Edith Hall - Böcker

They gave us democracy, philosophy, poetry, rational science, the joke. They built the Parthenon and the Library of Alexandria. They wrote the timeless myths of Odysseus and Oedipus, and the histories of Leonidas’s three hundred Spartans and Alexander the Great. But who were the ancient Greeks? And what was it that enabled them to achieve so much?Here, Edith Hall gives us a revelatory way of viewing this geographically scattered people, visiting different communities at various key moments during twenty centuries of ancient history. Identifying ten unique traits central to the widespread ancient Greeks, Hall unveils a civilization of incomparable richness and a people of astounding complexity – and explains how they made us who we are today. ‘A thoroughly readable and illuminating account of this fascinating people… This excellent book makes us admire and like the ancient Greeks equally’Independent‘A worthy and lively introduction to one of the two groups of ancient peoples who really formed the western world’Sunday Times‘Throughout, Hall exemplifies her subjects’ spirit of inquiry, their originality and their open-mindedness’Daily Telegraph‘A book that is both erudite and splendidly entertaining’Financial Times

The 24 essays collected in this book address the complex interactions between concepts of time, grammatical tense, and type of genre of prose or poetry in ancient Greek literature. The chronological scope stretches across nearly a millennium from archaic epic to the Second Sophistic, from the emotional intensity of Homer to Plutarch and the playfulness of Lucian, tracing patterns, developments, contrasts, and intertextual allusiveness across diverse texts and authors. These include dramatists (Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, and Aristophanes), philosophers (Plato), lyricists (Alcman and Sappho), ancient literary critics (Dionysius of Halicarnassus), orators (whose lawcourt speeches were delivered literally 'against the clock' in the form of the clepsydra), Hellenistic poets (Apollonius and Lycophron), historiographers (Herodotus) and the fabulist Aesop. The structure is informed by Greek philosophical categories, exploring discrete metaphysical, psychological, aetiological, and ethical ideas about temporality; the collective project of the volume is to investigate how authors manipulated not only tenses but imagery, moods, and metres, as well as generic conventions, in shaping and articulating notions about orality, literariness, subjectivity, immediacy, presence, futurity, causation, gender, sexuality, ethnography, cosmology, and remotest prehistory. The result is a pioneering, unique, and multifaceted volume that throws light not only on the rich linguistic resources of the ancient Greek language in evoking time, but on surprising interconnections between genres often studied in isolation.

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, InspiringThis Very Short Introduction introduces the life, work, and influence of one of the greatest dramatists of all time, Sophocles the Athenian. Placing his plays within their historical context, and explaining the conventions of ancient Greek tragic theatre, Edith Hall spotlights their distinctive features-tight plots, titanic personalities, lucid style, sympathetic women, exquisite poetry, and stagecraft. This analysis is followed by an account of how and why Sophoclean dramas have survived to be read and widely performed into the twenty-first century.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Human sacrifice, a spirited heroine, a quest ending in a hairsbreadth escape, the touching reunion of long-lost siblings, and exquisite poetry--these features have historically made Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris one of the most influential of Greek tragedies. Yet, despite its influence and popularity in the ancient world, the play remains curiously under-investigated in both mainstream cultural studies and more specialized scholarship. With Adventures with Iphigenia in Tauris, Edith Hall provides a much-needed cultural history of this play, giving as much weight to the impact of the play on subsequent Greek and Roman art and literature as on its manifestations since the discovery of the sole surviving medieval manuscript in the 1500s. The book argues that the reception of the play is bound up with its spectacular setting on the southern coast of the Crimean peninsula in what is now the Ukraine, a territory where world history has often been made. However, it also shows that the play's tragicomic tenor and escape plot have had a tangible influence on popular culture, from romantic fiction to Hollywood action films. The thirteen chapters illustrate how reactions to the play have evolved from the ancient admiration of Aristotle and Ovid, the Christian responses of Milton and Catherine the Great, the anthropological ritualists and theatrical Modernists including James Frazer and Isadora Duncan, to recent feminist and postcolonial dramatists from Mexico to Australia. Individual chapters are devoted to the most significant adaptations of the tragedy, Gluck's opera Iphigénie en Tauride and Goethe's verse drama Iphigenie auf Tauris. Richly illustrated and accessibly written, with all texts translated into English, Adventures with Iphigenia in Tauris argues elegantly for a reappraisal of this Euripidean masterpiece.

