Dionysus Since 69: Greek Tragedy at the Dawn of the Third Millennium

by Amanda Wrigley, Fiona Macintosh, Edith Hall

Overview

Greek tragedy is currently being performed more frequently than at any time since classical antiquity. This book is the first to address the fundamental question, why has there been so much Greek tragedy in the theatres, opera houses and cinemas of the last three decades? A detailed chronological appendix of production information and lavish illustrations supplement the fourteen essays by an interdisciplinary team of specialists from the worlds of classics, theatre studies, and the professional theatre. They relate the recent appeal of Greek tragedy to social trends, political developments, aesthetic and performative developments, and the intellectual currents of the last three decades, especially multiculturalism, post-colonialism, feminism, post-structuralism, revisions of psychoanalytical models, and secularization.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199259144
Publisher:	Oxford University Press, USA
Publication date:	02/01/2004
Pages:	500
Product dimensions:	8.60(w) x 5.70(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Edith Hall is Leverhulme Professor of Greek Cultural History at the University of Durham and Co-Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, University of Oxford. Fiona Macintosh is Senior Research Fellow at the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, University of Oxford. Amanda Wrigley is Researcher at the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, University of Oxford.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Why Greek tragedy since the late 1960s?, Edith Hall
1. Dionysus and the Sex War
2. Dionysus in '69, Froma Zeitlin
3. Bad women: gender politics in late twentieth-century performance and revision of Greek tragedy, Helene Foley
4. Heracles as Dr Strangelove and GI Joe: male heroism deconstructed, Kathleen Riley
2. Dionysus in Politics
5. Sophocles' Philoctetes, Seamus Heaney's, and some other recent half-rhymes, Oliver Taplin
6. Aeschylus, race, class, and war in the 1990s, Edith Hall
7. Greek tragedy in cinema: theatre, politics, history, Pantelis Michelakis
8. Greek drama and anti-colonialism: decolonising Classics, Lorna Hardwick
3. Dionysus and the Aesthetics of Performance
9. The use of masks in modern performances of Greek tragedy, David Wiles
10. Greek notes in Samuel Beckett's theatre art, Katharine Worth
11. Greek Tragedy in late twentieth-century opera, Peter Brown
4. Dionysus and the Life of the Mind
12. Oedipus in the East End: from Freus to Berkoff, Fiona Macintosh
13. Thinking about the origins of theatre in the 1970s, Erika Fischer-Lichte
14. The voices we hear, Timberlake Wertenbaker
15. Details of productions discussed, Amanda Wrigley

Editorial Reviews

"This tetrapartite volume contains fourteen thought-provoking essays by leading scholars on various intersections between ancient Greek tragedy and modern film, stage plays, and operas since 1969."—Text & Presentation, 2005

From the Publisher