This volume examines whether dramatic fragments should be approached as parts of a greater whole or as self-contained entities. It comprises contributions by a broad spectrum of international scholars: by young researchers working on fragmentary drama as well as by well-known experts in this field. The volume explores another kind of fragmentation that seems already to have been embraced by the ancient dramatists: quotations extracted from their context and immersed in a new whole, in which they work both as cohesive unities and detachable entities. Sections of poetic works circulated in antiquity not only as parts of a whole, but also independently, i.e. as component fractions, rather like quotations on facebook today. Fragmentation can thus be seen operating on the level of dissociation, but also on the level of cohesion. The volume investigates interpretive possibilities, quotation contexts, production and reception stages of fragmentary texts, looking into the ways dramatic fragments can either increase the depth of fragmentation or strengthen the intensity of cohesion.

This volume examines whether dramatic fragments should be approached as parts of a greater whole or as self-contained entities. It comprises contributions by a broad spectrum of international scholars: by young researchers working on fragmentary drama as well as by well-known experts in this field. The volume explores another kind of fragmentation that seems already to have been embraced by the ancient dramatists: quotations extracted from their context and immersed in a new whole, in which they work both as cohesive unities and detachable entities. Sections of poetic works circulated in antiquity not only as parts of a whole, but also independently, i.e. as component fractions, rather like quotations on facebook today. Fragmentation can thus be seen operating on the level of dissociation, but also on the level of cohesion. The volume investigates interpretive possibilities, quotation contexts, production and reception stages of fragmentary texts, looking into the ways dramatic fragments can either increase the depth of fragmentation or strengthen the intensity of cohesion.

Provides a comprehensive and systematic treatment of the life and work of Aristophanes A Companion to Aristophanes provides an invaluable set of foundational resources for undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars alike. More than a basic reference text, this innovative volume situates each of Aristophanes' surviving plays within discussion of key themes relevant to the study of the Aristophanic corpus. Throughout the Companion, an international panel of contributors incorporates material culture and performance context, offers methodological and theoretical insights into the study of Aristophanes, demonstrates the relevance of Aristophanes to modern life, and more. Each chapter focused on a particular play is paired with a theme that is exemplified by that play, such as gender, sexuality, religion, ritual, and satire. With an emphasis on understanding Greek comedy and its ancient Athenian context, the text includes approaches to Aristophanes through criticism, performance, translation, and teaching to encourage and inform future work on Greek comedy. Illustrating the vitality of contemporary engagement with one of the world's great literary figures, this comprehensive volume: Helps new readers and teachers of Aristophanes appreciate the broader importance of each play within the study of antiquity Offers sophisticated analyses of the Aristophanic corpus and its place in literary and cultural history Includes chapters focused on teaching Aristophanes, including one emphasizing performance Provides detailed syllabi and lesson plans for integrating the material into high school and college curricula A Companion to Aristophanes is an essential resource for advanced students and instructors in Classics, Ancient Literature, Comparative Literature, and Ancient Drama and Theater. It is also a must-have reference for academic scholars, university libraries, non-specialist Classicists and other literary critics researching ancient drama, and sophisticated general readers interested in Aristophanes, Greek drama, classical Athens, or the ancient Mediterranean world.

Through a series of case studies, this book explores the interrelations among Greek tragedy, theatre practices, and education in the United Kingdom. This is situated within what the volume proposes as ‘the Classics ecology’. The term ‘ecology’, frequently used in Theatre Studies, understands Classics as a field of cultural production dependent on shared knowledge circulated via formal and informal networks, which operate on the basis of mutually beneficial exchange. Productions of Greek tragedy may be influenced by members of the team studying Classics subjects at school or university, or reading popular works of Classical scholarship, or else by working with an academic consultant. All of these have some degree of connection to academic Classics, albeit filtered through different lenses, creating a network of mutual influence and benefit (the ecology). In this way, theatrical productions of Greek drama may, in the long term, influence Classics as an academic discipline, and certainly contribute to attesting to the relevance of Classics in the modern world. The chapters in this volume include contributions by both theatre makers and academics, whose backgrounds vary between Theatre Studies and Classics. They comprise a variety of case studies and approaches, exploring the dissemination of knowledge about the ancient world through projects that engage with Greek tragedy, theories and practices of theatre making through the chorus, and practical relationships between scholars and theatre makers. By understanding the staging of Greek tragedy in the United Kingdom today as being part of the Classics ecology, the book examines practices and processes as key areas in which the value of engaging with the ancient past is (re)negotiated. This book is primarily suitable for students and scholars working in Classical Reception and Theatre Studies who are interested in the reception history of Greek tragedy and the intersection of the two fields. It is also of use to more general Classics and Theatre Studies audiences, especially those engaged with current debates around ‘saving Classics’ and those interested in a structural, systemic approach to the intersection between theatre, culture, and class.

