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Oliver Taplin's seminal study was revolutionary in drawing out the
significance of stage action in Greek tragedy at a time when plays
were often read purely as texts, rather than understood as
performances. Professor Taplin explores nine plays, including
Aeschylus' agamemnon and Sophocles' Oedipus the King. The details
of theatrical techniques and stage directions, used by playwrights
to highlight key moments, are drawn out and related to the meaning
of each play as a whole. With extensive translated quotations, the
essential unity of action and speech in Greek tragedy is
demonstrated. Now firmly established as a classic text, Greek
Tragedy in Action is even more relevant today, when performances of
Greek tragedies and plays inspired by them have had such an
extraordinary revival around the world.
Sophocles stands as one of the greatest dramatists of all time, and
one of the most influential on artists and thinkers over the
centuries. His plays are deeply disturbing and unpredictable,
unrelenting and open-ended, refusing to present firm answers to the
questions of human existence, or to provide a redemptive
justification of the ways of gods to men or women. These three
tragedies portray the extremes of human suffering and emotion,
turning the heroic myths into supreme works of poetry and dramatic
action. Antigone's obsession with the dead, Creon's crushing
inflexibility, Deianeira's jealous desperation, the injustice of
the gods witnessed by Hyllus, Electra's obsessive vindictiveness,
the threatening of insoluble dynastic contamination... Such are the
pains and distortions and instabilities of Sophoclean tragedy. And
yet they do not deteriorate into cacophony or disgust or
incoherence or silence: they face the music, and through that the
suffering is itself turned into the coherence of music and poetry.
These original and distinctive verse translations convey the
vitality of Sophocles' poetry and the vigour of the plays in
performance, doing justice to both the sound of the poetry and the
theatricality of the tragedies. Each play is accompanied by an
introduction and substantial notes on topographical and mythical
references and interpretation.
Oliver Taplin's seminal study was revolutionary in drawing out the significance of stage action in Greek tragedy at a time when plays were often read purely as texts, rather than understood as performances. Professor Taplin explores nine plays, including Aeschylus' agamemnon and Sophocles' Oedipus the King. The details of theatrical techniques and stage directions, used by playwrights to highlight key moments, are drawn out and related to the meaning of each play as a whole. With extensive translated quotations, the essential unity of action and speech in Greek tragedy is demonstrated. Now firmly established as a classic text, Greek Tragedy in Action is even more relevant today, when performances of Greek tragedies and plays inspired by them have had such an extraordinary revival around the world. eBook available with sample pages: 0203083814
One of the foundational texts of Western literature, the Oresteia
trilogy is about cycles of deception and brutality within the
ruling family of Argos. In Agamemnon, queen Clytemnestra awaits her
husband's return from war to commit a terrible act of retribution.
The next plays, radically retitled here as The Women at the
Graveside and Orestes in Athens, deal with the aftermath of the
regicide, Orestes' search to avenge his father's death and his
ceaseless torment. A powerful discourse on the formation of
democracy, The Oresteia illuminates the tensions between loyalty to
one's family and to the community. In this classic for future
generations, Oliver Taplin captures the lyricism of the original.
Oedipus the King * Aias * Philoctetes * Oedipus at Colonus
Sophocles stands as one of the greatest dramatists of all time, and
one of the most influential on artists and thinkers over the
centuries. In these four tragedies he portrays the extremes of
human suffering and emotion, turning the heroic myths into supreme
works of poetry and dramatic action. Oedipus the King follows
Oedipus, the 'man of sorrow', who has unwittingly chosen to enact
his prophesied course by murdering his father and marrying his
mother. In Aias, the great warrior confronts the harrowing
humiliation inflicted upon him, while Philoctetes sees a once-noble
hero nursing his resentment after ten years of marooned isolation.
In Oedipus at Colonus the blind Oedipus, who has wandered far and
wide as a beggar, finally meets his mysterious death. These
original and distinctive verse translations convey the vitality of
Sophocles' poetry and the vigour of the plays in performance. Each
play is accompanied by an introduction and substantial notes on
topographical and mythical references and interpretation. ABOUT THE
SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made
available the widest range of literature from around the globe.
Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship,
providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable
features, including expert introductions by leading authorities,
helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for
further study, and much more.
This Norton Critical Edition includes: Oliver Taplin's new
translation of the fifth-century B.C.E. Greek tragedy-a trilogy of
revenge and murder within the royal family of Argos-with
explanatory annotations by the editors, ancient backgrounds and
responses from Homer, Stesichorus, Pindar, Euripides and Sophocles,
fourteen wide-ranging critical essays on the Oresteia, from G. W.
F. Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche to Oliver Taplin and Peter Wilson,
a Glossary of Technical Terms and Proper Names and a Selected
Bibliography.
Aeschylus' Agamemnon, the first play in the Oresteia trilogy, is
one of the most influential theatrical texts in the global canon.
In performance, translation, adaptation, along with sung and danced
interpretations, it has been familiar in the Greek world and the
Roman empire, and from the Renaissance to the contemporary stage.
It has been central to the aesthetic and intellectual avant-garde
as well as to radical politics of all complexions and to feminist
thinking. Contributors to this interdisciplinary collection of
eighteen essays on its performance history include classical
scholars, theatre historians, and experts in English and
comparative literature. All Greek and Latin has been translated;
the book is generously illustrated, and supplemented with the
useful research aid of a chronological appendix of performances.
This book opens up a neglected chapter in the reception of Athenian
drama, especially comedy; and it gives stage-centre to a
particularly attractive and entertaining series of vase-paintings,
which have been generally regarded as marginal curiosities. These
are the so-called `phlyax vases', nearly all painted in the Greek
cities of South Italy in the period 400 t0 360 BC. Up till now,
they have been taken to reflect some kind of local folk-theatre,
but Oliver Taplin, prompted especially by three that have only been
published in the last twelve years, argues that most, if not all,
reflect Athenian comedy of the sort represented by Aristophanes.
This bold thesis opens up questions of the relation of tragedy as
well as comedy to vase-painting, the cultural climate of the Greek
cities in Italy, and the extent to which Athenians were aware of
drama as a potential `export'. It also enriches appreciation of
many key aspects of Aristophanic comedy: its metatheatre and
self-reference, its use of stage-action and stage-props, its
unabashed indecency, and its polarised relationship, even rivalry,
with tragedy. The book has assembled thirty-six photographs of
vase-paintings. Many are printed here for the first time outside
specialist publications that are not readily accessible.
'Human wisdom is of little or no value', wrote Plato in his
Apology. And yet the ancient Greeks, including Plato himself, more
than any other people of antiquity were fascinated by the pursuit
of the wisdom they called philosophia. That search for knowledge
involved an extensive use of maxims and quotations, as we can see
from those expressions of Homer prefaced by the phrase 'as people
say'. Homer, the Seven Sages and the Pre-Socratic philosophers are
still extensively quoted in all the major western languages. Yet
for all their popularity, until now there has been no single
resource to which interested readers might turn. This unique
reference book offers one of the most comprehensive selections of
Greek quotations ever committed to print. With its English text
matched by the original Greek, the volume collects 7500 entries,
ranging from the archaic period to late antiquity, and across
philosophy, drama, poetry, history, science and medicine, each
indexed with key words to enable fast sourcing. Together, these
selections provide an incomparable insight into the glories of
Greek civilization.
This book consists of nine essays by six contributors exploring aspects of literature from the beginning of the Roman empire to the end of the classical era. The theme drawing the essays together is that appreciation of Roman literature can be informed and influenced by attending to the 'receivers' of the literature, and by consideration of what it was originally appreciated for.
This book combines the exploration of the "ethics" of the Iliad
with its poetic and narrative techniques, which extend all the way
from touches of phrasing to the shaping of whole scenes often
separated by thousands of lines. these two approaches to the Iliad
- through "form" and through "content" - are found to be
inextricably worked together, which is why the book consists of
"soundings"or sample explorations, where larger arguments branch
out from noticing details in the formaion of particualr passages.
Homer was an archaic poet, and even if he could write he surely
created the poems to be heard. It has generally been held that this
rules our the possiblity of intricate complexities - the
discoveries of many re-readings. This book maintains the contrary
position: the kind of artistry uncovered, especially the
long-distance interconnections, would be more rather than less
accessible if perceived aurally. Furthermore, this then opens up
further opportunities for shapings, patterns that would be more
apparent when heard in real time than they are inside the uniform
format of printed pages. These surroundings should interest those
experienced in other literatures and cultures. All G
The visual effect of the staging of Aeschylus' plays was an
essential part of their impact. And yet all that survives today are
the scripts. Imagination, helped by anachronistic sources, has
played the chief role for those dealing with the dramaturgy of
Aeschylus' works, and the result has usually been stages crowded
with extras and equipment. In this book, the author approaches the
subject from a completely different angle. He clears the stage and
looks for clues of Aeschylus' stagecraft in the texts of the plays
themselves. He concentrates his study in an analysis of the exits
and entrances in Aeschylus' works with constant reference to the
practice of Sophocles and Euripides as well. His arguments and
conclusions are fascinating and thought-provoking, and make the
book indispensable for anyone interested in ancient Greek drama and
its staging.
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