Aristophanes in Performance 421 BC-AD 2007: Peace, Birds and Frogs

ISBN-13: 9781904350613 / Angielski / Twarda / 2007 / 410 str.

Edith Hall; Amanda Wrigley

Opis

Flying to Heaven to demand an end to war, building Cloudcuckooland in the sky, descending to Hades to retrieve a dead tragedian such were the cosmic missions on which Aristophanes, the father of comedy, sent his heroes of the classical Athenian stage. The wit, intellectual bravura, political clout and sheer imaginative power of Aristophanes' quest dramas have profoundly influenced humorous literature and satire, but this volume, which originated at an international conference held at the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama at Oxford University in 2004, is the first interdisciplinary study of their seminal contribution to the evolution of comic performance. Interdisciplinary essays by specialists in Classics, Theatre, and Modern Literatures trace the international performance history of Aristophanic comedy, and its implication in aesthetic and political controversies, from antiquity to the twenty-first century. The story encompasses Jonson's satire, Cromwell's Ireland, German classicism, British Imperial India, censorship scandals in France, Greece and South Africa, Brechtian experiments in East Berlin, and musical theatre from Gilbert and Sullivan to Stephen Sondheim.

Spis treści

Introduction: Aristophanic Laughter across the Centuries Part I: Precedents 1. The Ups and Downs of Aristophanic Travel 2. Aristophanes in Early Modern England 3. The English-Speaking Aristophanes, 1650–1914 Part II: Excursus: Publication as Performance 4. Publication as Intervention: Aristophanes in 1659 5. Revolutionary Aristophanes? 6. Aristophanes’ Wealth and Dalpatram’s Part III: Revival to Repertoire 7. Aristophanes Revitalized! Music and Spectacle on the Academic Stage 8. From Scandal to Success Story: Aristophanes’ Birds as Staged by Karolos Koun 9. The Use of Masks in Koun’s Stage Interpretations of Birds 10. ‘Aristophanes is Back!’ Peter Hacks’s Adaptation of Peace 11. Sondheim Floats Frogs Part IV: Close Encounters 12. Freeing Aristophanes in South Africa: From High Culture to Contemporary Satire 13. Aristophanes’ Peace on the Twentieth-Century French Stage: From Political Statement to Artistic Failure 14. Poetry and Politics, Advice and Abuse: The Aristophanic Chorus on the Italian Stage 15. A Poet without ‘Gravity’: Aristophanes on the Italian Stage 16. A Version of the Birds in two Productions 17. Translating/Transposing Aristophanes 18. Aristophanes in Translation before 1920

O autorze

Edith Hall