CATEGORY: Philosophy play; historical fiction; comedy; social criticism. -/- STORYLINE: Katherine, a neurotic American lawyer, meets Christianus for a philosophy session at The Late Victorian coffee shop in London, where they also meet Wendy the waitress and Baldy the player. Will Katherine be able to overcome her deep depression by adopting some of Christianus’s satisfactionist ideas? Or will she stay unsatisfied and unhappy by stubbornly sticking to her own neti-neti nothingness philosophy? And what roles do Baldy, Wendy, and the (...) Okefenokee Man-Monster have in this connexion? -/- TOPICS: In the course of this philosophy play, Katherine and Christianus discuss many things: friendship, a Renoir painting, global warming, elephant conservation, freemasons, Prince of Wales and his tiger-hunting experience in Nepal, Victorian Chartism and a Kennington Common daguerreotype, a Mortality Proof, and, last but not least, Baldy, Wendy, and the gory plot of the Okefenokee Man-Monster. -/- NOTES: This work features elaborate footnotes and comments (including full bibliographical references) by the author, to enhance the reader's experience of the play and its philosophizing characters. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Plot Taxonomies and IntentionalityJon AdamsEver popular among the various topics occupying non-academic conversations about literature—such as the identity of the real author of the plays attributed to "Shakespeare"—is the notion that there exists only a finite number of storylines, and that all the stories we know are only ever complications or rehearsals of these few, elementary plots. What is the status of that claim? The issue gains a (...) renewed relevance in light of literary criticism's recent interest in the possibilities of employing evolutionary psychology as a means of naturalising literary study, but interest in plot taxonomies stretches a long way back. Why might we seek to categorise plots into a finite taxonomy? And what are the implications of the claim if true?Organising literature into any classificatory scheme is an attempt to achieve something like the coherence that the natural sciences have achieved—in chemistry and physics with the composition of the periodic table, and in biology with Linnaean classification. Much of science's epistemic prestige is rooted in the enormous success with which they have organised and categorised their subject of study. In searching for mechanism and pattern, the natural sciences proceed confidently from the belief that those mechanisms and patterns exist to be discovered, and that (relatively) simple rules underlie the manifest complexity of natural phenomena.Unfortunately, the study of literary fiction has no such security. There are two senses here in which we can talk of literature being patterned. At the micro-level, we have the question of whether individual works can be thought of as internally patterned. Usually, this type of patterning is easy enough to establish and recognise, and something the author is (or ought to be) in a good position to control. But, of course, internal [End Page 102] structures are not always conspicuous, and readers faced with an overtly complex text, like Pound's Cantos, or Finnegans Wake, have no guarantee that there is sense to be made of it. Surface complexity may shield a profound and subtle architecture, or the work may be as unstructured, fragmentary, and chaotic as it initially appears. A frustrated Wayne C. Booth draws attention to the problem: "One can't be sure that Finnegans Wake is not a great novel; perhaps someday readers will discover that the complex structure they now dream of and quarrel about is a realizable structure, an experienced structure. I doubt it, but it may happen. Until then, each new intricacy discovered... reveals precisely nothing more than that: a new intricacy."1 What's missing is a conceptual centre around which overall coherence might be achieved from what had seemed to be unconnected parts. Even so, if this sort of centre cannot be found in the individual work, it may yet obtain between works. In other words, The Cantos or Finnegans Wake may yet occupy nodal roles in a larger system, within which they acquire a previously unrecognized unity and order. This type of organization is something the individual author is obviously in a much less suitable position to control. Nonetheless, mapping out this larger, macro-level order is a task that literary criticism might want to take on. There is the example Borges uses of how Kafka's work retrospectively confers a familial similarity upon previously unconnected works. The quality of being "Kafkaesque" is the only thing common to the pieces, but was not apparent (or rather—the paradox that excites Borges—did not exist) prior to Kafka's writing.2 This is the second sense in which literature might be thought of as patterned; that is, not within works, but across them. On the larger scale, is it possible that literature as a whole could be understood as patterned?The notion that literature can be understood "as a whole," and its corollary, that a literature so understood would submit to taxonomical classification, is an enduring one. Anthropologists and art historians have long acknowledged that there appear to be recurring themes, motifs, and commonalities across world cultures, and consequently, commonalities among the narratives those cultures construct and consume. Cataloguing these similarities has produced a variety of classificatory systems.In the mid-nineteenth century, German scholar Adolf... (shrink)

