Choral Mediations in Greek Tragedy

This book analyses how the choruses of Greek tragedy creatively combined media and discourses to generate their own specific forms of meaning.

Renaud Gagné (Edited by), Marianne Govers Hopman (Edited by)

9781107033283, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 October 2013

440 pages, 5 b/w illus. 3 maps
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm, 0.76 kg

'This excellent volume occupies a distinctive place within the growing body of scholarship on the Greek chorus. It will be of great interest to scholars working on Greek tragedy and on ancient performance culture more broadly.' Lauren Curtis, The Classical Journal

This volume explores how the choruses of Greek tragedy creatively combined media and discourses to generate their own specific forms of meaning. The contributors analyse choruses as fictional, religious and civic performers; as combinations of text, song and dance; and as objects of reflection in themselves, in relation and contrast to the choruses of comedy and melic poetry. Drawing on earlier analyses of the social context of Greek drama, the non-textual dimensions of tragedy, and the relations between dramatic and melic choruses, the chapters explore the uses of various analytic tools in allowing us better to capture the specificity of the tragic chorus. Special attention is given to the physicality of choral dancing, musical interactions between choruses and actors, the trajectories of reception, and the treatment of time and space in the odes.

1. Introduction: the chorus in the middle Renaud Gagné and Marianne Hopman
2. Choral polyphony and the ritual functions of tragic songs Claude Calame
3. Chorus, conflict, closure in Aeschylus' Persians Marianne Hopman
4. Choral intertemporality in the Oresteia Jonas Grethlein
5. Choreography: the lyric voice of Sophoclean tragedy Simon Goldhill
6. Conflicting identities in the Euripidean chorus Laura Swift
7. The choral plot of Euripides' Helen Sheila Murnaghan
8. Transcultural chorality: Iphigenia in Tauris and Athenian imperial economics Barbara Kowalzig
9. Maenadism as self-referential chorality in Euripides' Bacchae Anton Bierl
10. The Delian maidens and their relevance to choral mimesis in Classical drama Gregory Nagy
11. Choral persuasions in Plato's Laws Lucia Prauscello
12. The comic chorus and the demagogue Jeffrey Henderson
13. Dancing letters: the Alphabetic Tragedy of Kallias Renaud Gagné
14. Choral dialectics: Hölderlin and Hegel Joshua Billings
15. Enter and exit the chorus: dance in Britain, 1880–1914 Fiona Macintosh
16. 'The thorniest problem and the greatest opportunity': directors on directing the Greek chorus Peter Meineck.

Subject Areas: Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB], Music [AV], Theatre studies [AN], Performance art [AFKP]