Acts Of Compassion In Greek Tragic Drama

Author : James Franklin Johnson
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN 13 : 0806154926
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.23/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Acts of Compassion in Greek Tragic Drama written by James Franklin Johnson and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2016-10-27 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ability of human beings to feel compassion or empathy for one another—and express that emotion by offering comfort or assistance—is an important antidote to violence and aggression. In ancient Greece, the epics of Homer and the tragic dramas performed each spring in the Theater of Dionysus offered citizens valuable lessons concerning the necessity and proper application of compassionate action. This book is the first full-length examination of compassion (eleos or oiktos in Greek) as a dramatic theme in ancient Greek literature. Through careful textual analysis, James F. Johnson surveys the treatment of compassion in the epics of Homer, especially the Iliad, and in the works of the three great Athenian tragedians: Aischylos, Euripides, and Sophokles. He emphasizes reciprocity, reverence, and retribution as defining features of Greek compassion during the Homeric and Archaic periods. In framing his analysis, Johnson distinguishes compassion from pity. Whereas in English the word “pity” suggests an attitude of superiority toward the sufferer, the word “compassion” has a more positive connotation and implies equality in status between subject and object. Although scholars have conventionally translated eleos and oiktos as “pity,” Johnson argues that our modern-day notion of compassion comes closest to encompassing the meaning of those two Greek words. Beginning with Homer, eleos normally denotes an emotion that entails action of some sort, whereas oiktos usually refers to the emotion itself. Johnson also draws associations between compassion and the concepts of fear and pity, which Aristotle famously attributed to tragedy. Because the Athenian plays are tragedies, they mainly show the disastrous consequences of a world where compassion falls short. At the same time, they offer glimpses into a world where compassion can generate a more beneficial—and therefore more hopeful—outcome. Their message resonates with today’s readers as much as it did for fifth-century Athenians.

Author : Emma M. Griffiths
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0198826079
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.71/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Children in Greek Tragedy written by Emma M. Griffiths and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-02 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Astyanax is thrown from the walls of Troy; Medeia kills her children as an act of vengeance against her husband; Aias reflects with sorrow on his son's inheritance, yet kills himself and leaves Eurysakes vulnerable to his enemies. The pathos created by threats to children is a notable feature of Greek tragedy, but does not in itself explain the broad range of situations in which the ancient playwrights chose to employ such threats. Rather than casting children in tragedy as simple figures of pathos, this volume proposes a new paradigm to understand their roles, emphasizing their dangerous potential as the future adults of myth. Although they are largely silent, passive figures on stage, children exert a dramatic force that transcends their limited physical presence, and are in fact theatrically complex creations who pose a danger to the major characters. Their multiple projected lives create dramatic palimpsests which are paradoxically more significant than their immediate emotional effects: children are never killed because of their immediate weakness, but because of their potential strength. This re-evaluation of the significance of child characters in Greek tragedy draws on a fresh examination of the evidence for child actors in fifth-century Athens, which concludes that the physical presence of children was a significant factor in their presentation. However, child roles can only be fully appreciated as theatrical phenomena, utilizing the inherent ambiguities of drama: as such, case studies of particular plays and playwrights are underpinned by detailed analysis of staging considerations, opening up new avenues for interpretation and challenging traditional models of children in tragedy.

Author : P. J. Finglass
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108321704
Total Pages : 724 pages
Book Rating : 4.09/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Sophocles: Oedipus the King written by P. J. Finglass and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-05 with total page 724 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For centuries the myth of Oedipus, the man who unwittingly killed his father and married his mother, has exerted a powerful hold on the human imagination; but no retelling of that myth has ever come close, in passion, drama, and menace to the one that we find in Sophocles' Oedipus the King. This new full-scale edition of that classic play - the first in any language since 1883 - offers a freshly constituted text based on consultation of manuscripts ancient and mediaeval. The introduction explores the play's dating and production, its creative engagement with pre-Sophoclean versions, its major themes, and its reception during antiquity. The commentary offers a detailed analysis, line by line and scene by scene, of the play's language, staging, and dramatic impact. The translation incorporated into the commentary ensures that the book will be accessible to all readers interested in what is arguably the greatest Greek tragedy of all.

Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004506055
Total Pages : 834 pages
Book Rating : 4.53/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Emotions and Narrative in Ancient Literature and Beyond written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-04-25 with total page 834 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emotions are at the core of much ancient literature, from Achilles’ heartfelt anger in Homer’s Iliad to the pangs of love of Virgil’s Dido. This volume applies a narratological approach to emotions in a wide range of texts and genres. It seeks to analyze ways in which emotions such as anger, fear, pity, joy, love and sadness are portrayed. Furthermore, using recent insights from affective narratology, it studies ways in which ancient narratives evoke emotions in their readers. The volume is dedicated to Irene de Jong for her groundbreaking research into the narratology of ancient literature.

