The article is devoted to the analysis of Medea image in eponymous tragedy by Euripides. The authors conclude that the tragedy created the image of a woman with a tragic fate and a passionate nature. ...The heroine of the tragedy is not ready to put up with fate and therefore begins to fight for justice and self-respect. By her act (killing children out of jealousy for her husband), Medea proves the power of a woman and points to her lack of femininity, which should be expressed in humility, meekness, faith, hope and love. In this regard, the image of Medea is a symbol of evil and the dark sides of the female essence.
In postwar Western culture, the myth of Antigone has been the subject of noted literary, literary-critical, dramatic, philosophical, and philological treatments, not least due to the strong influence ...of one of the key plays of the twentieth century, Jean Anouilh’s Antigone. The rich discussion of the myth has often dealt with its most famous formulation, Sophocles’ Antigone, but has paid less attention to the broader ancient context; the epic sources (the Iliad, Odyssey, Thebaid, and Oedipodea); the other tragic versions (Aeschylus’s Seven Against Thebes and his lost Eleusinians; Euripides’s Suppliants, Phoenician Women, and Antigone, of which only a few short fragments have been preserved); and the responses of late antiquity. This paper analyses the basic features of this nearly thousand-year-long ancient tradition and shows how they connect in surprising ways – sometimes even more directly than Sophoclean tragedy does – with the main issues in some unique contemporary traditions of its reception (especially the Slovenian, Polish and Argentine ones): the question of burying the wartime (or postwar) dead and the ideal of reconciliation.
“Fishes leapt out from the blue water because of his sweet music”. Music, poetry and soul in Orpheus’ myth. Through the analysis of different sources, this paper highlights the main events in ...Orpheus’ myth: the heroes’ birth, the power of his singing on plants and animals, the teaching of Dionysus’ mysteries, the descent into the Hades and his death. These elements are now analysed in light of the power of poetry and music on human soul. This deep meaning of Orpheus’ myth explains its lasting presence in ancient Greek culture.
The article studies the translation of the Ancient Greek literature into Ukrainian as an important and historically conditioned process that influenced the translation tradition in Ukraine. The ...authors trace the history of translation dating from the period of Kyivan Rus to modern times by applying linguistic, chronological and thematic approaches. As a result of the conducted study the authors define main directions and trends of assimilation of the classical Ancient Greek literature by the Ukrainian context through translation in its cultural and historical dimension, as well as characterize the translations of the Ukrainian scientists and outline their contribution into the classical literature corpus formation. It has been revealed that in different historical periods, translated literature performed definite functions (it was used in religious worship, as the material for original literature creation, in intellectual discussions). Since the 19th century, there existed a tendency when translators (M. Zerov, I. Franko, Lesya Ukrainka, V. Svidzinskyi, P. Nishchynskyi, M. Rylskyi, G. Kochur, Borys Ten, M. Lukash, M. Moskalenko, A. Sodomora, etc.), guided by their own preferences, cultural trends, national needs, political attitudes, consciously chose original texts for translation, carried out scientific investigations and added commentaries to their publications, thereby creating a scientific discussion in the Ukrainian society. It was also found out that translations of Homer's works into Ukrainian led to the emergence of a certain translational tradition (the same phenomenon is observed in Western Europe), when Ukrainian translators developed a methodology that allowed them not only to convey the ideological and content component of the original poems, but also to reproduce the rhyming of ancient poetry. The paper concludes that modern translators from the Ancient Greek language continue to popularize ancient literature and the legacy of the holy fathers, thereby supporting the continuity of the Ukrainian school of translation.
This paper delves into the question of the potential addresses of ancient Greek novels. After shedding some light on the matter (based on ancient sources which account for the sociocultural ...underpinnings of the new genre), a classification is established in an attempt to provide a deeper understanding of alleged homogeneity in readership. The entire bibliography demonstrates a discontinuation in the conception prevalent decades ago, which, based on subjective and anachronistic interpretations, would find reinforcement in the silence of ancient sources. To make matters more intricate, the surviving information regarding how the novel was viewed in ancient times appears not to point to a prestigious status thereof. All things considered, should these presumptions alone lead us to consider the novel as a low-quality genre in terms of literary and stylistic standards? Ancient Greek novel might well be one of those cases in which literary or cultural creations have called for reassessment and revaluation several centuries following their conception.