This book investigates some aspects of the cultural consequences of the settlement of Greeks in Egypt during the Hellenistic period, through a discussion of papyrological material, archaeological evidence, and literary sources. It is divided into three sections. The first, Space and Images, reflects on the evolutions and changes in iconography, spatial organization, and landscape. The second, Ethnic Interactions, offers new hints on the long debated topic of ethnicity, relying on a wide range of Greek and Demotic sources. The third, The Literary Experience, shifts the attention from documents to literature, examining the circulation of Greek texts and books in Egypt from different perspectives. Mixing case studies and overviews, the volume offers an updated, multifaceted representation of complex phaenomena which can be understood only going beyond disciplinary boundaries.

This volume focuses on the adaptation of Greek tragedy between 1970 and 2005 in order to interrogate the relationship between tragedy and postmodernism. Analysis of a range of adaptations from this period demonstrates intertextual engagements with prototype texts that have much in common with the main ideas expressed in poststructuralist thought.

This volume forms the second part of the three-volume commentary on the fragments of Diphilus, who belongs to the prominent triad of the poets of New Comedy alongside Menander and Philemon. The present volume comprises the text and an English translation of the fragments of twenty-two plays of Diphilus, followed by a full-scale (philological, thematic, literary, interpretative, historical) commentary that also yields insight into the reception of Diphilan comedy in Roman theatre. This in-depth study of the Diphilan techniques of verbal humour and performance aims at shedding light on the dramatist's distinctive place in the comic tradition, as well as showcasing a degree of variation in the overall image of the production of new comedy.

Dramatic texts come with a natural structure of acts, scenes and speech clearly assigned to characters that lends itself to computational analysis: These explicit structures allow for straightforward formalizations without extensive preparatory work. Work on drama has therefore always been at the forefront of research in computational literary studies, with its pioneers analyzing drama quantitatively long before the digital age. Today, increasingly large digital text corpora are available and computational literary studies aims at a higher-scaled view on literary history, promising to analyze thousands of literary texts simultaneously. After decades of exploring the possibilities offered by computational methods, the field is now undergoing a phase of consolidation that takes stock of achievements and opportunities and critically reflects the computational methods and interpretations derived from data. Building on insights from the fields' tradition and current research approaches, this volume provides an overview of the status quo of computational drama analysis and explores possible routes for the future.

Die Beiträge des mehrsprachigen Sammelbandes analysieren die »Umgebung« von Fragmenten der griechischen Literatur. Damit sind soziokulturelle und sprachliche Kontexte, dramaturgische Mechanismen sowie Evolutionsprozesse einer literarischen Gattung bis hin zur Rezeption antiker Fragmente gemeint. Dabei gehen sie den Fragen nach, warum, mit welcher Absicht, in welcher Form und in welchem Umfang ein Trägertext ein Fragment zitiert. Der Band eröffnet damit nicht nur der Fragmentforschung unter philologischen und methodologischen Gesichtspunkten neue Wege, sondern erweitert auch das Verständnis der Überlieferungsprozesse antiker Literatur.

The use of suspense in ancient literature attracts increasing attention in modern scholarship, but hitherto there has been no comprehensive work analysing the techniques of suspense through the various genres of the Classical literary canon. This volume aspires to fill such a gap, exploring the phenomenon of suspense in the earliest narrative writings of the western world, the literature of the ancient Greeks. The individual chapters focus on a wide range of poetic and prose genres (epic, drama, historiography, oratory, novel, and works of literary criticism) and examine the means by which ancient authors elicited emotions of tense expectation and fearful anticipation for the outcome of the story, the development of the plot, or the characters' fate. A variety of theoretical tools, from narratology and performance studies to psychological and cognitive approaches, are exploited to study the operation of suspense in the works under discussion. Suspenseful effects are analysed in a double perspective, both in terms of the artifices employed by authors and with regard to the responses and experiences of the audience. The volume will be useful to classical scholars, narratologists, and literary historians and theorists.