Edith M Hall | University of Durham (original) (raw)

Books by Edith M Hall

A collection of twelve essays, several never published elsewhere, on various of ancient Greek the... more A collection of twelve essays, several never published elsewhere, on various of ancient Greek theatre: the use of 'parts' and rehearsal scripts, metatheatre, the recurrent comparison of women with visual artworks, childbirth plots in tragedy, comedy and satyr play, and a reappraisal of Inventing the Barbarian fifteen years on. This book was not well marketed and is hard to find.

How did classical authors and ideas inform reform in Britain 1789-1960s?

Papers by Edith M Hall

Illinois Classical Studies, 2018

This article argues that Hephaestus, the only physically disabled Olympian deity, occupies an imp... more This article argues that Hephaestus, the only physically disabled Olympian deity, occupies an important position in the history of comedy and the Greek tradition of laughter. From the Homeric epics to fourth-century comedy and vase-painting, Hephaestus is consistently to be found in cultural contexts which explore the instrumentality of laughter in domestic and social relationships, rituals and entertainments. The article proposes that the structure of the mythical narrative of the Return of Hephaestus, with its estrangement of the protagonist from his community, riotous reconciliation, and komastic procession, underlies several Old Comedies. It also suggests that his banausic profession and deformity helped to make him particularly popular in cultural artifacts—vases and dramas—produced in Athens in the democratic period because neither his trade nor his appearance would have disqualified him from wielding sovereign power, κράτος, as a citizen there.

Transformative Aesthetics

2017 ‘Aristotle’s theory of katharsis in its historical and social contexts’, in Erika Fischer-Li... more 2017 ‘Aristotle’s theory of katharsis in its historical and social contexts’, in Erika Fischer-Lichte and Benjamin Wihstutz (eds.) Transformative Aesthetics. London: Routledge.

Trends in Classics

The rhetorical question, often assumed to have been favoured by the sophist Gorgias, became a fun... more The rhetorical question, often assumed to have been favoured by the sophist Gorgias, became a fundamental feature of ancient rhetoric in both Greek and Latin. By the time of Senecan tragedy, an accumulation of as many as seventeen serial rhetorical questions can be found expressing extremes of emotion, especially indignation or despair. Rhetorical questions in some archaic and classical Greek authors have received limited attention, for example, in the Iliad those delivered by Thersites in exciting indignation (2.225–233) and by the authorial voice to create pathos in asking Patroclus about the Trojans he has killed (16.692–693); the string of questions Aphrodite humorously asks in Sappho 1; the ritual queries in the Derveni Papyrus; the series of two to three questions found (often near the beginning of speeches) in the agōns of some tragedies. But the increasing variety and sophistication of the deployment of the rhetorical question in the Greek orators has been surprisingly negle...

Beyond Greece and Rome

This chapter addresses the theatrical reception of the Persian king Cambyses II as portrayed in H... more This chapter addresses the theatrical reception of the Persian king Cambyses II as portrayed in Herodotus book III. The Achaemenid madman, whose death without issue creates an acute succession crisis, plays a noteworthy part as the ‘star’ of two of the most successful theatre works between 1560 and 1667. The first is Thomas Preston’s The Lamentable Tragedy Mixed Full of Pleasant Mirth Containing the Life of Cambises King of Persia (1560 or 1561, the earliest surviving Elizabethan tragedy). The second is Elkanah Settle’s Restoration drama Cambyses (1667). It is argued that both plays project the conflicted early modern English self and its fractured religious and political psyche and that Settle’s play foreshadows the emergent eighteenth-century ‘She-Tragedy’ and ‘Sentimental Drama’, in which the fantasy of familial domestic harmony, and honourable love, were to become the theatre’s ideological counterpart of the British bourgeois settlement.

War and Society in The greek World, 2020

... Plate 2a Detail of Alexander the Great, from the Alexander Mosaic. ... sons, your wives and t... more ... Plate 2a Detail of Alexander the Great, from the Alexander Mosaic. ... sons, your wives and the temples of the gods, and the tombs of your ancestors'(402–5). The wives are sandwiched between the children (to bear whom was their primary function in classical Athens) and ...

A People’s History of Classics, 2020

Book on classical Athenian theatre and society

Co-edited volume about progressive uses of classical culture in Britain 1789-1969

A collection of twelve essays, several never published elsewhere, on various of ancient Greek the... more A collection of twelve essays, several never published elsewhere, on various of ancient Greek theatre: the use of 'parts' and rehearsal scripts, metatheatre, the recurrent comparison of women with visual artworks, childbirth plots in tragedy, comedy and satyr play, and a reappraisal of Inventing the Barbarian fifteen years on. This book was not well marketed and is hard to find.

How did classical authors and ideas inform reform in Britain 1789-1960s?