La violencia física de carácter cómico registra antecedentes en distintos géneros de la literatura griega antigua. La crítica ha asociado los orígenes del slapstick con la farsa popular, pero el ...recurso puede remontarse a la épica y rastrearse en la fábula, el yambo, la comedia. Este trabajo registra antecedentes de la golpiza cómica en diferentes géneros e indaga sus rasgos particulares y comunes, desde una perspectiva analítica y teórica. El recurso, de especial eficacia por canalizar pulsiones hostiles y suprimir la empatía, adquiere en la tradición literaria griega un valor tópico y punitivo y, en particular, en la comedia aristofánica, una marcada potencia argumentativa. Physical violence, of comic sort, has antecedents in different genres of ancient Greek literature. Criticism has associated the origins of ancient slapstick with popular farce, but the resource is found in epic, fable, yambo and comedy. This work records antecedents of comic beating in different genres and studies its particular and common features, from an analytical and theoretical perspective. The resource, especially effective in channeling hostile impulses and suppressing empathy, acquires a topical and punitive value in Greek literary tradition and, in particular, in aristophanic comedy, a remarkable argumentative potential.
Sophocles' Antigone is a touchstone in democratic, feminist and legal theory, and possibly the most commented upon play in the history of philosophy and political theory. Bonnie Honig's rereading of ...it therefore involves intervening in a host of literatures and unsettling many of their governing assumptions. Exploring the power of Antigone in a variety of political, cultural, and theoretical settings, Honig identifies the 'Antigone-effect' - which moves those who enlist Antigone for their politics from activism into lamentation. She argues that Antigone's own lamentations can be seen not just as signs of dissidence but rather as markers of a rival world view with its own sovereignty and vitality. Honig argues that the play does not offer simply a model for resistance politics or 'equal dignity in death', but a more positive politics of counter-sovereignty and solidarity which emphasizes equality in life.
Birth of the symbol Struck, Peter T
2004., 20090209, 2009, 2004, c2004., 2004-01-01
eBook
Nearly all of us have studied poetry and been taught to look for the symbolic as well as literal meaning of the text. Is this the way the ancients saw poetry? In Birth of the Symbol, Peter Struck ...explores the ancient Greek literary critics and theorists who invented the idea of the poetic "symbol." The book notes that Aristotle and his followers did not discuss the use of poetic symbolism. Rather, a different group of Greek thinkers--the allegorists--were the first to develop the notion. Struck extensively revisits the work of the great allegorists, which has been underappreciated. He links their interest in symbolism to the importance of divination and magic in ancient times, and he demonstrates how important symbolism became when they thought about religion and philosophy. "They see the whole of great poetic language as deeply figurative," he writes, "with the potential always, even in the most mundane details, to be freighted with hidden messages."
Female acts in Greek tragedy Foley, Helene P; Foley, Helene P
2001., 20090110, 2009, 2001, 2001-01-01, Volume:
15
eBook
Although Classical Athenian ideology did not permit women to exercise legal, economic, and social autonomy, the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides often represent them as influential ...social and moral forces in their own right. Scholars have struggled to explain this seeming contradiction. Helene Foley shows how Greek tragedy uses gender relations to explore specific issues in the development of the social, political, and intellectual life in the polis. She investigates three central and problematic areas in which tragic heroines act independently of men: death ritual and lamentation, marriage, and the making of significant ethical choices. Her anthropological approach, together with her literary analysis, allows for an unusually rich context in which to understand gender relations in ancient Greece.
Antilogies, or pairs of symmetrically opposed speeches or arguments, were generally ignored by Plato, Isocrates, Aristotle, Cicero, and Diogenes Laertius, and, later, by Eduard Norden, Hermann Diels, ...and most modern scholars of antiquity. As a consequence, until the end of the twentieth century CE, antilogies have been ignored or, at best, treated as a minor literary device to be mentioned only with reference to individual writings. Nevertheless, during the second half of the fifth century, antilogies were a crucially important form of argument and persuasion in ‘sophistic’ thought, philosophy, historiography, comedy and tragedy, and other fields. In order to redress the historical neglect of the art of antilogy, this essay provides an inventory (doubtless incomplete) of some 30 antilogies composed by playwrights such as Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, historians such as Herodotus and Thucydides, and, most importantly, ‘sophists’ such as Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus and Antiphon (in addition to a few other writers of the same period). Building on this inventory, the second part of the essay seeks to establish identifying features of antilogy and assess its cultural significance in the Athenian context (in the second half of the fifth century BCE).
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