The plot of Iphigenia in Tauris is usually thought to be Euripides' own invention. Its basic assumption can be found in Proclus' summary of the Cypria, viz. that a deer was substituted for Iphigenia during the sacrifice at Aulis and that she herself was removed to the land of the Tauri. Her later rescue by Orestes and Pylades, however, cannot be traced with probability to any work of art or literature earlier than Euripides' play. In this play, (...) in which Orestes recognizes and then saves the sister whom he had long thought dead, it is assumed that her replacement by a deer went unseen by those present at the sacrifice. The sequel which this assumption allowed Euripides to invent is original only in a limited sense, since it bears the imprint of several familiar story types. These types include the following: the murder of a kinsman is narrowly averted by a recognition; a reunion is followed by an intrigue; and a maiden is rescued. Each is used elsewhere by Euripides. The first two, for example, are found in Cresphontes, the second in Electra, and the third in Andromeda. Correspondences of this sort, based on plot patterns, will naturally gain in interest if it can be shown that they throw light on a play's meaning or on the process that led to its creation. The student of dramatic plots, however, soon discovers that analogies between them are easy to draw and can be quickly multiplied. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to show that considerations similar to those which have been applied by the present writer to the Suppliants throw more light than is generally admitted on the construction and dramatic value ox the Septem. The criticism of Dr. Verrall, whom I cannot mention without a deep sense of gratitude and sorrow, and the edition by Prof. Tucker, have made it unlikely that any careful student will without argument dismiss the play as uninteresting. We are (...) no longer content to remark that ‘the scene between Eteocles and the Chorus is dramatically unnecessary,’ that ‘in the episode, vv. 370–708, which is the centre and kernel of the Seven against Thebes, we look in vain for action,’ that ‘there is no drama proper except between Antigone and the Herald.’. (shrink)

A great deal of the humor that we encounter is narrative in form. This is obviously the case with many, if not most, jokes. But humor also occurs in more expanded narrative frameworks, including plays, novels, films, short stories, TV programs, comic books, and so forth. The purpose of this paper is to explore the question of whether there are any plot structures—of magnitudes greater than that of the joke—that might be thought of as comic in virtue of their (...) narrative form. (shrink)

The article sets out to explore two plays by contemporary playwrights, one American, the other Ukrainian, focusing on William Shakespeare and Lesia Ukrainka, respectively, within the framework of “the author as character” subgenre of fictional biography. Accordingly, the article considers the correlation between the factual and the fi ctional as one of its foci of attention. Drawing upon a variety of theoretical approaches, the article summarizes the principal characteristics of “the author as character” subgenre and proceeds to discuss how they (...) operate in the dramas under scrutiny. The analysis makes it abundantly clear that in Nigro’s and Nezhdana’s plays the balance between fact and fi ction is defi nitively tipped in favor of the latter. By centering their biographical plays on highly mythologized artists of national standing, both dramatists aimed at demythologizing these cult fi gures, inevitably placing them, however, within new mythical plots combining a Neo-Romantic vision of the artist as demiurge, with a Neo-Baroque as well as fin de siècle apology of death and a postmodern denial of one objective reality. (shrink)

The plot of I. Dvoretskii's The Man from Outside is simple. A young engineer, Cheshkov, is recruited from a new and exemplary enterprise to go to an old one with long-established traditions to bail out its most troublesome department. His former place of employment doesn't want to let him go, and at the new one he is given a hostile reception. The most acute kind of conflict arises. Things reach a point at which the executives over whom he has (...) been given authority offer resignations en masse, and the department's Party organization expresses lack of confidence in him. The question is settled in the statewide committee of the Party. Nonetheless, this concentration upon what might be called personal drama around the hero cannot overshadow the simple fact that the conflict between Cheshkov and the factory management is a conflict of a work situation in form only; in reality, it is a conflict between two sets of ethics, two styles of life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 123.1 (2002) 111-118 [Access article in PDF] Brief MentionSupplices, The Satyr Play: Charles Mee's Big Love Rush Rehm Berkeley Repertory Theater, long the most adventurous theater company in the San Francisco Bay area, opened its new Roda theater in style this spring with Aeschylus' Oresteia (trans. Fagles), followed (on the more intimate thrust stage) by Charles L. Mee's adaptation of Aeschylus' Danaid trilogy, entitled (...) Big Love. Seeing these productions in tandem reminds one of the similarities between the two trilogies, as if Aeschylus in his Oresteia developed and expanded ideas introduced five years earlier in Danaides. These include the horrific consequences of male violence, not the least of which involves the tragic female response of killing husbands and turning households into bloodbaths. The primal compulsions that affect human beings--particularly eros and vengeance, immortally hypostasized as Aphrodite and the Furies--drive through both trilogies, countered somewhat by the religious and moral imperatives to grant beleaguered foreigners asylum. Reflecting Athens's radical democracy, Aeschylus emphasizes the perils and responsibilities of a polity that must face the consequences of its own decisions. In dramatic terms, both trilogies tap the power of choral lyric to wash over plot and action, almost like a force of nature, moving the human drama into a wider spatial and temporal context. Aeschylus also exploits the apparent finality of a trial in both works to bring matters to a dramatic close. However, ultimate resolution depends on the fundamentally comedic faith in the curative powers of marriage, family, and time to restore the human community. Addressing these themes in Big Love, Mee uses them to construct an entertaining romp. One could say he converts Aeschylus' Danaides into a contemporary satyr play, the paratragic genre for which Aeschylus was famous in antiquity (none of his survive, but one called Amymone ended the Danaid tetralogy).Although only Supplices is extant, most scholars agree on the [End Page 111] trilogy's dramatic arc. 1 Led by their father Danaos, the fifty Danaids flee from detested marriage with their Egyptian cousins. They receive asylum in Argos, until the Argive leader Pelasgos is defeated in battle and the victorious Egyptians have their connubial way. Commanded by their father, the Danaids murder their husbands on their wedding night--all save Hypermestra, who spares Lynkeus. A trial absolves Hypermestra of disobedience, and Aphrodite celebrates the power of eros, manifest in the marriage of earth and sky. Due to its incomplete story line and the absence of all but a few short fragments from the latter two plays, Supplices has not proved popular on the modern stage.Enter Charles Mee, whose updated version Big Love follows (mutatis mutandis) the reconstruction outlined above. Missing is Danaos, and (as one might expect) Aeschylus' lyrically and poetically charged language. According to Mee, "getting into a Greek plot is like stepping into a Rolls Royce," and he clearly enjoys the ride. 2 In earlier plays, Mee has stepped into the plots of Euripides' Bacchae, Orestes, and Trojan Women (in the first half of his Trojan Women a Love Story). 3 His updated treatments have attracted the interest of classicists, drawn to new translations, contemporary productions, and modern adaptations of ancient material. 4 Regarding Mee's creative use of Greek tragedy, key questions remain: where is he heading in his smooth-riding import? does some destination guide the journey? whom does Mee pick up along the way?Answering the last first, Big Love--as directed by Les Waters at Berkeley, with a strong cast--sweeps up the audience with its energy and sense of play. It offers an evening of kitsch, froth, stage blood (over-the-top and inoffensive), and body-slamming physical humor. Although set in Italy--the Pelasgian Piero is a suave villa-owner who "makes arrangements" and "has connections"--this is very much an American play, full of commercial pop culture. For example, the first "chorus" has three representative Danaids singing Leslie Gore's schlock rock "You Don't [End Page 112] Own Me," using champagne flutes and empty bottles as microphones, like... (shrink)

