A. Feickert, Euripidis Rhesos: Einleitung, Übersetzung, Kommentar (2005), JHS 127, 2007, 161-62. (original) (raw)
Related papers
THE RECEPTION OF EURIPIDES' 'THE BACCHAE', PH.D. THESIS, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON, LONDON 2005.
This thesis aims to recount the performance history of Euripides’ Bakkhai with special reference to nine eminent productions of the 20th century. First, I deal with methodological issues on how one gathers together the pieces of evidence from an ‘invisible’ performance. Given that the Bakkhai was only revived in the 20th century, the review of its textual reception in Chapter 1 covers the gap between the textual and the theatrical re-usage of the play. Moreover, to review the literature would prove that there is indeed a structural model already inbuilt in the text and subsequently applied to performance not necessarily as a footnote to classicist theories. Chapter 2 retells the stage history of the Bakkhai through nine of the least documented productions of this ‘forgotten’ Euripidean tragedy. My Conclusions decipher the structural model of the Bakkhai and provide an explanation for its ‘otherness’ as a tragedy intended for the theatre of the mise-en-scène.
The “Iphigenia in Aulis“” unfolds a very exciting plotline, full of suspenseful arcs of action, surprising twists and abrupt volte-faces, sensational confrontations and revelation of secrets, incessant making and unmaking of intrigues, and cumulative thwarting of the audience’s expectations. From beginning to end, the spectators rarely experience a moment of tranquility. This play is probably the closest that Classical Greek art has reached to the structure of the modern adventure thriller, in which everything is subservient to the forward movement of the story and the creation of serial surprise. To achieve this memorable sequence of unabated suspense, the author has had to make some sacrifices regarding the verisimilitude of events, the lifelikeness of the personages’ reactions, and the psychological realism of their attitudes. It is worth wondering whether Euripides has moved beyond the Aristotelian principles of “eikos” and “anankaion”, plausibility and necessity in plot development, to approach rather the Brechtian perspective of “Jede Szene für sich”. Similarly to other plays of Euripides’ later period, the “Iphigenia” may be read as a parable on the historical circumstances and civic conflicts of Athens during the final years of the Peloponnesian War. Two major constituents of the plot lend themselves par excellence to the detection of allusions to contemporary reality: on one hand, the great war which the Greeks are about to start, and in particular the explanations offered about its causes, purposes, and the desires of the parties involved; on the other hand, the sacrifice of young Iphigenia, which programmatically epitomises the high human cost of the military enterprise. These two capital events of the storyline seem to entail wide-ranging meditations on the recent history of the embattled Greece. Especially in the years of the Decelean War, after about 410 BCE, Euripides seems to have been preoccupied with the fate of the younger generation of Athens: those youths that had been born and grown up in the harsh conditions of the long conflict, those who had never known the time of peace and the golden age of Athens. One further aspect of the “Iphigenia in Aulis” deserves comment; namely, the open and extensible concept of historical experience that emerges from the construction of the plot and the arrangement of the story materials. The finale of the “Iphigenia” contains the germs of further storylines that will run their course in the post-drama world. The end of the story of this tragedy is only the beginning of several other stories, which will be of equally violent, catastrophic, and tragic nature. This peculiarly Euripidean view of human experience as an open-ended process brings the Euripidean dramaturgy particularly close to the Shakespearian concept of the human condition, clearly discerned in Shakespeare’s historical plays. In the conception of history as an open process of unending evil, Euripides and Shakespeare come together.
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2022
? hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=markantonatos+companion+euripides&printsec=frontcover "A Goliath of a manuscript" issued a Goliath of a book. In the aftermath of the Brill's Companion to Sophocles (2012), Andreas Markantonatos' (professor of Greek at the University of Peloponnese) editorial achievement is a survey of the entire Euripidean spectrum 1. The organization of the content, explained on p. 7-8, greatly facilitates reading: part 1, "the poet and his work", includes studies on the individual plays and the fragments; parts 2-7 guide us through "dominant themes, overriding ideas and prevailing motifs"; finally, part 8, "Euripides made new", deals with modern reception and translation. The latter is limited to English, but we welcome the advice to learn ancient Greek for a personal approach to the original text. The two indexes, in particular the first one (subjects), greatly facilitate the reading. Each of the 49 erudite chapters includes a relevant and updated multilingual bibliography suitable even for undergraduates under appropriate guidance.
Much Ado about Greek tragedy? Shakespeare, Euripides, and the histoire tragique
What Is a Greek Source on the Early English Stage? Fifteen New Essays, 2024
This article approaches the relation between Shakespeare and Greek tragedy by looking at one of the main known sources for the Claudio-Hero plot of Much Ado about Nothing, Matteo Bandello’s novella of “Timbreo and Fenicia”, and its French rewriting by François de Belleforest. It considers the generic implications of the transition from novella to histoire tragique, in light of the French rewritings’ key role in the reception of ‘Bandello’ in England. After exploring certain intersections between the early modern reception of Greek tragedy and the project of the histoires tragiques, it looks closely at the notable presence of Euripides in “Timbrée et Fénicie”. It concludes by arguing that, out of all the proposed sources of Much Ado, Belleforest’s rewriting of this tale is the one most likely to have led Shakespeare to Euripides’ Alcestis, which it re-proposes as an intertext in the ending of Much Ado. This layering of texts seems to have resonated with the playwright for over a decade, since, in The Winter’s Tale, he is thought to have returned not only to the same moment from Alcestis, but also to the same story in ‘Bandello’.
