Originally adapted for the stage, Peter Meineck's revised translations achieve a level of fidelity appropriate for classroom use while managing to preserve the wit and energy that led The New Yorker to judge his Clouds The best Greek drama we've ever seen anywhere," and The Times Literary Supplement to describe his Wasps as "Hugely enjoyable and very, very funny. A general Introduction, introductions to the plays, and detailed notes on staging, history, religious practice and myth combine to make this a remarkably useful teaching text.

Meineck and Woodruff's new annotated translations of Sophocles' Ajax , Women of Trachis , Electra , and Philoctetes combine the same standards of accuracy, concision, clarity, and powerful speech that have so often made their Theban Plays a source of epiphany in the classroom and of understanding in the theatre. Woodruff's Introduction offers a brisk and stimulating discussion of central themes in Sophoclean drama, the life of the playwright, staging issues, and each of the four featured plays.

Theatrocracy is a book about the power of the theatre, how it can affect the people who experience it, and the societies within which it is embedded. It takes as its model the earliest theatrical form we possess complete plays from, the classical Greek theatre of the fifth century BCE, and offers a new approach to understanding how ancient drama operated in performance and became such an influential social, cultural, and political force, inspiring and being influenced by revolutionary developments in political engagement and citizen discourse. Key performative elements of Greek theatre are analyzed from the perspective of the cognitive sciences as embodied, live, enacted events, with new approaches to narrative, space, masks, movement, music, words, emotions, and empathy. This groundbreaking study combines research from the fields of the affective sciences - the study of human emotions - including cognitive theory, neuroscience, psychology, artificial intelligence, psychiatry, and cognitive archaeology, with classical, theatre, and performance studies. This book revisits what Plato found so unsettling about drama - its ability to produce a theatrocracy, a "government" of spectators - and argues that this was not a negative but an essential element of Athenian theatre. It shows that Athenian drama provided a place of alterity where audiences were exposed to different viewpoints and radical perspectives. This perspective was, and is, vital in a freethinking democratic society where people are expected to vote on matters of state. In order to achieve this goal, the theatre offered a dissociative and absorbing experience that enhanced emotionality, deepened understanding, and promoted empathy. There was, and still is, an urgent imperative for theatre.

The Routledge Handbook of Classics and Cognitive Theory is an interdisciplinary volume that examines the application of cognitive theory to the study of the classical world, across several interrelated areas including linguistics, literary theory, social practices, performance, artificial intelligence and archaeology. With contributions from a diverse group of international scholars working in this exciting new area, the volume explores the processes of the mind drawing from research in psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, and anthropology, and interrogates the implications of these new approaches for the study of the ancient world. Topics covered in this wide-ranging collection include: cognitive linguistics applied to Homeric and early Greek texts, Roman cultural semantics, linguistic embodiment in Latin literature, group identities in Greek lyric, cognitive dissonance in historiography, kinesthetic empathy in Sappho, artificial intelligence in Hesiod and Greek drama, the enactivism of Roman statues and memory and art in the Roman Empire. This ground-breaking work is the first to organize the field, allowing both scholars and students access to the methodologies, bibliographies and techniques of the cognitive sciences and how they have been applied to classics.

Theatrocracy is a book about the power of the theatre, how it can affect the people who experience it, and the societies within which it is embedded. It takes as its model the earliest theatrical form we possess complete plays from, the classical Greek theatre of the fifth century BCE, and offers a new approach to understanding how ancient drama operated in performance and became such an influential social, cultural, and political force, inspiring and being influenced by revolutionary developments in political engagement and citizen discourse. Key performative elements of Greek theatre are analyzed from the perspective of the cognitive sciences as embodied, live, enacted events, with new approaches to narrative, space, masks, movement, music, words, emotions, and empathy. This groundbreaking study combines research from the fields of the affective sciences - the study of human emotions - including cognitive theory, neuroscience, psychology, artificial intelligence, psychiatry, and cognitive archaeology, with classical, theatre, and performance studies. This book revisits what Plato found so unsettling about drama - its ability to produce a theatrocracy, a "government" of spectators - and argues that this was not a negative but an essential element of Athenian theatre. It shows that Athenian drama provided a place of alterity where audiences were exposed to different viewpoints and radical perspectives. This perspective was, and is, vital in a freethinking democratic society where people are expected to vote on matters of state. In order to achieve this goal, the theatre offered a dissociative and absorbing experience that enhanced emotionality, deepened understanding, and promoted empathy. There was, and still is, an urgent imperative for theatre.

This volume offers the fruits of Peter Meineck and Paul Woodruff's dynamic collaboration on the plays of Sophocles' Theban cycle, presenting the translators' Oedipus Tyrannus (2000) along with Woodruff's Antigone (2001) and a muscular new Oedipus at Colonus by Meineck. Grippingly readable, all three translations combine fidelity to the Greek with concision, clarity, and powerful, hard-edged speech. Each play features foot-of-the-page notes, stage directions, and line numbers to the Greek. Woodruff's Introduction discusses the playwright, Athenian theatre and performance, the composition of the plays, and the plots and characters of each; it also offers thoughtful reflections on major critical interpretations of these plays.

Aristophanes's classic send-up of rivalry within the ultra-competitive world of fifth-century Athenian theatre wins a new lease on life in this fresh line-for-line translation by Peter Meineck. Premiered in 2021 by Aquila Theatre and accompanied here by Meineck's notes and wide-ranging Introduction, this Frogs offers the best view yet of a high-stakes afterlife contest between two of Athens's late great playwrights. Both are undisputed masters of tragedy. But only one can win and return to save the city.