The Ruše school plays, which are described in the Latin chronicle of Jožef Avguštin Meznerič titled Notata Rastensia antiquissimis documentis desumpta et variis fide humana dignis autographis syno­ptice descripta in connection with the Latin school (1645–1760), are frequently seen as an early attempt of theatrical production, lost in Slovenian literary history. They were introduced by the remarkable Luka Jamnik, a local priest and talented impresario, called the “Ro­mulus of Ruše” in the chronicle. In 1680, he began organizing annual plays modelled (...) after Jesuit school “comedies” (actio comica). Regular annual performances in honour of the Virgin Mary took place every early September, on the feast of Mary’s name, until 1722, but due to a later fire, no texts have been preserved. This article undertakes a unique task – the first attempt to reconstruct one of the performances from that time, a lost play from 1706 with a supposedly ancient motif about Emperor Jovinian who was miraculously led to conversion, De Joviniano imperatore mire correcto. It outlines the dramatic plot based on two literary sources, one from the Gesta Romanorum collection and the other from the Summa Theologica by a Dominican writer called Antoninus of Florence. With a collection of six periochae, “theater programs” preserved from similar school performances of the time, it also sketches the Erwartungshorizont of possible variations, just as they were presented on different European stages at the time. Furthermore, the paper presents the treatment of this motif, known as ATU 757, “The Emperor’s Haughtiness Punished,” in a series of other traditions, starting from its roots in the biblical story of King Nebu­chadnezzar (Dan 3:31–4:34) through the authors such as Herrand of Wildonie, Geoffrey Chaucer, Hans Sachs, William Morris, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, to the contemporary 20th-century opera by Josef Tal and Israel Eliraz. In this light, the 1706 performance in Ruše emerges as a significant annual highlight of cultural life in the region, with young intellectuals introducing their audience of several thousand viewers to a complex motif from European literary tradition that was both spiritually and socially provocative. (shrink)

The fabula praetexta is a category of Roman drama about which we are poorly informed. Ancient testimonia are scanty and widely scattered, while surviving fragments comprise fewer than fifty lines. Only five or six titles are firmly attested. Scholarly debate, however, has been extensive, and has especially focused on reconstructing the plots of the plays.1 The main approach has been to amplify extant fragments by fitting them into a plot taken from treatments of the same episode in later historical (...) sources such as Livy, Dionysius, or Plutarch.2 This method was extended by Mommsen and others in their efforts to identify new titles and plots by isolating passages in the historians which seem written in a dramatic style, and could therefore be interpreted as derivations from historical plays.3 Such a line of approach is both risky and subjective. It is based on the desire to recover a lost genre, which modern scholars feel must or should have existed. It is tempting to imagine that the Romans would have encouraged a thriving national theatre on historical themes. Such a genre, it is argued, would have been influential in shaping the average Roman's view of past events and the treatment of famous episodes by later historians.4 The conclusions reached have virtually no basis in the ancient sources we actually have. The result is largely a fiction created by the scholarly imagination. (shrink)

