella tradizione antica. Le maschere del mito greco parlano di altre ragioni, di passioni irriducibili, di colpe che l’eroe non ha pagato. E di una giustizia che non si lascia iscrivere nella legge condivisa.
Ulisse che calunnia; Ulisse, infido e vigliacco in battaglia; Ulisse che corrompe; Ulisse che tradisce; Ulisse che sacrifica una fanciulla affinché soffino venti favorevoli alla partenza da Troia; Ulisse che seduce e abbandona; Ulisse, il reduce, che fa strage di giovani a Itaca. Capitolo per capitolo, la luce tocca personaggi femminili e maschili – compagni di impresa in guerra e in viaggio, madri e figlie, padri e figli, dee e mortali. Nauplio, Teti, Aiace, Neottolemo, Ecuba, Polissena, Calipso, Nausica, Eupite – figure ai bordi della narrazione maggiore, travolte e stravolte nella loro vicenda mitica dal genio contorto di Ulisse. Dalle fonti antiche emergono le loro voci che, in concerto, compongono un grave atto d’accusa contro l’eroe.

Il libro è disponibile su: https://bit.ly/Contro_Ulisse_Salerno_Editrice_2021

La traduzione dell'Edipo a Colono di Sofocle è un'avventura straordinaria, ed emozionante. Non solo perché con questa tragedia Sofocle chiude idealmente la vicenda terrena ed umana di Edipo, vicenda ch'egli aveva già narrato - limitatamente alle tragedie che ci sono pervenute - prima nell'Antigone, quindi nell'Edipo re. Ma anche, e soprattutto, perchè questa tragedia ci avvicina, come nessun'altra, all'uomo Sofocle, e in particolare a quel dialogo intimo che ogni uomo, e Sofocle in particolare, intrattiene con la morte, nell'attesa della propria morte. E Sofocle, ormai novantenne, sapeva di non dover attendere ancora a lungo per fare esperienza di quest'incontro.
Il personaggio di Edipo - in esso è naturale vedere lo stesso poeta - ingigantisce progressivamente nel corso della tragedia: è un percorso opposto a quello che Sofocle aveva delineato nell'Edipo re. Il vecchio dal passo incerto che incontriamo all'inizio della tragedia, guiderà egli stesso Teseo al luogo nel quale si compirà misteriosamente la sua eroizzazione. L'uomo che nel prologo si rivolge che timore e rispetto all'abitante di Colono, si rivolgerà da pari a pari al re di Atene, ed infine assurgerà tra gli dei.
Condivido, qui, una parte di quest'avventura: la traduzione del prologo (1-116) e della parodo (117-253). Il testo di riferimento, così come le note, sono quelli dell'edizione di Jebb.
La traduzione è 'ragionevolmente letterale', e le note sono limitate ad alcuni commenti grammaticali che possono aiutare il lettore nella comprensione del testo.

This article examines three sections of the proem to Lucretius' De rerum natura: the so-called hymn to Venus (Lucr. 1.1-43), the praise of Epicurus (1.62-79), and the Iphigenia passage (1.80-101). The article's goal is to show that distinct, interconnected political echoes are perceptible in these three sections of Lucretius' proem, and that Lucretius intertwines his philosophical teaching with Roman political culture in such a way as to make his Epicurean message more acceptable to Roman audiences. The article demonstrates Lucretius' interaction with the use of myth in political language in Rome in the 60s and 50s bce. It analyzes the relevance of the Mithridatic wars to Roman discussions of imperialism and Lucretius' exploitation of this conflict's iconic status. This article suggests that Memmius' political action in the 60s may have made him a particularly suitable addressee for Lucretius' poem. It also explores the implications of this new reading of the proem for the date of Lucretius' De rerum natura.

The article proposes a new supplement for the lacunae revealed by the metre at the end ol ll. 1672-73, challenging the widespread opinion that l. 1673 must contain the adverb καλως, extracted by Auratus froμ the paraphrase of schol. vet. T 1672b. The text can be better emended by accepting Canter’s idea that the lost adverb was εὖ and writing ⟨ἐγώ⟩ at the end of l. 1672 and ⟨τάδ’ εὖ⟩ at the end of l. 1673

In the "Spiritual Work of Art", the gods, not the humans, show up as the heroes of Greek tragedy. Given the way the gods are characterized in this section of the Phenomenology of Spirit, I argue further that the subject matter of ancient tragedy is not a particular situation in which one human meets his or her fate in a way that elicits fear and pity from the spectator. Rather, tragedy concerns the untenable nature and inevitable dissolution of the ethical world in general.