Author: J. Peter EubenPublisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520055728
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 334
Book Description
Greek Tragedy and Political Theory
Author: J. Peter EubenPublisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520055728
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 334
Book Description
The Tragedy of Political Theory
Author: J. Peter EubenPublisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691218188
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 331
Book Description
In this book J. Peter Euben argues that Greek tragedy was the context for classical political theory and that such theory read in terms of tragedy provides a ground for contemporary theorizing alert to the concerns of post-modernism, such as normalization, the dominance of humanism, and the status of theory. Euben shows how ancient Greek theater offered a place and occasion for reflection on the democratic culture it helped constitute, in part by confronting the audience with the otherwise unacknowledged principles of social exclusion that sustained its community. Euben makes his argument through a series of comparisons between three dramas (Aeschylus' Oresteia, Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannos, and Euripides' Bacchae) and three works of classical political theory (Thucydides' History and Plato's Apology of Socrates and Republic) on the issues of justice, identity, and corruption. He brings his discussion to a contemporary American setting in a concluding chapter on Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 in which the road from Argos to Athens, built to differentiate a human domain from the undefined outside, has become a Los Angeles freeway desecrating the land and its people in a predatory urban sprawl.
Greek Tragedy and Political Philosophy
Author: Peter J. AhrensdorfPublisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139475584
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 193
Book Description
In this book, Peter Ahrensdorf examines Sophocles' powerful analysis of a central question of political philosophy and a perennial question of political life: should citizens and leaders govern political society by the light of unaided human reason or religious faith? Through an examination of Sophocles' timeless masterpieces - Oedipus the Tyrant, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone - Ahrensdorf offers a sustained challenge to the prevailing view, championed by Nietzsche in his attack on Socratic rationalism, that Sophocles is an opponent of rationalism. Ahrensdorf argues that Sophocles is a genuinely philosophical thinker and a rationalist, albeit one who advocates a cautious political rationalism. Ahrensdorf concludes with an incisive analysis of Nietzsche, Socrates and Aristotle on tragedy and philosophy. He argues, against Nietzsche, that the rationalism of Socrates and Aristotle incorporates a profound awareness of the tragic dimension of human existence and therefore resembles in fundamental ways the somber and humane rationalism of Sophocles.
The Politics of Greek Tragedy
Author: David M. CarterPublisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 9781904675167
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
Part of the 'Greece and Rome Live' series, which aims to introduce figures and aspects of the ancient world to the general reader, this is a guide to the political aspect of Greek tragedy using close examination of specific plays. A handy combined index/glossary and a bibliography are included.
Tragedy and Enlightenment
Author: Christopher RoccoPublisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520331362
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1997.
Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Tragedy
Author: Robert Carl PirroPublisher:
ISBN: 9780875802688
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 224
Book Description
A German Jewish refugee suffering tremendous personal and political upheaval during the years of Nazi conquest, Hannah Arendt turned to classical literature and drama as she struggled to make sense of the terrible events of her time. Studying fiction, plays, and poetry, she found a way to meld theoretical political philosophy and concrete personal commitment to action. Among her literary resources, the epics and plays of ancient Greece provided the ideal balance of politics and culture. In Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Tragedy, Pirro focuses especially on the influence of Greek tragedy on Arendt's political writings. Pirro casts Arendt's political thought as tragic storytelling, crafted to inspire her audience both to appreciate political freedoms and to act on those freedoms by participating in public life. Echoing an affinity for Greek drama common in the tradition of German philosophy and letters, Arendt draws on tragic characters, scenes, and dramatic conventions, as well as theories, to assess the maddening and often fatal contradictions of political life in modern times. Classical narratives of heroic achievements and failures shape the structure and content of Arendtian thought, as when she compares Jewish refugees' attempts to confront their stateless condition during the 1930s and 1940s to Ulysses's mythical quest. Turning her attention in the postwar years to the promise and limits of political freedom in American life, Arendt invokes Sophocles's last drama, Oedipus at Colonus, in an attempt to outline an alternative, aesthetic sense of political authority in the American Republic. In providing this new avenue of approach to Arendt, Pirro shows how elements of Greek tragedy helped her grapple with the problems of modern politics in the chaos of a universe without rules. Arendt enthusiasts and readers interested in the classics and politics will find fresh ideas to consider in Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Tragedy.