In this paper I focus on features of Aristotle's work (discussed in the Poetics) that can enhance our appreciation of Classical Greek tragedies and some of Shakespeare's works. Most important of these features is the production of the tragic effect, which consists of two parts: (1) the arousal of pity and fear to their maximum and (2) the katharsis or purgation of these emotions. The concept of katharsis has been interpreted in many ways and I will seek the most appropriate (...) interpretation. I argue that the maximisation of fear and pity that leads to the katharsis of these emotions can only be achieved by the unfolding of a well structured tragic plot and the revelation of character qualities in the tragic play. The successful tragedies from Classical Greece and the Shakespearean era possess the plots that were structured in a manner so as to produce the tragic effect to its maximum. I pay particular attention to Oedipus Rex of Sophocles and King Lear of Shakespeare to illustrate my point. (shrink)

This article examines three films by the Swedish director Ruben Östlund: Play, Force Majeure, and The Square. It describes the role of mobile phones in the films, both on the level of content and in terms of aesthetics. Within the films, the failure of the phone to connect the protagonists to significant others is seen as symbolic of an alienation that leads them to points of crisis. Here, the mobile phone works as a device in two ways. First, as (...) a significant communication technology, and second, as a plot contrivance to advance the dramatic conflict. Critically, the mobile phone opens an uncertain space where subjectivity becomes increasingly insecure, precisely as it becomes fundamentally intertwined with it. There is a cinematic tradition of mobilizing this ambiguity to which this process can be connected. Further, the form of these works is considered in relation to the notion of traumatic repetition, and how this expands into the wider contemporary image-culture and the key influence of YouTube within this. Here, the films are considered in relation to the changing dynamic of the public sphere in the light of the mobile recording capabilities, that have come to shape an emergent cinematic aesthetic evident in these films. (shrink)

The aesthetic experience of Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinion of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is not reducible to an interpretation of plot or a linear critical analysis on the level of structure. Instead, it is thematized around a particular paradox of “double chronology” of autobiography, which continues the unfolding of the text yet simultaneously disrupts it. As such, Tristram Shandy’s lack of plot is a secondary phenomenon to the textual game of detour and digression it plays. This essay (...) is less concerned with providing a closed argument and much more concerned with opening up inquiry into time and the aesthetics of reading with brief recourse to Paul Ricoeur and Hans-Georg Gadamer. Overall, I hope to indicate how Tristram Shandy provides a space wherein the pleasure of reading itself is disclosed. (shrink)

The cultural-historical approach provides the deep theoretical grounds for the analysis of children’s play. Vygotsky suggested three critical features of play: switching to an imaginary situation, taking on a play role, and acting according to a set of rules defined by the role. Collaboration, finding ideas and materials for creating an imaginary situation, defining play roles, and planning the plot are complex tasks for children. However, the question is, do children need educator’s support during the (...) play to develop their executive functions, and to what extent? This experimental study was aimed at answering this inquiry. The four modes of sociodramatic play were created which differed in the adult intervention, from non-involvement in the play to its entire organization. The play could be child-led, adult-led, or free ; and there was also a control group where the children heard the same stimulus stories as the other groups but then followed them up with a drawing activity instead of a play activity. The study revealed that, firstly, the ways of educator’s involvement in the play differed in their potential in respect to the development of executive functions, and, secondly, this influence was not equal for different components of executive functions. Free play in the experiment was not a beneficial condition for the development of any of the studied components of executive functions, compared to the conditions involving the participation of an adult in the play. Furthermore, the type of adult intervention stimulated the development of various executive functions. The entire organization of the play by the adult had a positive impact of their general development. In contrast, the adult’s assistance in the organization of the children’s play had a positive effect on the development of inhibitory control. The study results can be helpful when considering educational practices within a cultural-historical approach to engaging the potential of play in children’s learning and development around the world. (shrink)

Sartre's Resistance myth, The Flies, and Camus's contemporaneous modern tragedy, The Misunderstanding, show remarkable similarities in conception, composition, themes, characters, relationships and intrigue. However, from the moment when the plots converge—each protagonist choosing to remain in his precarious new situation—they also diverge diametrically: Camus's Jan is doomed to reified passivity and death; Sartre's Oreste is galvanised into decisive action and new life. Does Camus's orientation toward nihilistic despair translate a negative assessment of his war-time role as an intellectual, and Sartre's (...) much more positive disposition equally represent his affirmation of writing as a valid resistance activity? (shrink)