Author : Margaret Mullett
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1351358499
Total Pages : 528 pages
Book Rating : 4.91/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Managing Emotion in Byzantium written by Margaret Mullett and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-09-30 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Byzantinists entered the study of emotion with Henry Maguire’s ground-breaking article on sorrow, published in 1977. Since then, classicists and western medievalists have developed new ways of understanding how emotional communities work and where the ancients’ concepts of emotion differ from our own, and Byzantinists have begun to consider emotions other than sorrow. It is time to look at what is distinctive about Byzantine emotion. This volume is the first to look at the constellation of Byzantine emotions. Originating at an international colloquium at Dumbarton Oaks, these papers address issues such as power, gender, rhetoric, or asceticism in Byzantine society through the lens of a single emotion or cluster of emotions. Contributors focus not only on the construction of emotions with respect to perception and cognition but also explore how emotions were communicated and exchanged across broad (multi)linguistic, political and social boundaries. Priorities are twofold: to arrive at an understanding of what the Byzantines thought of as emotions and to comprehend how theory shaped their appraisal of reality. Managing Emotion in Byzantium will appeal to researchers and students alike interested in Byzantine perceptions of emotion, Byzantine Culture, and medieval perceptions of emotion.

Author : Rachel Hall Sternberg
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521845526
Total Pages : 376 pages
Book Rating : 4.21/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Pity and Power in Ancient Athens written by Rachel Hall Sternberg and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-07-25 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient Athenians resemble modern Americans in their moral discomfort with empire. Athenians had power and used it ruthlessly, but the infliction of suffering did not mesh well with their civic-self-image. Embracing the concepts of democracy and freedom, they proudly pitted themselves against tyranny and oppression, but in practice they were capable of being tyrannical. Pity and Power in Ancient Athens argues that the exercise of power in democratic Athens, especially during its brief fifth-century empire, raised troubling questions about the alleviation and infliction of suffering, and pity emerged as a topic in Atheninan culture at this time.

Author : Bryan Doerries
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307949729
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.21/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Theater of War written by Bryan Doerries and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2016-08-23 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For years theater director Bryan Doerries has been producing ancient Greek tragedies for a wide range of at-risk people in society. His is the personal and deeply passionate story of a life devoted to reclaiming the timeless power of an ancient artistic tradition to comfort the afflicted. Doerries leads an innovative public health project—Theater of War—that produces ancient dramas for current and returned soldiers, people in recovery from alcohol and substance abuse, tornado and hurricane survivors, and more. Tracing a path that links the personal to the artistic to the social and back again, Doerries shows us how suffering and healing are part of a timeless process in which dialogue and empathy are inextricably linked. The originality and generosity of Doerries’s work is startling, and The Theater of War—wholly unsentimental, but intensely felt and emotionally engaging—is a humane, knowledgeable, and accessible book that will both inspire and enlighten.

Author : Ursula Wirtz
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000208192
Total Pages : 327 pages
Book Rating : 4.91/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Trauma and Beyond written by Ursula Wirtz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-06-08 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this seminal work on the clinical, archetypal and spiritual dimension of trauma, the author offers a compelling vision of the transformative potential of suffering and the dialectic of Dying and Becoming. Wirtz outlines a healing path from fragmentation to integration and illuminates the resilience of the human spirit in the face of severe trauma. Trauma and Beyond will be essential reading and a valuable resource for counsellors, therapists and Jungian analysts who are challenged in their practice with individual and collective traumata.

Author : Charles Segal
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN 13 : 9780806131368
Total Pages : 534 pages
Book Rating : 4.65/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Tragedy and Civilization written by Charles Segal and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on comprehensive analyses of all of Sophocles' plays, on structuralist anthropology, and on other extensive work on myth and tragedy, Charles Segal examines Sophocles both as a great dramatic poet and as a serious thinker. He shows how Sophoclean tragedy reflects the human condition in its constant and tragic struggle for order and civilized life against the ever-present threat of savagery and chaotic violence, both within society and within the individual. Tragedy and Civilization begins with a study of these themes and then proceeds to detailed discussions of each of the seven plays. For this edition Segal also provides a new preface discussing recent developments in the study of Sophocles.

Author : Thomas De Quincey
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 40 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Theory of Greek Tragedy written by Thomas De Quincey and published by . This book was released on 1893 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: