Blood relations Cummings, Scott T
American Theatre,
02/1995, Letnik:
12, Številka:
2
Magazine Article, Trade Publication Article
Parallelisms between the tragedies of the ancient Greeks and those of contemporary times can be gleaned from the play 'The Oresteia,' as staged by the American Repertory Theatre as its opening ...production for the 1995-96 season. Directed by Francois Rochaix from a version of Robert Auletta, the Greek trilogy tells of the prosecution of Orestes for murdering his mother Clytemnestra.
Ancient Greek dramas focusing on women's tragedies are being re-staged with the productions of 'Hecuba,' 'Medea,' and 'Electra.' Actress Olympia Dukakis plays the title role of 'Hecuba' while ...Phylicia Rashad is the main character in 'Medea.' Both plays are presented at the Williamstown Theatre of Festival of Massachusetts and at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, GA, respectively. Zoe Wanamaker is the lead character of 'Electra' presented at Broadway, NY. Theatrical directors and producers expressed their interests in these Greek tragedies due to their themes and diversities of interpretations.
Abstract Objective We attempt to present and analyze suicidal behaviour in the ancient Greek and Roman world. Methods Drawing information from ancient Greek and Latin sources (History, Philosophy, ...Medicine, Literature, Visual Arts) we aim to point out psychological and social aspects of suicidal behaviour in antiquity. Results The shocking exposition of suicides reveals the zeitgeist of each era and illustrates the prevailing concepts. Social and legal reactions appear ambivalent, as they can oscillate from acceptance and interpretation of the act to punishment. In the history of these attitudes, we can observe continuities and breaches, reserving a special place in cases of mental disease. The delayed emergence of a generally accepted term for the voluntary exit from life (the term suicidium established during the 17th century), is connected to reactions triggered by the act of suicide than to the frequency and the extent of the phenomenon. Conclusions The social environment of the person, who voluntary ends his life usually dictates the behaviour and historical evidence confirms the phenomenon.
A fiercely independent thinker, colorful storyteller, and spirited teacher, David Grene devoted his life to two things: farming, which he began as a boy in Ireland and continued into old age; and ...classics, which he taught for several decades that culminated in his translating and editing, with Richmond Lattimore, of The Complete Greek Tragedies. In this charming memoir, which he wrote during the years leading up to his death in 2002 at the age of eighty-nine, Grene weaves together these interests to tell a quirky and absorbing story of the sometimes turbulent and always interesting life he split between the University of Chicago—where he helped found the Committee on Social Thought—and the farm he kept back in Ireland. Charting the path that took him from Europe to Chicago in 1937, and encompassing his sixty-five-year career at the university, Grene’s book draws readers into the heady and invigorating climate of his time there. And it is elegantly balanced with reflections stemming from his work on the farm where he hunted, plowed and regularly traveled on horseback to bring his cows home for milking. Grene’s form and humor are quite his own, and his brilliant storytelling will enthrall anyone interested in the classics, rural Ireland, or twentieth-century intellectual history, especially as it pertains to the University of Chicago.
This generous selection of published essays by the distinguished classicist Charles Segal represents over twenty years of critical inquiry into the questions of what Greek tragedy is and what it ...means for modern-day readers. Taken together, the essays reflect profound changes in the study of Greek tragedy in the United States during this period-in particular, the increasing emphasis on myth, psychoanalytic interpretation, structuralism, and semiotics.
This article compares the dramatisation of the Oedipus myth by Sophocles in his Oedipus Rex and by Cocteau in his La Machine Infernale. Both dramas are based on fundamentally the same story but ...nevertheless there are great differences in structure. This fact is due to a difference in attitude towards Fate on the part of the two dramatists. Sophocles admits the fact that Fate frequently intervenes in the life of man in a way which seems to be cruel. But he accepts this as something which we cannot understand and cannot alter. Therefore in his dramas he does not emphasize the cruelty of Fate but rather concentrates on the ignorance of man and also on the heroic way in which he endures his fate. So in the Oedipus Rex, Sophocles does not show us how Oedipus is led to commit those terrible crimes — at the beginning of his tragedy the worst has already happened — but he shows how Oedipus gradually discovers the truth and what his reaction is. Cocteau, on the other hand, wishes to demonstrate the cruelty of the gods towards man. Therefore he takes the events in chronological sequence and shows how Oedipus is caught in the web of Fate. To emphasize this he even invents incidents of his own. In the first three acts he takes three critical moments in the history of Oedipus. The first incident is wholly his own invention. While Thebes is suffering under the reign of terror of the Sphinx, the ghost of Laius appears on the city walls and tries to warn Jocasta against the coming of Oedipus, but by a combination of circumstances she never receives the warning. In the second act Oedipus' encounter with the Sphinx is depicted. But instead of conquering her by his superior wisdom, Oedipus is completely in her power and only escapes because she falls in love with him and tells him the answer to the riddle beforehand. Oedipus does not realize this and departs in triumph to claim Jocasta as his wife. In the third act Oedipus and Jocasta is shown on their wedding night. Time and again they are on the brink of discovering their real relationship, but each time the discovery is averted. Finally, in the fourth act, Cocteau describes Oedipus' discovery of the truth, following the main lines of Sophocles' tragedy. Although Cocteau has succeeded in giving us a fascinating dramatisation of this ancient myth, he has given no radically new interpretation of the myth.
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