In a paper recently published in this Review, I tried to show that part of the formal beauty of the Hercules Furens is due to a subtle treatment of the familiar doctrine that the tyrant's wealth and power are of trifling value compared with Sophrosune, the gain that is really gain. Perhaps some further notes on the dramatic use made by Euripides of these familiar ideas may be of interest. One object with which I started was to observe the use (...) of the word τúραννος in Greek drama. Though the poets frequently enough use it merely as a convenient equivalent for βασιλεúσetc., popular feeling made it easy to suggest the meaning ‘tyrant,’ ‘bad King,’ or ‘Usurper’; and the poets use the ambiguity with great subtlety and in a manner which enables them to obtain fine effects of irony and scorn. What is more important is the fact that the notion of a tyrant with which we are acquainted in later Greek literature was already common-place in the fifth century, and that many dramatic effects depend on the recognition by the audience of the commonplace as such. Indeed, it is often the adaptation by the poet of the familiar ideas that lends formal beauty to compositions which, if we think simply of the plot, appear at first sight jerky or ‘epeisodic.’. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Pleasure of the PlayDeborah KnightThe Pleasure of the Play, by Bert O. States; 226 pp. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994, $34.50, cloth, $12.95, paper.I am an Aristotelian about narrative structure. This is not always a fashionable position, and in some company I know just what to expect: a pop deconstructivist dressing down by those who assume that I must have simply missed the point of poststructuralism (...) and postmodernism. Surely, the nay-sayers claim, no one believes in beginnings, middles, and ends anymore—certainly not since Godard taught us that we don’t need to put them in that order. Isn’t it just obvious (they continue) that we must reject the ideology of wholeness and unity, and opt instead for fragmentation, or self-reflexivity, or other violations of Aristotelian form? And there is no mistaking that, in some quarters, notions like mimesis and catharsis haven’t received much good press lately.But there are still kindred Aristotelians, and Bert O. States is one. His The Pleasure of the Play takes the Poetics as its pivotal text and sets in motion around it a lively discussion of plays from, yes, Oedipus Rex to The Real Inspector Hound, stopping along the way to consider Shakespeare, Chekhov, Brecht, Handke (among others), before concluding with an essay on Samuel Beckett’s Catastrophe, a play dedicated to Václav Havel. States adopts an open rather than a closed view of what the Poetics has to say about tragedy, expanding the discussion well beyond tragedy itself, out toward drama and, indeed, comedy. But he is clearly unwilling to go as far as another group of Aristotelians, notably Paul Ricoeur, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Jerome Bruner, who treat narrative as a mode of actual lived existence. States’s objective is to show the continued vitality of the Poetics, especially in terms of what it can tell us about drama in cultural contexts much removed from the one which offered Aristotle his range of primary textual material. [End Page 272]To be clear, then, States doesn’t claim to be doing either Poetics “scholarship” or exegesis. Indeed, this book is not what one might typically think of as a philosophical examination of the Poetics. Anyone looking for such a thing would do well to consult the excellent but unmistakably philosophical Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics, edited by Amélie Oksenberg Rorty. States is doing something else here. Like Aristotle, he is showing how dramatic structures work.The book is engaging. It features wonderfully turned phrases, examples that immediately illuminate a point, and nicely interwoven references to a range of theorists and philosophers who only rarely are found in each other’s company, for example: Richard Boyd, Martin Heidegger, Douglas Hofstadter, Wolfgang Iser, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Francis Sparshott, Tzvetan Todorov. Some of States’s more delightful examples might offend Aristotle purists. Hard cheese to them. Consider how States uses Roland Barthes’s analysis of the newspaper feature story, or fait divers, to illuminate the structure of the great dramatic plots. In States’s examples—GENERAL SACRIFICES DAUGHTER IN WEDDING CEREMONY (Iphigenia at Aulis) or WIFE FORCED INTO ADULTERY BY HUSBAND, MOTHER, PRIEST (Mandragola) or, to use Aristotle’s own example, MAN’S STATUE AVENGES HIS MURDER (pp. 67-68)—what each mock headline captures is the peculiar, often ironic, internal logic of drama. For States, this peculiar logic is characterized by events which are simultaneously improbable, unthinkable, unanticipatable, yet—given the unfolding course of actions—uncannily probable after all.Central to understanding this internal logic is the Aristotelian notion of peripety, the critical “divulging event” (p. 49) which turns out to be just the reverse of what one intended (as for example Oedipus killing his father and marrying his mother). Where Aristotle seems to treat peripety as a mere plot device, States considers it “a principle of plot development.” Thus, the status of peripety as a crucial dramatic plot device is “really a symptom” of its more basic function (p. 86). Peripety as a principle of plot development helps to show why it makes little sense to claim that what narratives imitate is “reality”—peripety is just what “open life” lacks (p... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 123.3 (2002) 369-406 [Access article in PDF] The Body And Its Representations In Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazousai:Where Does The Costume End? Eva Stehle Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazousaiis a rich and funny play, but it gives the impression of lacking a sustained point. Theater directors can happily stage it, subverting Aristophanes by casting women and recasting the text to speak to modern disputes over gender, sex, and politics, as (...) Mary-Kay Gamel has done so wonderfully (see her article in this volume). But the student of comedy who wishes to study the play in the context of its original production in 411, probably at the City Dionysia, has a harder time. Because it has no overt political theme it was for long passed over as a paignion, an escape from relevance in the tense atmosphere of that spring. As a "woman play" it seems less satisfactory than Lysistrata or Ekklesiazousai because it has no female lead character and Euripides' nameless kinsman (whom I call "Inlaw") upstages the women and their concerns. 1 With the current interest in performance and the metatheatrical aspects of comedy, Thesmophoriazousai has finally come into its own as a sly dialogue on theater and ritual, comedy versus tragedy, and gender. 2 But the older view remains in effect that the play has no politics. At the same time, it is assimilated to Aristophanes' other plays in its thematics, while its striking anomalies go unremarked. As a result, it still does not quite come into focus. [End Page 369]As a play about ritual and theater, Thesmophoriazousai is said to absorb women's ritual and restage it within its own festival setting at the City Dionysia. Yet this is the only one of Aristophanes' surviving plays in which the principal male characters exit the stage before the end of the play. Here they flee, in female dress to boot, leaving the chorus to play out the final scene with the Scythian slave. 3 Euripides and Inlaw do not share in the fun of sending the slave running in one wrong direction then another. And the play ends as it began, on Nesteia, the day of fasting for the women performing the Thesmophoria. 4 No revelry brings on the transition to feast and renewal that the audience probably expected. No procession points the way to a new instauration created by the comedy. 5 Given the importance of processions in Athenian life as an expression of community revival, this is a speaking absence. 6As a play about tragedy and comedy, Thesmophoriazousai is said to show the triumph of comedy over tragedy as the more encompassing and flexible art form. The plots of tragedy fail to rescue Inlaw, while a comic plot succeeds: Euripides brings on a dancing girl, Elaphion, who seduces the Scythian slave away for sex while Euripides frees Inlaw. But Euripides' final trick is no comic plot. In the Aristophanic comic plot the [End Page 370] hero wins a desirable young woman, often one whose name promises new fertility, peace, or power; he does not give one away to the blocking figure. 7 Euripides also capitulates to the women, promising never to speak ill of them again. Only by relinquishing both triumph and sex (and thereby also festivity) does he salvage his poor kinsman's life. Euripides' plot fit for a "barbarian nature" (1129) is rather a farcical version of his own rescue-play plot: like Helen and Andromeda it involves deceiving the blocking figure, which allows the principals to escape while leaving others (chorus or a god) to thwart the chase. But its success is based on abandoning pure representation and giving the "real" (within the world of the play) woman away to the internal audience in order to rescue a pseudo-woman.As for gender representation in the play, most analysis holds that men prevail. Different commentators take Aristophanes to be revealing that women on stage are all really men, or questioning what a woman really is since she is the very figure of mimesis, or showing that women deserve... (shrink)

The text provides a political reading of Shakespeare?s Macbeth, claiming that the play is responding to the curious connection between witchcraft and state power in the preceding century, as well as contemporary political events. Namely, practices variously labeled as witchcraft, magic, conjuring were an integral aspect of English politics and struggles over royal succession in the sixteenth century; even more so were the witch hunts and attempts by British monarchs to control witchcraft. These issues reached a head with the (...) accession of James VI of Scotland to the English throne in 1603, and the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. On the surface, Shakespeare?s play, written in the immediate aftermath of the failed attempt at regicide, brings these historical and political issues together in an effort to legitimize James? rule. However, the article shows that a closer look reveals a more complicated, indeed subversive undercurrent at play. Paradoxically, while Macbeth does provide James with legitimacy, at the same time it calls into question the grounds of that legitimacy. nema. (shrink)

The text provides a political reading of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, claiming that the play is responding to the curious connection between witchcraft and state power in the preceding century, as well as contemporary political events. Namely, practices variously labeled as witchcraft, magic, conjuring were an integral aspect of English politics and struggles over royal succession in the sixteenth century; even more so were the witch hunts and attempts by British monarchs to control witchcraft. These issues reached a head with the (...) accession of James VI of Scotland to the English throne in 1603, and the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. On the surface, Shakespeare’s play, written in the immediate aftermath of the failed attempt at regicide, brings these historical and political issues together in an effort to legitimize James’ rule. However, the article shows that a closer look reveals a more complicated, indeed subversive undercurrent at play. Paradoxically, while Macbeth does provide James with legitimacy, at the same time it calls into question the grounds of that legitimacy. (shrink)