The Classical Review, 2018
Perris situates his fine monograph on versions of Euripides’ Bacchae amidst ‘stronger’ and ‘weaker’ theses on reception. P. finds that this tragedy is fertile material, ‘predisposed to creative translation’ (p. 170). Hence Bacchae provokes responses so diverse as Gilbert Murray’s ‘mystery play’ (p. 63), H.D.’s ‘incantatory, secular mysticism’ (p. 93), Derek Mahon’s ‘anti-political’ irreverence (p. 96), and Colin Teevan’s deadpan ‘translationese’ (p. 120). While P. offers no substan- tial commentary on Brian de Palma and Wole Soyinka, whose versions of Bacchae have received much critical attention elsewhere, his book covers an impressive expanse. Each translation is considered amidst the efforts of its author’s contemporaries, and we are given an exhaustive list of adaptations of the play. P. takes a strong line on the versions we should avoid: ‘the less said about Dionysus in New York (2008), by retired New York State Supreme Court Justice Nicholas Clemente, the better’; Richard Edwin Day’s 1909 epic is ‘insufferable’ (p. 47). Contemplation of Dionysus’ manifestations even begets allusions to Spinal Tap, Jimi Hendrix and Queens of the Stone Age.
Theatre Journal, 1980
When this book was first published, its burden-that Greek tragedies make more sense when they are treated as plays for performance-was fairly novel, or at least it was preached more than it was practised. In the few years since then, it has become an orthodoxy, and stagecraft is now given due attention in nearly all new books. While happy about that, I am not happy that my name is cited as a 'ringleader' of those who maintain that we should concentrate on performance rather than words. I do not endorse that: the power of the Greek theatre rests on its extraordinary combination of word and embodiment. To neglect one is to impoverish the other. I trust that this book does not encourage anyone to set the performative dimension in competition with the verbal. I hope it does not seem fickle to say that there are things here which I would not write in the same way today. The revised bibliography gives some idea of how fast the water is flowing under the bridges of scholarship. I would also acknowledge more openly in chapter 1 the selectivity of any account of the 'author's meaning'. And in the last chapter I would stress more that it is the place of books like this to suggest and to prompt rather than to dictate to the professional theatre. The use made of my work by the National Theatre Oresteia in London in 1981-2 shows that such a relationship can work. This book is, in fact, about ancient Greek culture and about the theatre, and it is meant for the 'general reader' who is interested in either or both. I hope professional Hellenists will read it, but it was not written primarily for them. While I have had students in mind above all, students of drama or English literature or Classical civilization, any student who encounters Greek tragedy, anyone who is fascinated by the Greeks, who loves the theatre, anyone who is prepared to be enriched by the great literature of the past may find these pages worth while. But there is a condition. The core of the book (chapters 3-9) demands and assumes that the reader already knows all, or at least some, of the nine tragedies it concentrates on (they are listed on p. 22). Furthermore, it is probably best read with a translation (or text) open to hand, preferably a translation which has the line numbers in the margin (there are recommendations on pp. 197-8). This book is in no way a substitute for reading the plays themselves-and, if possible, seeing them. Indeed, I should like to think that the book has encouraged and will encourage theatres to stage these great dramas, and might help to find them audiences. I quote from the tragedies liberally. All quotations are translated and all the translations are my own. I am only too aware how stilted and imperfect they are; but I thought it essential to translate high poetry into something which suggests its lofty and arresting style. The language of Greek tragedy was not that of everyday speech, and I had rather turn it into bad verse than into pedestrian prose. In the earlier Preface I stressed how much this book owed to the inspiration and to the help of Colin Macleod. Since his death in December 1981, at the age of 38, everything that preserves his insight, however diluted, has become that much more concentrated. If this study succeeds at all in getting beneath the surface, that is owed to him. Magdalen College, Oxford March 1985 Oliver Taplin viii 1 The visual dimension of tragedy Behind the dialogue of Greek drama we are always conscious of a concrete visual actuality, and behind that of a specific emotional actuality. Behind the drama of words is the drama of action, the timbre of voice and voice, the uplifted hand or tense muscle, and the particular emotion. The spoken play, the words which we read, are symbols, a shorthand, and often, as in the best of Shakespeare, a very abbreviated shorthand indeed, for the actual and felt play, which is always the real thing. The phrase, beautiful as it may be, stands for a greater beauty still. This is merely a particular case of the amazing unity of Greek, the unity of concrete and abstract in philosophy, the unity of thought and feeling, action and speculation in life.