Illinois Classical Studies, 2018

This article argues that Hephaestus, the only physically disabled Olympian deity, occupies an imp... more This article argues that Hephaestus, the only physically disabled Olympian deity, occupies an important position in the history of comedy and the Greek tradition of laughter. From the Homeric epics to fourth-century comedy and vase-painting, Hephaestus is consistently to be found in cultural contexts which explore the instrumentality of laughter in domestic and social relationships, rituals and entertainments. The article proposes that the structure of the mythical narrative of the Return of Hephaestus, with its estrangement of the protagonist from his community, riotous reconciliation, and komastic procession, underlies several Old Comedies. It also suggests that his banausic profession and deformity helped to make him particularly popular in cultural artifacts—vases and dramas—produced in Athens in the democratic period because neither his trade nor his appearance would have disqualified him from wielding sovereign power, κράτος, as a citizen there.

Transformative Aesthetics

2017 ‘Aristotle’s theory of katharsis in its historical and social contexts’, in Erika Fischer-Li... more 2017 ‘Aristotle’s theory of katharsis in its historical and social contexts’, in Erika Fischer-Lichte and Benjamin Wihstutz (eds.) Transformative Aesthetics. London: Routledge.

Trends in Classics

The rhetorical question, often assumed to have been favoured by the sophist Gorgias, became a fun... more The rhetorical question, often assumed to have been favoured by the sophist Gorgias, became a fundamental feature of ancient rhetoric in both Greek and Latin. By the time of Senecan tragedy, an accumulation of as many as seventeen serial rhetorical questions can be found expressing extremes of emotion, especially indignation or despair. Rhetorical questions in some archaic and classical Greek authors have received limited attention, for example, in the Iliad those delivered by Thersites in exciting indignation (2.225–233) and by the authorial voice to create pathos in asking Patroclus about the Trojans he has killed (16.692–693); the string of questions Aphrodite humorously asks in Sappho 1; the ritual queries in the Derveni Papyrus; the series of two to three questions found (often near the beginning of speeches) in the agōns of some tragedies. But the increasing variety and sophistication of the deployment of the rhetorical question in the Greek orators has been surprisingly negle...

Beyond Greece and Rome

This chapter addresses the theatrical reception of the Persian king Cambyses II as portrayed in H... more This chapter addresses the theatrical reception of the Persian king Cambyses II as portrayed in Herodotus book III. The Achaemenid madman, whose death without issue creates an acute succession crisis, plays a noteworthy part as the ‘star’ of two of the most successful theatre works between 1560 and 1667. The first is Thomas Preston’s The Lamentable Tragedy Mixed Full of Pleasant Mirth Containing the Life of Cambises King of Persia (1560 or 1561, the earliest surviving Elizabethan tragedy). The second is Elkanah Settle’s Restoration drama Cambyses (1667). It is argued that both plays project the conflicted early modern English self and its fractured religious and political psyche and that Settle’s play foreshadows the emergent eighteenth-century ‘She-Tragedy’ and ‘Sentimental Drama’, in which the fantasy of familial domestic harmony, and honourable love, were to become the theatre’s ideological counterpart of the British bourgeois settlement.

War and Society in The greek World, 2020

... Plate 2a Detail of Alexander the Great, from the Alexander Mosaic. ... sons, your wives and t... more ... Plate 2a Detail of Alexander the Great, from the Alexander Mosaic. ... sons, your wives and the temples of the gods, and the tombs of your ancestors'(402–5). The wives are sandwiched between the children (to bear whom was their primary function in classical Athens) and ...

A People’s History of Classics, 2020

Book on classical Athenian theatre and society

Co-edited volume about progressive uses of classical culture in Britain 1789-1969

Co-edited volume of essays on the ancient Greek tragedian Sophocles and his continuing cultural p... more Co-edited volume of essays on the ancient Greek tragedian Sophocles and his continuing cultural presence (C.U.P.)

Ancient Theatre and Performance Culture Around the Black Sea, 2019

Classical Scholarship and Its History, 2021

In this new translation of the most profound tragedies of Euripides, one of the trio of the supre... more In this new translation of the most profound tragedies of Euripides, one of the trio of the supreme Greek tragedians of the fifth century BC, James Morwood brings harshly to life the pressure of the intolerable circumstances under which Euripides places his characters. His dark and cheerless world, one where the gods prove malevolent, importent, or simply absent, reveals men, to use his own words, 'as they are'. His clear-eyed yet sympathetic analysis of characters such as Medea, Hippolytus and Phaedra, and Electra and Clytemnestra - and the supremacy of women is not accidental - is conducted with extraordinary psychological insight through the fearful symmetry of his plot construction. Medea, Hippolytus, and Electra give dramatic articulacy to their creator's howl of protest against the world in which we still live today. His Helen shows him working in a different vein. The themes remain deeply serious; the analysis is still proving and acute. Yet the happy ending, howe...