New Light on Tony Harrison was developed from a conference marking the 80th birthday of the prizewinning British poet Tony Harrison. Contributors include practising poets, playwrights, specialists in Classics, Theatre, Translation Studies, English and World Literature, and professionals in media where Harrison's extensive work has been least researched. The aim of the volume is to explore new approaches to the understanding of the work of one of our most important poets. The volume examines four main areas: - Tony Harrison's more recent poems- The continuation of his relationship with ancient theatre after the landmark Oresteia and Trackers of the 1980-1990 decade, alongside his evolving dramatic relationship with Euripides and with French authors (Hugo, Molière, Racine)- Harrison's profound contribution during his periods of residence abroad in Africa, North America, Moscow and Prague, and his popularity in French and Italian translation; - His extensive body of poems written specifically for television and radio.This is a must for fans of Tony Harrison's work and for those with an interest in, or studying English Literature, Classical Mythology, Theatre Studies, and Film courses.

Incest, polygamy, murder, sacrilege, impalement, castration, female power, and despotism: these are some of the images by which the Greek tragedians defined the non-Greek, `barbarian' world. This book explains for the first time the reasons behind their singular fascination with barbarians. It sets the plays against the historical background of the Panhellenic wars against Persia and the establishment of an Athenian empire based on democracy and slavery. Contemporary anthropology and political philosophy is discussed, revealing how the poets conceptualized the barbarian as the negative embodiment of Athenian civic ideals. By comparing the treatment of foreigners in Homer and tragedy, it shows that the new dimension which the idea of the barbarian had brought to the tragic theatre radically affected the past, and enriched the tragedians' repertoire of aural and visual effects. The invented barbarian of the tragic stage was a powerful cultural expression of Greek xenophobia and chauvinism, but, paradoxically, produced an outburst of creative energy and literary innovation.The D.Phil. dissertation out of which this book developed won the Hellenic Foundation's prize for the best doctoral thesis in ancient Greek studies in the UK and Republic of Ireland (1988).

This lavishly illustrated book offers the first full, interdisciplinary investigation of the historical evidence for the presence of ancient Greek tragedy in the post-Restoration British theatre, where it reached a much wider audience - including women - than had access to the original texts. Archival research has excavated substantial amounts of new material, both visual and literary, which is presented in chronological order. But the fundamental aim is to explain why Greek tragedy, which played an elite role in the curricula of largely conservative schools and universities, was magnetically attractive to political radicals, progressive theatre professionals, and to the aesthetic avant-garde. All Greek has been translated, and the book will be essential reading for anyone interested in Greek tragedy, the reception of ancient Greece and Rome, theatre history, British social history, English studies, or comparative literature.

Women Classical Scholars: Unsealing the Fountain from the Renaissance to Jacqueline de Romilly is the first written history of the pioneering women born between the Renaissance and 1913 who played significant roles in the history of classical scholarship. Facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles from patriarchal social systems and educational institutions - from learning Latin and Greek as a marginalized minority, to being excluded from institutional support, denigrated for being lightweight or over-ambitious, and working in the shadows of husbands, fathers, and brothers - they nevertheless continued to teach, edit, translate, analyse, and elucidate the texts left to us by the ancient Greeks and Romans.In this volume twenty essays by international leaders in the field chronicle the lives of women from around the globe who have shaped the discipline over more than five hundred years. Arranged in broadly chronological order from the Italian, Iberian, and Portuguese Renaissance through to the Stalinist Soviet Union and occupied France, they synthesize illuminating overviews of the evolution of classical scholarship with incisive case-studies into often overlooked key figures: some, like Madame Anne Dacier, were already famous in their home countries but have been neglected in previous, male-centred accounts, while others have been almost completely lost to the mainstream cultural memory. This book identifies and celebrates them - their frustrations, achievements, and lasting records; in so doing it provides the classical scholars of today, regardless of gender, with the female intellectual ancestors they did not know they had.