Fear of Diversity
Author: Arlene W. SaxonhousePublisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226735542
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276
Book Description
This wide-ranging and provocative book locates the origin of political science in the everyday world of ancient Greek life, thought, and culture. Arlene Saxonhouse contends that the Greeks, confronted by the puzzling diversity of the physical world, sought an unseen and unifying force that would constrain and explain it. This drive toward unity did more than place the mind over the senses: it led the Greeks to play down the very real differences - in particular the female, the family, and sexuality - in both their political and personal lives. While the dramatists and Plato captured the tragic consequences of trying to do so, it was not until Aristotle and his Politics did the Greek world - and its heirs - have a true science of politics, one capable of embracing diversity and accommodating conflict. Much of the book's force derives from Saxonhouse's masterful interweaving of Greek philosophy and drama, her juxtaposition of the thought of the pre-Socratics, Plato, and other philosophers to the cultural life revealed by such dramatists as Aristophanes and Aeschylus. Her approach opens up fresh understandings of such issues as the Greeks' fear of the feminine and their attempts to ignore the demands that gender, reproduction, and the family inevitably make on the individual and the family. The Fear of Diversity represents an important contribution to political philosophy, classics, and gender studies.
The Political Art of Greek Tragedy
Author: Christian MeierPublisher: Polity
ISBN: 9780745606927
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 238
Book Description
In this outstanding new book, Christian Meier examines the close relationship between drama and politics at the beginning of the great age of Greek tragedy, focusing on the works of Aeschylus. The author examines the political, social and even psychological problems of the inhabitants of fifth-century Athens, during a time of rapid change. Through the role of festivals and the role of the festival of Dionysus in particular, Meier moves on to the interpretation of Aeschylus' plays. He shows how the political statements of the mythical characters made sense of and even influenced the politics of the day. Finally, he discusses the work of Sophocles in counterpoint to the plays of Aeschylus. This book will be of interest to students and academics of history, particularly the history of the ancient world, as well as those studying literature and drama.
The Greek Tragedy
Author: Kōnstantinos TsoukalasPublisher: Harmondsworth : Penguin
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216
Book Description
Note sur la 4e de couverture: The suspension of ordinary liberties and the resulting political and cultural suffocation are all too familiar to the Greek people, for since the revolution of 1821 they have seldom been able to create the conditions for a stable parliamentary democracy. Strategically Greece is a gateway between Europe and Asia, through which has marched a succession of invading armies. And politically the frequent interventions of the monarchy and the constant juggling of parties and personalities have engendered an atmosphere of mistrust in which dictatorship can be imposed by the army as an alternative to Communism or instability-and even as a guarantee of firm government. In this Penguin Special a Greek lawyer now studying in Paris presents an anatomy of the current Greek crisis, and relates it to an unhappy history of intervention and repression. Constantine Tsoukala's moving book portrays, in historical perspective, the full anguish of contemporary Greece.
Psychoanalytic Theory of Greek Tragedy
Author: C. Fred AlfordPublisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300105261
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 236
Book Description
Psychoanalytic readings of literature are often reductionist, seeking to find in great works of the past support for current psychoanalytic tenets. In this book C. Fred Alford begins with the possibility that the insights into human needs and aspirations contained in Greek tragedy might be more profound than psychoanalytic theory. He offers his own psychoanalytic interpretation of the tragedies, one that reconstructs the dramatists' views of the world and, when necessary, enlarges psychoanalysis to take these views into account. Alford draws on an eclectic mixture of psychoanalytic theories--in particular the work of Melanie Klein, Robert Jay Lifton, and Jacques Lacan--to help him illuminate the concerns of the Greek poets. He discusses not only well-known tragedies, such as Aeschylus' Oresteia trilogy, Sophocles' Theban plays, and Euripides' Medea and Bacchae, but also lesser-known works, such as Sophocles' Philoctetes and Euripides' so-called romantic comedies. Alford examines the fundamental concerns of the tragedies: how to live in a world in which justice and power often seem to have nothing to do with each other; how to confront death; how to deal with the fear that our aggression will overflow and violate all that we care about; how to make this inhumane world a more human place. Two assumptions of the tragic poets could, he argues, enrich psychoanalysis--that people are responsible without being free, and that pity is the most civilizing connection. The poets understood these things, Alford believes, because they never flinched in the face of the suffering and constraint that are at the center of human existence.