Elodie Paillard – författare

The aim of this book is to explore the definition(s) of ‘theatre’ and ‘metatheatre’ that scholars use when studying the ancient Greek world. Although in modern languages their meaning is mostly straightforward, both concepts become problematical when applied to ancient reality. In fact, ‘theatre’ as well as ‘metatheatre’ are used in many different, sometimes even contradictory, ways by modern scholars.Through a series of papers examining questions related to ancient Greek theatre and dramatic performances of various genres the use of those two terms is problematized and put into question.Must ancient Greek theatre be reduced to what was performed in proper theatre-buildings? And is everything was performed within such buildings to be considered as ‘theatre’? How does the definition of what is considered as theatre evolve from one period to the other?As for ‘metatheatre’, the discussion revolves around the interaction between reality and fiction in dramatic pieces of all genres. The various definitions of ‘metatheatre’ are also explored and explicited by the papers gathered in this volume, as well as the question of the distinction between paratheatre (understood as paratragedy/comedy) and metatheatre.Readers will be encouraged by the diversity of approaches presented in this book to re-think their own understanding and use of ‘theatre’ and ‘metatheatre’ when examining ancient Greek reality.

Why did ancient autocrats patronise theatre? How could ancient theatre – rightly supposed to be an artform that developed and flourished under democracy – serve their needs?

Plato claimed that poets of tragic drama "drag states into tyranny and democracy". The word order is very deliberate: he goes on to say that tragic poets are honoured "especially by the tyrants, and secondly by the democracies" (Republic 568c).

For more than forty years scholars have explored the political, ideological, structural and economic links between democracy and theatre in ancient Greece. By contrast, the links between autocracy and theatre are virtually ignored, despite the fact that for the first 200 years of theatre''s existence more than a third of all theatre-states were autocratic.

For the next 600 years, theatre flourished almost exclusively under autocratic regimes. The volume brings together experts in ancient theatre to undertake the first systematic study of the patterns of use made of the theatre by tyrants, regents, kings and emperors.

Theatre and Autocracy in the Ancient World is the first comprehensive study of the historical circumstances and means by which autocrats turned a medium of mass communication into an instrument of mass control.