Women Classical Scholars: Unsealing the Fountain from the Renaissance to Jacqueline de Romilly is the first written history of the pioneering women born between the Renaissance and 1913 who played significant roles in the history of classical scholarship. Facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles from patriarchal social systems and educational institutions - from learning Latin and Greek as a marginalized minority, to being excluded from institutional support, denigrated for being lightweight or over-ambitious, and working in the shadows of husbands, fathers, and brothers - they nevertheless continued to teach, edit, translate, analyse, and elucidate the texts left to us by the ancient Greeks and Romans.In this volume twenty essays by international leaders in the field chronicle the lives of women from around the globe who have shaped the discipline over more than five hundred years. Arranged in broadly chronological order from the Italian, Iberian, and Portuguese Renaissance through to the Stalinist Soviet Union and occupied France, they synthesize illuminating overviews of the evolution of classical scholarship with incisive case-studies into often overlooked key figures: some, like Madame Anne Dacier, were already famous in their home countries but have been neglected in previous, male-centred accounts, while others have been almost completely lost to the mainstream cultural memory. This book identifies and celebrates them - their frustrations, achievements, and lasting records; in so doing it provides the classical scholars of today, regardless of gender, with the female intellectual ancestors they did not know they had.

This is an invaluable introduction to ancient Greek tragedy which discusses every surviving play in detail and provides all the background information necessary for understanding the context and content of the plays. Edith Hall argues that the essential feature of the genre is that it always depicts terrible human suffering and death, but in a way that invites philosophical enquiry into their causes and effects, This enquiry was played out in the bright sunlight of open-air theatre, which became a key marker of the boundary between living and dead. The first half of the book is divided into four chapters which address the social and physical contexts in which the plays were performed, the contribution of the poets, actors, funders, and audiences, the poetic composition of the texts, their performance conventions, main themes, and focus on religion, politics, and the family. The second half consists of individual essays on each of the surviving thirty-three plays by the Greek tragedians, and an account of the recent performance of Greek tragic theatre and tragic fragments. An up-to-date 'Suggestions for further reading' is included.

This is the first comprehensive and illustrated study of the most important form of theatre in the entire Roman Empire - pantomime, the ancient equivalent of ballet dancing. Performed for more than five centuries in hundreds of theatres from Portugal in the West to the Euphrates, from Gaul to North Africa, solo male dancing stars - the forerunners of Nijinsky, Nureyev, and Baryshnikov - stunned audiences with their erotic costumes, subtlety of gesture, and dazzling athleticism. In sixteen specially commissioned and complementary studies, the leading world specialists explore all aspects of the ancient pantomime dancer's performance skills, popularity, and social impact, while paying special attention to the texts that formed the basis of this distinctive art form.

Greek tragedy is currently being performed more frequently than at any time since classical antiquity. This book is the first to address the fundamental question, why has there been so much Greek tragedy in the theatres, opera houses and cinemas of the last three decades? A detailed chronological appendix of production information and lavish illustrations supplement the fourteen essays by an interdisciplinary team of specialists from the worlds of classics, theatre studies, and the professional theatre. They relate the recent appeal of Greek tragedy to social trends, political developments, aesthetic and performative developments, and the intellectual currents of the last three decades, especially multiculturalism, post-colonialism, feminism, post-structuralism, revisions of psychoanalytical models, and secularization.

Aeschylus' Agamemnon, the first play in the Oresteia trilogy, is one of the most influential theatrical texts in the global canon. In performance, translation, adaptation, along with sung and danced interpretations, it has been familiar in the Greek world and the Roman empire, and from the Renaissance to the contemporary stage. It has been central to the aesthetic and intellectual avant-garde as well as to radical politics of all complexions and to feminist thinking. Contributors to this interdisciplinary collection of eighteen essays on its performance history include classical scholars, theatre historians, and experts in English and comparative literature. All Greek and Latin has been translated; the book is generously illustrated, and supplemented with the useful research aid of a chronological appendix of performances.

Cultural Responses to the Persian Wars addresses the huge impact on subsequent culture made by the wars fought between ancient Persia and Greece in the early fifth century BC. It brings together sixteen interdisciplinary essays, mostly by classical scholars, on individual trends within the reception of this period of history, extending from the wars' immediate impact on ancient Greek history to their reception in literature and thought both in antiquity and in the post-Renaisssance world. Extensively illustrated and accessibly written, with a detailed Introduction and bibliographies, this book will interest historians, classicists, and students of both comparative and modern literatures.