The plot of Brian Friel's Molly Sweeney oscillates around the theme of perception, blindness and eye-sight recovery. Although visually impaired, the eponymous character is a self-reliant and independent person who is very active, both professionally and socially. What serves as the source of tragedy in the play is the male desire to compensate for Molly's physical disability perceived as a sign of deficiency and oddity that needs to be normalized. Prompted by her husband, Molly decides to undergo a (...) surgery which gives her a chance to regain sight and, thus, become a part of the world of the visually abled. Yet, subsequent to the operation, Molly cannot adapt herself to the new reality and develops a medical condition called blindsight, which leads to her final alienation and confusion. Focusing predominantly on the main character of the play, this paper examines the ways in which Molly Sweeney experiences the surrounding world and seeks satisfaction and self-fulfilment through physical activities, such as swimming or dancing, which she vividly describes in her monologues. It explores the double nature of Molly who, despite her self-sufficiency, capacity for rebellion and a sense of autonomy, seems prone to male manipulation exercised at first by her father, later by her husband Frank and doctor Rice. Her expression of independence becomes particularly conspicuous in the scene of a party organized the night before her surgery when she performs a wild and frantic hornpipe, which serves as a form of momentary upheaval and a visualization of the outburst of extreme emotions. Although the dance is not presented onstage, it has a crucial function in the play, for it serves as its powerful climax, after which Molly experiences gradual deterioration. Interpreted in the context of the history of Irish dance, the mad hornpipe appears replete with meanings and allusions. Traditionally associated with human sexuality and the female element, dance was often treated by the Irish clergy with a great deal of distrust as a source of evil and moral corruption. Consequently, like in the case of the frenzied reel in another famous Frielian play, Dancing at Lughnasa, the limitless and unrestricted performance in the climactic scene of Molly Sweeney may be seen as a tool of subversion and female opposition to the Irish patriarchal order. It is a unique moment in which the protagonist seizes male power and gains full, though very temporary, control over her life. (shrink)

The plays of Menander have been largely absent from the recent critical attention given the metatheatrical aspects of ancient comedy because they avoid direct reference to performance and maintain dramatic illusion. But as readings of tragic self-reflexivity have shown, even consistently illusionistic drama can make reference to itself as drama so that the audience is encouraged to view the play in double focus, as both a pretense of reality and as an evident dramatic artifice. Metatheatricality in Menander has its (...) basis in the recurring view of the characters that life is like a tragedy. A number of characters state that the events at hand resemble a tragic situation, comment on events by quoting from a tragedy, or ask other characters to view the current situation through the lens of a particular tragic drama. In other instances, reference is made to aspects of dramatic staging or to the constitutive parts of plays. Such comments are realistic, or probable, because it is likely that Greeks of the fourth century regularly interpreted their own lives through the paradigm of myth, best known in dramatized form, and used theatrical metaphors to refer to everyday events. At the same time, however, audience members may experience a character's comparison of the dramatic situation to tragedy as humorously ironic because they know that the plot is destined to fulfill itself in a comic mode. Tragedy is in fact a mask worn by Menander's comedy, and the audience has a metadramatic experience whenever it focuses on the fact of masking. Analysis of passages from the Dyscolos, Epitrepontes, Perikeiromene, and Samia, as well as fuller discussion of the Aspis, demonstrates that Menader's plays invite metadramatic readings in which the plot develops through the struggles of characters to impose on themselves and others tragic readings of their comic situation. (shrink)

This mischievously artful essay plays out on several levels; think of them as storeys of an imaginary castle much like the real, solid, central Italian one it explores and expounds. On its own ground floor, the essay recounts a gruesome murder, a noble husband’s midnight revenge upon his wife and upon her bastard lover, his own half-brother, in her castle chamber, in bed. In sex. Of course. The murder itself is pure Renaissance, quintessential Boccaccio or Bandello, but the aftermath, in (...) fort and village, is more singular, more ethnographically delightful, as castle and village trace a ceremonious passage from frozen limbo to fluid grief and storytelling, finally set in motion by the arrival of the dead wife’s brother. Meanwhile, one flight up, the essay retells my own investigation of the real castle’s geometry, as I clambered through rooms, peered out windows, prowled the roof, and scanned blueprints seeking the places of the plotters’ plots. In an expository attic, I lodge reflections on my teaching stratagems, as I led a first-year seminar into detection’s crafts and exposition’s ploys. All the while, on its rooftop, this essay dances among fantastical chimneys and turrets of high theory and literary practice, musing on the patent irony of artful artifice, which evokes both the irony and the pathos of scholars’ cool histories about hot deeds and feelings. Art suggests we authors had best hide ourselves, unlike normal essayists, so as not to spoil the show. But, I posit, our self-effacement is so conspicuous that it proclaims our presence, as in fact it should, and, by so doing, trumpets the necessary tensions of our artifice and craft. Thus artfulness itself nicely both proclaims and celebrates the bittersweet frustrations of historians’ and readers’ quest for knowledge and, especially, for experience of a lost past. (shrink)

The early modern play Sir Thomas More, written by Anthony Munday, Henry Chettle, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood, and William Shakespeare, takes an ecumenical viewpoint of the play's Catholic hero in order to conform to the expectations of the Master of the Revels and to appeal to a cross-confessional audience. The playwrights carefully construct the play within the confines of censorship by centering the play's action around More's dynamic personality instead of giving a full exposition of historical (...) plot. More's personality and famous wit function together as a means for diverting attention away from the controversy surrounding More's silent opposition to Henrician policy while subtly validating his martyrdom. The argument of this article examines the adaptation of the play's ideologically diverse source material, the playwrights’ use of martyrological conventions, and the subtle traces of Erasmian allusion and recusant rhetoric in its reading of the play. (shrink)

