Euripides' Bacchae : the play and its audience /
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The purpose of this book is to investigate what it was Euripides intended to convey to the theatre-going public of his day when he wrote his most exciting and most gruesome play, the Bacchae . The meanings which are to be attached to the action of a play are woven by an audience, both during and after the performance, into a single dramatic experience, labelled in this book as 'audience response'. After some introductory chapters dealing with the history of the interpretation of the Bacchae and with the theory of audience response, the main part of the book is devoted to a detailed analysis of the action of the play (chapters 4 and 5), and to a study of Dionysus in his various apects in Athenian life and in his appearances in earlier literature and on the tragic stage. The discussion of the choruses concentrates on the choruses' repeated utterances about cleverness and wisdom, which form the core of the Dionysian propaganda of the play. The most immediate results of this new interpretation of the Bacchae are that the widely-accepted view of Pentheus as a dark puritan, a man possessed by the Dionysian qualities of his divine opponent, proves to be untenable, and that that which in the past has been rightly called the overriding theme of the play - the god's epiphany - also contains the poet's most serious and ironical discussion of divinity and of man's treatment of it. The problems of the Greek text are given full discussion, mainly in the nots and appendices. In many cases new solutions are proposed; some new problems are however added.
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Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)--Free University of Amsterdam. :
1 online resource (200 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 192-198) and index. :
9789004328051 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Narrative setting and dramatic poetry /
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This volume evaluates a single element of tragic art, namely the way in which narrative descriptions of place participate in the poetry of tragedy. They join together structures of the theater to create a context for tragic performance, and ultimately reflect upon tragedy's connection to earlier narrative forms and to the traditional tales that regularly supply tragic plots. The first part of this book examines the introductory function of spatial descriptions and the peculiar resources offered to the playwright by cult settings. In the second part, the spatial oppositions, that are inherent structuring devices in traditional tales, are taken up in chapters treating the motif of exile in extant tragedy.
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Revision of the author's thesis (doctoral--Yale), presented in 1985 under the title, Setting and theme in Greek tragedy. :
1 online resource (178 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 162-168) and index. :
9789004329201 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Speaking volumes : orality and literacy in the Greek and Roman world /
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This volume examines orality and literacy in the ancient Greek and Roman world through a range of perspectives and in various genres. Four essays on the Homeric epics present recent research into performative aspects of language, cognitive theory and oral composition, a re-evaluation of Parry's oral-formulaic theory, and a new perspective on the poem's transmission. These are complemented by studies of the oral nature of Greek proverbial expressions, and of poetic authority within a fluid oral tradition. Two essays consider the significance of the written word in a predominantly oral culture, in relation to star calendars and to Panathenaic inscriptions. Finally, two chapters consider the ongoing influence of oral tradition in the ancient novel and in Roman declamation. These essays illustrate the importance of considering ancient texts in the context of fluctuating oral and literate influences.
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1 online resource (xvi, 235 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 216-228) and index. :
9789004351028 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Novel Perspectives on Communication Practices in Antiquity : Towards a Historical Social-Semiotic Approach /
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Documentary texts are vital to our understanding of many aspects of the ancient world, such as its administration, education, and economy. The value of these texts goes even further however: being autographs, they directly testify to ancient communication practices, a field of study which so far has remained underexplored. In this volume, specialists in the field engage with a broad range of documentary sources. They discuss not only how various modes of communication, such as language, handwriting, and lay-out, are employed in specific contexts of writing, but also how these different modes are interrelated. Building on insights from contemporary social-semiotic theory, the volume makes a case for the establishment of historical social semiotics as a discipline.
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1 online resource :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004526518
9789004526525
The narrative voice in the Theogony of Hesiod /
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This volume offers analysis of the narratological structure of the Theogony with the purpose of elucidating a major, unifying theme in this poem: the relationship between the divine and mortal realms. The techniques of narratology are herein employed to support the argument that Hesiod portrays the cosmos as sharply divided between gods and men. The Theogony should therefore be read as a didactic poem explaining primarily the position of man vis-à-vis the gods. The first half of this book discusses relevant scholarship and introduces the theme of relationship of gods to men in the Theogony . The second half of the book discusses how Hesiod employs Character-Text, Attributive Discourse, Embedded Focalization, Anachrony, and Commentary to achieve his didactic purposes.
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1 online resource (xv, 206 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 193-202) and indexes. :
9789047413851 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Mythical and legendary narrative in Ovid's Fasti /
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This book analyses the mythical and legendary narratives in Ovid's Fasti as narrative and concentrates on the neglected literary aspects of these stories. It combines traditional tools of literary criticism with more modern techniques (taken especially from narratology and intertextuality). From a narratological viewpoint it covers important features such as aperture, closure, characterization, internal narrators, description, space, time and cinematic technique. On the intertextual level it examines the narratives' complex relationship with Virgil, Livy and Ovid's own earlier works. Recent criticism on the Fasti has addressed various elements (religious, historical, political, astronomical et cetera), but detailed narrative study has been wanting. This book fills that gap, to provide a more informed and balanced appreciation of this multifaceted poem aimed at classicists and literary critics in general (for whom all the Latin is translated).
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1 online resource (xiii, 299 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 289-294) and indexes. :
9789047407225 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The ancient art of persuasion across genres and topics /
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"Persuasion has long been one of the major fields of interest for researchers across a wide range of disciplines. The present volume aims to establish a framework to enhance the understanding of the features, manifestations and purposes of persuasion across all Greek and Roman genres and in various institutional contexts. The volume considers the impact of persuasion techniques upon the audience, and how precisely they help speakers/authors achieve their goals. It also explores the convergences and divergences in deploying persuasion strategies in different genres, such as historiography and oratory, and in a variety of topics. This discussion contributes towards a more complete understanding of persuasion that will help to advance knowledge of decision-making processes in varied institutional contexts in antiquity".
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004412552
Ainoi, logoi, mythoi : fables in archaic, classical, and Hellenistic Greek literature : with a study of the theory and terminology of the genre /
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The first study to focus on the numerous ancient Greek fables occurring outside (and predating) the extant fable collections. Divided into three parts, its core is an intertextual analysis of the functions of fables and their allusions. Here the author covers many different authors and a variety of genres in Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic Greek Literature, ranging from lyric to historiography, from Aristotle to Hesiod and from Agamemnon to Zopyrus. This analysis is based on a study of both modern and ancient fable theory - the latter having hitherto never been studied in toto , and incorporating the Graeco-Roman terminology of the genre. The book's third part is a collection of all texts (and contexts) studied, which greatly facilitates cross-referencing.
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Title romanized.
Includes indexes. :
1 online resource (xxx, 683 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 577-610). :
9789004330306 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Sophrosyne and the rhetoric of self-restraint : polysemy and persuasive use of an ancient Greek value term /
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While of paramount importance to Ancient Greek society, sophrosyne , the value of self-restraint, constitutes a notoriously complex concept, and provides the speaker of Ancient Greek with a subtle instrument for verbal persuasion. This study provides a new description of the semantics of sophrosyne in Archaic and Classical Greek, based on a model from the field of cognitive linguistics. Besides, the volume shows how such a semantic description can contribute to the analysis and study of our sources: it investigates how speakers in our texts (ab)use the term to achieve their ends, covering most of the main texts, and culminating in a chapter on the dialogues of Plato.
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Based on the author's thesis (doctoral)--Universiteit Leiden, 2004. :
1 online resource (x, 375 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 357-365) and indexes. :
9789047406983 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.