Greek tragedy is currently being performed more frequently than at any time since classical antiquity. This book is the first to address the fundamental question, why has there been so much Greek tragedy in the theatres, opera houses, and cinemas of the last three decades? A detailed chronological appendix of production information and lavish illustrations supplement the fourteen essays by an interdisciplinary team of specialists from the worlds of classics, theatre studies, and the professional theatre. They relate the recent appeal of Greek tragedy to social trends, political developments, aesthetic and performative developments, and the intellectual currents of the last three decades, especially multiculturalism, post-colonialism, feminism, post-structuralism, revisions of psychoanalytical models, and secularization.

In this pioneering study Edith Hall explores the numerous different ways in which we can understand the relationship between the real, social world in which the Athenians lived and the theatrical roles that they invented. In twelve studies of role types and the theatrical conventions that contributed to their creation - including women in childbirth, drowning barbarians, horny satyrs, allegorical representations of Comedy, peasant farmers, tragic masks, and solo sung arias - she advances the argument that the interface between ancient Greek drama and social reality must be understood as a complicated and incessant process of mutual cross-pollination.

Love and loyalty, hatred and revenge, fear, deprivation, and political ambition: these are the motives which thrust the characters portrayed in these three Sophoclean masterpieces on to their collision course with catastrophe.Recognized in his own day as perhaps the greatest of the Greek tragedians, Sophocles' reputation has remained undimmed for two and a half thousand years. His greatest innovation in the tragic medium was his development of a central tragic figure, faced with a test of will and character, risking obloquy and death rather than compromise his or her principles: it is striking that Antigone and Electra both have a woman as their intransigent 'hero'. Antigone dies rather neglect her duty to her family, Oedipus' determination to save his city results in the horrific discovery that he has committed both incest and parricide, and Electra's unremitting anger at her mother and her lover keeps her in servitude and despair.These vivid translations combine elegance and modernity, and are remarkable for their lucidity and accuracy. Their sonorous diction, economy, and sensitivity to the varied metres and modes of the original musical delivery make them equally suitable for reading or theatrical peformance. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

A pathbreaking study of the role played by ancient Greek and Roman sources and voices in the struggle to abolish transatlantic slavery and in representations of that struggle in the twentieth century. Thirteen essays by an interdisciplinary team of specialists from three continents, led by the Centre for the Reception of Greece and Rome at Royal Holloway University of London, ask how both critics and defenders of slavery in media ranging from parliamentary speeches to poetry, fiction, drama, and cinema have summoned the ghosts of the ancient Spartans, Homer, Aristotle, Aeschylus, Pliny, Spartacus, and Prometheus to support their arguments.

The story of Medea, a maligned and misunderstood woman of Greek mythology, from one of Britain’s foremost classicistsMothers who kill their children are universally abhorred but perennially fascinating. In this book, the award-winning scholar Edith Hall explores the possibility that Medea, mythology’s archetypal murderous mother, could be based on a historical figure who migrated to Greece in the late Bronze Age.Medea has appeared in countless works of art—plays, operas, musicals, ballets, movies, poems, paintings, sculptures, and novels—but until now no one has written a biography of her. Through meticulous research and fast-paced narrative, Hall brings new life to Medea’s story, from her lonely childhood on the shores of the Black Sea through her dramatic escape with Jason and the Argonauts, the murders and attempted palace coup in Thessaly, her deadly revenge in Corinth, and her final exile in Athens.In reframing a figure long reduced to villainy, Hall restores Medea’s humanity, illuminating a woman pushed to extremes by betrayal and displacement—a brilliant, embattled outsider navigating the violent patriarchies of the ancient Mediterranean.

An urgent study of Homer’s Iliad, exposing the beginnings of the ecological disaster we now face and facilitating our understanding of its history  “Exhilarating.”—Emma Greensmith, Times Literary Supplement  The roots of today’s environmental catastrophe run deep into humanity’s past. Through this unprecedented reading of Homer’s Iliad, the award-winning classicist Edith Hall examines how this foundational text both documents the environmental practices of the ancient Greeks and betrays an awareness of the dangers posed by the destruction of the natural landscape. Underlying Homer’s account of brutal military operations, alliances, and cataclysmic struggle is a palpable understanding that the direction in which humanity was headed could create a world that was uninhabitable.  Hall provides unparalleled insight into the ancient origins of climate change and argues that the Iliad exposes the deepest contradictions behind the environmental problems we have created. Indeed, it is possible that some of the violence done to the environment throughout history has been authorized, if not exacerbated, by the celebration of the exploitation of nature in Homer’s poem. Drawing compelling analogies to contemporary poetry, literature, and film, Hall demonstrates that the Iliad, as a priceless document of the mindset of early humans, can help us understand the long history of ecological degradation and inspire activism to rescue our planet from disaster.