Acknowledgements List of Illustrations Map 1: Iphigenia's Adventures 400 BCE to 500 CE Map 2:... more Acknowledgements List of Illustrations Map 1: Iphigenia's Adventures 400 BCE to 500 CE Map 2: Iphigenia's Adventures since Dante Timeline Preface: The Play, its Myth, and the Date of its First Production Chapter I:Rediscovering Tauris Chapter II: Iphigenia, Quest Heroine Chapter III: Travel Tragedy Chapter IV: Plots and Pots Chapter V: Orestes, Pylades, and Roman Men Chapter VI: Imperial Escapades Chapter VII: Escorts of Artemis Chapter VIII: Iphigenia's Christian Conversion Chapter IX: Gluck's Iphigenie in Pain Chapter X: Goethe's Iphigenie between Germany and the World Chapter XI: Rites of Modernism Chapter XII: Women's Adventures with Iphigenia Chapter XIII: Decolonising Thoas Abbreviations and Bibliography Index

New Light on Tony Harrison, 2019

This chapter explores the theme of witnessing in Harrison’s later theatre works, especially the c... more This chapter explores the theme of witnessing in Harrison’s later theatre works, especially the contrast between photographic and poetic records and accounts of trauma. It argues that Harrison’s choice of ancient plays to adapt and translate (Hippolytus, Medea, Hecuba, Iphigenia in Tauris, Trojan Women), and the central topics discussed in his original play FRAM, are closely related to his experience of the ancient Greek tragedian Euripides, especially to his messenger speeches, and above all to the messenger speech in his HERACLES. It also discusses his engagement with the figure of Gilbert Murray, whose pro-suffragette translations of Euripides were directed in Edwardian London by Harley Granville Barker, and who appears in FRAM, and describes the genesis of Harrison’s IPHIGENIA IN CRIMEA, in which Hall was closely involved.

Aristophanic Humour, 2020

Transformative Aesthetics, 2017

2017 ‘Aristotle’s theory of katharsis in its historical and social contexts’, in Erika Fischer-Li... more 2017 ‘Aristotle’s theory of katharsis in its historical and social contexts’, in Erika Fischer-Lichte and Benjamin Wihstutz (eds.) Transformative Aesthetics. London: Routledge.

Patriarchal Moments ed. Cesare Cuttica and Gaby Mahlberg, 35-42. London: Bloomsbury., 2016

A Discussion of women in Aristotle's Politics.

Pre-print version from book printed by Bloomsbury, 2015.

Την 14η Φεβρουαρίου, ημέρα Τρίτη και ώρα 19.00 στην Μεγάλη Αίθουσα του Εθνικού και Καποδιστριακού... more Την 14η Φεβρουαρίου, ημέρα Τρίτη και ώρα 19.00 στην Μεγάλη Αίθουσα του Εθνικού και Καποδιστριακού Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών, αναγορεύθηκε επίτιμη διδάκτορας του Τμήματος Θεατρικών Σπουδών της Φιλοσοφικής Σχολής του Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών, η κυρία Edith Hall, καθηγήτρια κλασικών σπουδών στο Πανεπιστήμιο King’s College του Λονδίνου (Ηνωμένο Βασίλειο).

VIDEOS
ΑΝΑΓΟΡΕΥΣΗ ΤΗΣ EDITH HALL ΣΕ ΕΠΙΤΙΜΗ ΔΙΔΑΚΤΟΡΑ ΤΟΥ ΤΜΗΜΑΤΟΣ ΘΕΑΤΡΙΚΩΝ ΣΠΟΥΔΩΝ
ΠΡΩΤΟ ΜΕΡΟΣ
• Προσφώνηση από τον Αναπληρωτή Πρύτανη του Εθνικού και Καποδιστριακού
Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών, καθηγητή Ναπολέοντα Ν. Μαραβέγια.
• Παρουσίαση του έργου και της προσωπικότητας της τιμωμένης από τον
ομότιμο καθηγητή του Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών Βάλτερ Πούχνερ
•Αναγόρευση της τιμωμένης:
•Ανάγνωση των κειμένων του Ψηφίσματος του Τμήματος, της
Αναγόρευσης και του Διδακτορικού Διπλώματος από την Πρόεδρο του
Τμήματος Θεατρικών Σπουδών, καθηγήτρια Άννα Γ. Ταμπάκη.

http://delos.uoa.gr/opendelos/player?rid=f18cf087

ΔΕΥΤΕΡΟ ΜΕΡΟΣ
• Περιένδυση της τιμωμένης με την τήβεννο της Σχολής από την Κοσμήτορα
της Φιλοσοφικής Σχολής του Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών, καθηγήτρια Ελένη
Μιχ. Καραμαλέγκου.
• Ομιλία της τιμωμένης με θέμα: «Aristotle and the Idea of an Athenian
University».
http://delos.uoa.gr/opendelos/player?rid=faeacf78