Meineck's translation is faithful and supple; the language employed is modern without betraying the grandeur and complexity--particularly the images--of the Aeschylean text. After reading this translation, one has but one further wish: to see it and hear it at Delphi, Epidaurus or Syracuse. --Herman Van Looy, L'Antiquite Classique

Peter Meineck and Paul Woodruff's collaboration on this new translation combines the strengths that have recently distinguished both as translators of Greek tragedy: expert knowledge of the Greek and of the needs of the teaching classicist, intimate knowledge of theatre, and an excellent ear for the spoken word. Their Oedipus Tyrannus features foot-of-the-page notes, an Introduction, stage directions and a translation characterized by its clarity, accuracy, and power.

The Routledge Handbook of Classics and Cognitive Theory is an interdisciplinary volume that examines the application of cognitive theory to the study of the classical world, across several interrelated areas including linguistics, literary theory, social practices, performance, artificial intelligence and archaeology. With contributions from a diverse group of international scholars working in this exciting new area, the volume explores the processes of the mind drawing from research in psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, and anthropology, and interrogates the implications of these new approaches for the study of the ancient world. Topics covered in this wide-ranging collection include: cognitive linguistics applied to Homeric and early Greek texts, Roman cultural semantics, linguistic embodiment in Latin literature, group identities in Greek lyric, cognitive dissonance in historiography, kinesthetic empathy in Sappho, artificial intelligence in Hesiod and Greek drama, the enactivism of Roman statues and memory and art in the Roman Empire. This ground-breaking work is the first to organize the field, allowing both scholars and students access to the methodologies, bibliographies and techniques of the cognitive sciences and how they have been applied to classics.

Aeschylus: The Libation Bearers ; Euripides: Electra ; Sophocles: Electra

Peter Meineck and Paul Woodruff's collaboration on this new translation combines the strengths that have recently distinguished both as translators of Greek tragedy: expert knowledge of the Greek and of the needs of the teaching classicist, intimate knowledge of theatre, and an excellent ear for the spoken word. Their Oedipus Tyrannus features foot-of-the-page notes, an Introduction, stage directions and a translation characterized by its clarity, accuracy, and power.

First published in Peter Meineck and Paul Woodruff's Sophocles: Four Tragedies , this riveting translation by Peter Meineck of Sophocles' Philoctetes features a new Introduction by Paul Woodruff. "Peter Meineck has given us a superbly vivid rendering of the play, informed throughout by his practical experience in the theater. His is a Philoctetes that is supremely alive, from start to finish. . . . [I]deal for classroom use . . . accompanied by a new and thoughtful introduction from philosopher and classicist Paul Woodruff. Woodruff anchors the play in the complex web of fears and anxieties of 409 BCE, as both Sophocles' life and Athens' imperial heyday drew to a close. . . . [A]n exceptionally fine work of translation and scholarship that will go far toward demolishing dismissals of the play as inaccessible or unengaging for the modern reader. Sophocles, Meineck and Woodruff eloquently remind us, speaks to every age, not least our own." -Thomas R. Keith, Loyola University Chicago in CJ-Online

Meineck and Woodruff's new annotated translations of Sophocles' Ajax , Women of Trachis , Electra , and Philoctetes combine the same standards of accuracy, concision, clarity, and powerful speech that have so often made their Theban Plays a source of epiphany in the classroom and of understanding in the theatre. Woodruff's Introduction offers a brisk and stimulating discussion of central themes in Sophoclean drama, the life of the playwright, staging issues, and each of the four featured plays.

First published in Peter Meineck and Paul Woodruff's Sophocles: Four Tragedies , this riveting translation by Peter Meineck of Sophocles' Philoctetes features a new Introduction by Paul Woodruff. "Peter Meineck has given us a superbly vivid rendering of the play, informed throughout by his practical experience in the theater. His is a Philoctetes that is supremely alive, from start to finish. . . . [I]deal for classroom use . . . accompanied by a new and thoughtful introduction from philosopher and classicist Paul Woodruff. Woodruff anchors the play in the complex web of fears and anxieties of 409 BCE, as both Sophocles' life and Athens' imperial heyday drew to a close. . . . [A]n exceptionally fine work of translation and scholarship that will go far toward demolishing dismissals of the play as inaccessible or unengaging for the modern reader. Sophocles, Meineck and Woodruff eloquently remind us, speaks to every age, not least our own." -Thomas R. Keith, Loyola University Chicago in CJ-Online

Aeschylus: The Libation Bearers ; Euripides: Electra ; Sophocles: Electra

This volume offers the fruits of Peter Meineck and Paul Woodruff's dynamic collaboration on the plays of Sophocles' Theban cycle, presenting the translators' Oedipus Tyrannus (2000) along with Woodruff's Antigone (2001) and a muscular new Oedipus at Colonus by Meineck. Grippingly readable, all three translations combine fidelity to the Greek with concision, clarity, and powerful, hard-edged speech. Each play features foot-of-the-page notes, stage directions, and line numbers to the Greek. Woodruff's Introduction discusses the playwright, Athenian theatre and performance, the composition of the plays, and the plots and characters of each; it also offers thoughtful reflections on major critical interpretations of these plays.

Originally adapted for the stage, Peter Meineck's revised translations achieve a level of fidelity appropriate for classroom use while managing to preserve the wit and energy that led The New Yorker to judge his Clouds The best Greek drama we've ever seen anywhere," and The Times Literary Supplement to describe his Wasps as "Hugely enjoyable and very, very funny. A general Introduction, introductions to the plays, and detailed notes on staging, history, religious practice and myth combine to make this a remarkably useful teaching text.