An award-winning classicist turns to Greek tragedies for the wisdom to understand the damage caused by suicide and help those who are contemplating suicide themselves  “Remarkable, brave and compassionate.”—Rowan Williams, New Statesman  In Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus the Tyrant, a messenger arrives to report that Jocasta, queen of Thebes, has killed herself. To prepare listeners for this terrible news, he announces, “The tragedies that hurt the most are those that sufferers have chosen for themselves.” Edith Hall, whose own life and psyche have been shaped by such loss—her mother’s grandfather, mother, and first cousin all took their own lives—traces the philosophical arguments on suicide, from Plato and Aristotle to David Hume and Albert Camus.  In this deeply personal story, Hall explores the psychological damage that suicide inflicts across generations, relating it to the ancient Greek idea of a family curse. She draws parallels between characters from Greek tragedy and her own relatives, including her great-grandfather, whose life and death bore similar motivations to Sophocles’ Ajax: both men were overwhelmed by shame and humiliation.  Hall, haunted by her own periodic suicidal urges, shows how plays by Sophocles and other Greek dramatists helped her work through the loss of her grandmother and namesake Edith and understand her relationship with her own mother. The wisdom and solace found in the ancient tragedies, she argues, can help one choose survival over painful adversity and offer comfort to those who are tragically bereaved.

A People’s History of Classics explores the influence of the classical past on the lives of working-class people, whose voices have been almost completely excluded from previous histories of classical scholarship and pedagogy, in Britain and Ireland from the late 17th to the early 20th century.This volume challenges the prevailing scholarly and public assumption that the intimate link between the exclusive intellectual culture of British elites and the study of the ancient Greeks and Romans and their languages meant that working-class culture was a ‘Classics-Free Zone’. Making use of diverse sources of information, both published and unpublished, in archives, museums and libraries across the United Kingdom and Ireland, Hall and Stead examine the working-class experience of classical culture from the Bill of Rights in 1689 to the outbreak of World War II. They analyse a huge volume of data, from individuals, groups, regions and activities, in a huge range of sources including memoirs, autobiographies, Trade Union collections, poetry, factory archives, artefacts and documents in regional museums. This allows a deeper understanding not only of the many examples of interaction with the Classics, but also what these cultural interactions signified to the working poor: from the promise of social advancement, to propaganda exploited by the elites, to covert and overt class war.A People’s History of Classics offers a fascinating and insightful exploration of the many and varied engagements with Greece and Rome among the working classes in Britain and Ireland, and is a must-read not only for classicists, but also for students of British and Irish social, intellectual and political history in this period. Further, it brings new historical depth and perspectives to public debates around the future of classical education, and should be read by anyone with an interest in educational policy in Britain today.

This book traces the international performance history of Aristophanic comedy, and its implication in aesthetic and political controversies, from 421 BC to AD 2007. It includes Brechtian experiments in East Berlin, and musical theatre from Gilbert and Sullivan to Stephen Sondheim.

The ancient Greeks invented democracy, theater, rational science, and philosophy. They built the Parthenon and the Library of Alexandria. They wrote down the timeless myths of Odysseus and Oedipus, and the histories of Leonidas’s three hundred Spartans and Alexander the Great. But understanding these uniquely influential people has been hampered by their diffusion across the entire Mediterranean. Most ancient Greeks did not live in what is now Greece but in settlements scattered across Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Libya, France, Italy, Bulgaria, Russia, and Ukraine. They never formed a single unified social or political entity. Acclaimed classics scholar Edith Hall’s Introducing the Ancient Greeks is the first book to offer a synthesis of the entire ancient Greek experience, from the rise of the Mycenaean kingdoms of the sixteenth century BC to the final victory of Christianity over paganism in AD 391.Each of the ten chapters visits a different Greek community at a different moment during the twenty centuries of ancient Greek history. In the process, the book makes a powerful original argument: A cluster of unique qualities made the Greeks special and made them the right people, at the right time, to take up the baton of human progress. According to Herodotus, the father of history, what made all Greeks identifiably Greek was their common descent from the same heroes, the way they sacrificed to their gods, their rules of decent behavior, and their beautiful language. Edith Hall argues, however, that their mind-set was just as important as their awe-inspiring achievements. They were rebellious, individualistic, inquisitive, open-minded, witty, rivalrous, admiring of excellence, articulate, and addicted to pleasure. But most important was their continuing identity as mariners, the restless seagoing lifestyle that brought them into contact with ethnically diverse peoples in countless new settlements, and the constant stimulus to technological innovation provided by their intense relationship with the sea.Expertly researched and elegantly told, Introducing the Ancient Greeks is an indispensable contribution to our understanding of the Greeks.

