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Books > Philosophy > Western philosophy
Following his opposition to the establishment of a theatre in
Geneva, Jean-Jacques Rousseau is often considered an enemy of the
stage. Yet he was fascinated by drama: he was a keen theatre-goer,
his earliest writings were operas and comedies, his admiration for
Italian lyric theatre ran through his career, he wrote one of the
most successful operas of the day, Le Devin du village, and with
his Pygmalion, he invented a new theatrical genre, the Scene
lyrique ('melodrama'). Through multi-faceted analyses of Rousseau's
theatrical and musical works, authors re-evaluate his practical and
theoretical involvement with and influence on the dramatic arts, as
well as his presence in modern theatre histories. New readings of
the Lettre a d'Alembert highlight its political underpinnings,
positioning it as an act of resistance to external bourgeois
domination of Geneva's cultural sphere, and demonstrate the work's
influence on theatrical reform after Rousseau's death. Fresh
analyses of his theory of voice, developed in the Essai sur
l'origine des langues, highlight the unique prestige of Italian
opera for Rousseau. His ambition to rethink the nature and function
of stage works, seen in Le Devin du village and then, more
radically, in Pygmalion, give rise to several different discussions
in the volume, as do his complex relations with Gluck. Together,
contributors shed new light on the writer's relationship to the
stage, and argue for a more nuanced approach to his theatrical and
operatic works, theories and legacy.
This is the sixteenth volume in the Oratory of Classical Greece.
This series presents all of the surviving speeches from the late
fifth and fourth centuries BC in new translations prepared by
classical scholars who are at the forefront of the discipline.
These translations are especially designed for the needs and
interests of today's undergraduates, Greekless scholars in other
disciplines, and the general public.
Classical oratory is an invaluable resource for the study of
ancient Greek life and culture. The speeches offer evidence on
Greek moral views, social and economic conditions, political and
social ideology, law and legal procedure, and other aspects of
Athenian culture that have recently been attracting particular
interest: women and family life, slavery, and religion, to name
just a few.
This volume assembles twenty-two speeches previously published
in the Oratory series. The speeches are taken from a wide range of
different kinds of cases--homicide, assault, commercial law, civic
status, sexual offenses, and others--and include many of the
best-known speeches in these areas. They are Antiphon, Speeches 1,
2, 5, and 6; Lysias 1, 3, 23, 24, and 32; Isocrates 17, 20; Isaeus
1, 7, 8; Hyperides 3; Demosthenes 27, 35, 54, 55, 57, and 59; and
Aeschines 1. The volume is intended primarily for use in teaching
courses in Greek law or related areas such as Greek history. It
also provides the introductions and notes that originally
accompanied the individual speeches, revised slightly to shift the
focus onto law.
Stoicism has had a diverse reception in German philosophy. This is
the first interpretive study of shared themes and dialogues between
late nineteenth-century and twentieth-century experts on classical
antiquity and philosophers. Assessing how modern philosophers have
incorporated ancient resources with the context of German
philosophy, chapters in this volume are devoted to philosophical
giants such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Wilhelm Dilthey, Walter
Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Hans Jonas, Hans
Blumenberg, and Peter Sloterdijk. Among the ancient Stoics, the
focus is on Seneca, Epictetus, and doxography, but reference will
also be made to texts that have so far been neglected by
non-specialists. Often references to Stoic texts are playful,
making it hard for non-specialists to reconstruct their
understanding of the sources; by illuminating and enhancing the
philosophical significance of these receptions, this book argues
that they can change our understanding of Greek and Roman Stoic
doctrines and authors, twentieth-century continental philosophy,
and the themes which coordinate their ongoing dialogues. Some of
these themes are surprising for Stoicism, such as the poetics of
tragic drama and the anthropological foundations of hermeneutics.
Others are already central to Stoic reception, such as the
constitution of the subject in relation to various ethical,
ecological, and metaphysical powers and processes; among these are
contemplation and knowledge; identity and plurality; temporality,
facticity, and fate; and personal, social, and planetary forms of
self-cultivation and self-appropriation. Addressing the need for a
synoptic vision of related continental readings of Stoicism, this
book brings ancient texts into new dialogues with up-to-date
scholarship, facilitating increased understanding, critical
evaluation, and creative innovation within the continental response
to Stoicism.
This collection of essays sheds new light on the relationship
between two of the main drivers of intellectual discourse in
ancient Greece: the epic tradition and the Sophists. The
contributors show how throughout antiquity the epic tradition
proved a flexible instrument to navigate new political, cultural,
and philosophical contexts. The Sophists, both in the Classical and
the Imperial age, continuously reconfigured the value of epic
poetry according to the circumstances: using epic myths allowed the
Sophists to present themselves as the heirs of traditional
education, but at the same time this tradition was reshaped to
encapsulate new questions that were central to the Sophists'
intellectual agenda. This volume is structured chronologically,
encompassing the ancient world from the Classical Age through the
first two centuries AD. The first chapters, on the First Sophistic,
discuss pivotal works such as Gorgias' Encomium of Helen and
Apology of Palamedes, Alcidamas' Odysseus or Against the Treachery
of Palamedes, and Antisthenes' pair of speeches Ajax and Odysseus,
as well as a range of passages from Plato and other authors. The
volume then moves on to discuss some of the major works of
literature from the Second Sophistic dealing with the epic
tradition. These include Lucian's Judgement of the Goddesses and
Dio Chrysostom's orations 11 and 20, as well as Philostratus'
Heroicus and Imagines.
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