The Anachronism of Greek Tragedy - in its Time and in our Own
Location
Janet Ayers Academic Center, JAAC 4094
Presentation Type
Presentation
Start Date
19-9-2018 3:00 PM
Description
Greek tragedy seems to speak for the ages. From antiquity to the modern day the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides have been staged again and again. What accounts for this continuous appeal? The adaptability of Greek tragedy to various political regimes (tyranny, monarchy, oligarchy, democracy) has been the predominant explanation. Is there something essentially political at the heart of tragedy? The supremacy of cultural poetics, a form of criticism owing its origins to the “thick” sociohistorical interpretations of New Historicism, would suggest so. In this presentation I want to test some alternatives to this orthodoxy. We’ll touch on a handful of canonical plays, as well as some modern popular culture, to see if tragedy contains a deeper, more essential kernel, one that can help to explain its relevance to the past, present and future.
Recommended Citation
Rader, Richard, "The Anachronism of Greek Tragedy - in its Time and in our Own" (2018). Humanities Symposium. 9.
https://repository.belmont.edu/humanities_symposium/2018/2018/9
The Anachronism of Greek Tragedy - in its Time and in our Own
Janet Ayers Academic Center, JAAC 4094
Greek tragedy seems to speak for the ages. From antiquity to the modern day the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides have been staged again and again. What accounts for this continuous appeal? The adaptability of Greek tragedy to various political regimes (tyranny, monarchy, oligarchy, democracy) has been the predominant explanation. Is there something essentially political at the heart of tragedy? The supremacy of cultural poetics, a form of criticism owing its origins to the “thick” sociohistorical interpretations of New Historicism, would suggest so. In this presentation I want to test some alternatives to this orthodoxy. We’ll touch on a handful of canonical plays, as well as some modern popular culture, to see if tragedy contains a deeper, more essential kernel, one that can help to explain its relevance to the past, present and future.
Comments
Convocation Credit: Society and the Arts and Sciences