The ancient Greeks invented democracy, theater, rational science, and philosophy. They built the Parthenon and the Library of Alexandria. Yet this accomplished people never formed a single unified social or political identity. In Introducing the Ancient Greeks, acclaimed classics scholar Edith Hall offers a bold synthesis of the full 2,000 years of Hellenic history to show how the ancient Greeks were the right people, at the right time, to take up the baton of human progress. Hall portrays a uniquely rebellious, inquisitive, individualistic people whose ideas and creations continue to enthrall thinkers centuries after the Greek world was conquered by Rome. These are the Greeks as you’ve never seen them before.

This collection of twenty essays examines the art, profession and idea of the actor in Greek and Roman antiquity, and has been commissioned and arranged to cast as much interdisciplinary and transhistorical light as possible on these elusive but fascinating ancient professionals. It covers a chronological span from the sixth century BC to Byzantium (and even beyond to the way that ancient actors have influenced the arts from the Renaissance to the twentieth century) and stresses the huge geographical spread of ancient actors. Some essays focus on particular themes, such as the evidence for women actors or the impact of acting on the presentation of suicide in literature; others offer completely new evidence, such as graffiti relating to actors in Asia Minor; others ask new questions, such as what subjective experience can be reconstructed for the ancient actor. There are numerous illustrations and all Greek and Latin passages are translated.

This collection of twenty essays examines the art, profession and idea of the actor in Greek and Roman antiquity, and has been commissioned and arranged to cast as much interdisciplinary and transhistorical light as possible on these elusive but fascinating ancient professionals. It covers a chronological span from the sixth century BC to Byzantium (and even beyond to the way that ancient actors have influenced the arts from the Renaissance to the twentieth century) and stresses the huge geographical spread of ancient actors. Some essays focus on particular themes, such as the evidence for women actors or the impact of acting on the presentation of suicide in literature; others offer completely new evidence, such as graffiti relating to actors in Asia Minor; others ask new questions, such as what subjective experience can be reconstructed for the ancient actor. There are numerous illustrations and all Greek and Latin passages are translated.

This book contains thirteen essays by senior international experts on Greek tragedy looking at Sophocles' dramas. They reassess their crucial role in the creation of the tragic repertoire, in the idea of the tragic canon in antiquity, and in the making and infinite re-creation of the tragic tradition in the Renaissance and beyond. The introduction looks at the paradigm shifts during the twentieth century in the theory and practice of Greek theatre, in order to gain a perspective on the current state of play in Sophoclean studies. The following three sections explore respectively the way that Sophocles' tragedies provoked and educated their original Athenian democratic audience, the language, structure and lasting impact of his Oedipus plays, and the centrality of his oeuvre in the development of the tragic tradition in Aeschylus, Euripides, ancient philosophical theory, fourth-century tragedy and Shakespeare.

This exciting collection constitutes the first analysis of the modern performance of ancient Greek drama from a theoretical perspective. The last three decades have seen a remarkable revival of the performance of ancient Greek drama; some ancient plays - "Sophocles", "Oedipus", "Euripides", and "Medea" - have established a distinguished place in the international performance repertoire, and attracted eminent directors including Peter Stein, Ariane Mnouchkine, Peter Sellars, and Katie Mitchell. Staging texts first written two and a half thousand years ago, for all-male, ritualised, outdoor performance in masks in front of a pagan audience, raises quite different intellectual questions from staging any other canonical drama, including Shakespeare. But the discussion of this development in modern performance has until now received scant theoretical analysis. This book provides the solution in the form of a lively interdisciplinary dialogue, inspired by a conference held at the Archive of Performances of Greek & Roman Drama (APGRD) in Oxford, between sixteen experts in Classics, Drama, Music, Cultural History and the world of professional theatre.The book will be of great interest to scholars and students of Classics and Drama alike.