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Indlæser... Greek Tragic Women on Shakespearean Stagesaf Tanya Pollard
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Greek Tragic Women on Shakespearean Stages argues that ancient Greek plays exerted a powerful and uncharted influence on early modern England's dramatic landscape. Drawing on original research to challenge longstanding assumptions about Greek texts' invisibility, the book shows not only that the plays were more prominent than we have believed, but that early modern readers and audiences responded powerfully to specific plays and themes. The Greek plays most popular in the period were not male-centered dramas such as Sophocles' Oedipus, but tragedies by Euripides that focused on raging bereaved mothers and sacrificial virgin daughters, especially Hecuba and Iphigenia. Because tragedy was firmly linked with its Greek origin in the period's writings, these iconic female figures acquired a privileged status as synecdoches for the tragic theater and its ability to conjure sympathetic emotions in audiences. When Hamlet reflects on the moving power of tragic performance, he turns to the most prominent of these figures: 'What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba/ That he should weep for her?' Through readings of plays by Shakespeare and his contemporary dramatists, this book argues that newly visible Greek plays, identified with the origins of theatrical performance and represented by passionate female figures, challenged early modern writers to reimagine the affective possibilities of tragedy, comedy, and the emerging genre of tragicomedy. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Indlæser...GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)822.33Literature English & Old English literatures English drama Elizabethan 1558-1625 Shakespeare, William 1564–1616LC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit: Ingen vurdering.Er det dig?Bliv LibraryThing-forfatter. |
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(1) that Shakespeare had more cognizance of Greek drama than has traditionally been acknowledged;
(2) that the affective power of Greek tragedy was encapsulated for him above all in the female protagonists of Euripides’ plays, especially their bereaved mothers such as Hecuba and sacrificial virgin daughters such as Iphigenia;
(3) that Shakespeare and other early modern writers attributed the remarkable ability of these female protagonists to transmit powerful emotions to the audience to the distinctive nature of their bodies and their role in genealogical transmission;
(4) that these female protagonists uphold models of ethics and heroism that stand in contrast to those of their male counterparts and thereby offer alternative perspectives from which to question society’s hegemonic values;
(5) that these female protagonists also thus make available an alternative model for understanding the processes of literary transmission operative in the early modern reception of classical drama, from its more familiar perception as a struggle between fathers and sons to one in which such male practices of usurpation are replaced by female ones of propagation and supplementation; and
(6) that, in sum, Shakespeare saw in Greek drama the origins of his own theatrical practices, in Euripides’ figure of Alcestis a compelling symbol for his endeavours to reanimate the dead, and in Euripides’ plays more generally a stimulus to experiment in the hybrid genre of tragicomedy.