The last play of the Varronian canon, Vidularia, is transmitted to us through two different channels. Some pages of it survive in the Codex Ambrosianus, containing the prologue and a couple of scenes from the beginning of the play. On the other hand grammarians quote fragments of a few lines out of context, as examples of idiosyncratic Latin syntax and morphology. From the combination of these two disparate sources classical scholars have reconstructed a Vidularia that is parallel to (...) Rudens on all major points. The plot is not very different, and on the whole the consensus philologorum is correctly summed up by the Terentian sentence of Leo: qui utramve recte novit, ambas noverit. (shrink)

Syrgiannes Palaiologos Philanthropenos played a leading role in the conflicts between factions of the Byzantine aristocracy in the 1320s and 1330s. The most important historians of the period, Nikephoros Gregoras and John Kantakouzenos, depict a rather negative picture of the personality of Syrgiannes. He is portrayed as an overambitious individual who constantly plots against the throne. He is seen as a perjurer whose actions prove that he has no moral constraints and does not hesitate to betray his friends. This image (...) has influenced modern scholarship which to a large extent uncritically accepts this negative image of Syrgiannes without taking into consideration the biases and contradictions of the narratives of Gregoras and Kantakouzenos. The cross-examination of the information provided by these two historians indicates that a large part of their account of the activities of Syrgiannes and his motives should be treated cautiously. (shrink)

ISBN-13: 978-1934074480
Plot Summary from the book:
"An aristocratic young man, fed up with his studies, contemplates military service. His teacher is unable by any reasoning to call him back him from the path he has embarked upon. The young man enlists another youth who commits himself to the journey, dressed in military garb, and he happens upon two deserting soldiers, unsightly and ill-used both in their dress and in their hygiene. Both young men are so moved by the (...) deserters’ remarks deploring and reviling their lot in life that they return to their studies. One of the deserters, however, hopes to be welcomed back by the wife and small children he had deserted and left penniless and bereft of friends. She gives him a nasty reception, with verbal and corporal abuse, and he barely manages to have his sin forgiven and to return to her good graces."
From the Table of Contents:
Introduction
How to Use this Book
Jacobus Pontanus: Biography
Jesuit Comedy – Seriously?
The Stratocles as a Spiritual Exercise
Just War and the Morality of Military Service
A Play about War and the Real Wars of Pontanus' Time
The Characters and Their Names
Pontanus’ Use of Classical Sources
The History of the Text of Stratocles
Performance
Stratocles or War
Endnotes
Appendices
Pontanus on Humanist Studies
Pontanus on Writing Comedy
Renaissance School Hazing, called “Deposition”
Anonymous: Instructions for Deposition
Dialogue on Hazing (Progymnasma 100)
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"This is an extremely intelligent, interesting, and well written book." --Murder Is Academic "... compelling analysis of the comedy thriller... " --Theatre Studies "... almost as much fun to read as is seeing the actual plays discussed... " --Journal of Popular Culture The phenomenal success of such plays as Deathtrap and Sleuth heralded the advent of a new form of detective play--the comedy thriller. Carlson takes the wraps off the comedy thriller and reveals its postmodern effects. He looks at (...) all the elements of the thriller--openings, settings, characters, plot lines, the role of the audience, and endings--and shows how they work to overturn the conventions of realism in detective drama. (shrink)

Scholars often assume that Old Comedies based on mythological stories differed from other Old Comedies primarily by their mythological plot material, and that therefore they shared the structural features of the surviving plays of Aristophanes. I show that the evidence may instead indicate that these Old Comedies did not as a rule have a parabasis or an agon. The structure of mythological Old Comedy could then have resembled the satyr play more closely than Aristophanic Old Comedy, meaning genre (...) did not necessarily determine form. (shrink)

Peter Byrne presents a detailed study of the role of the concept of God in Kant's Critical Philosophy. After a preliminary survey of the major interpretative disputes over the understanding of Kant on God, Byrne explores his critique of philosophical proofs of God¿s existence. Examining Kant¿s account of religious language, Byrne highlights both the realist and anti-realist elements contained within it. The notion of the highest good is then explored, with its constituent elements - happiness and virtue, in pursuit of (...) an assessment of how far Kant establishes that we must posit God. The precise role God plays in ethics according to Kant is then examined, along with the definition of religion as the recognition of duties as divine commands. Byrne also plots Kant¿s critical re-working of the concept of grace. The book closes with a survey of the relation between the Critical Philosophy and Christianity on the one hand and deism on the other. (shrink)

The framework of plateaus, dips, and leaps shines light on periods when individuals may be inventing new methods of skilled performance. We begin with a review of the role performance plateaus have played in experimental psychology, human–computer interaction, and cognitive science. We then reanalyze two classic studies of individual performance to show plateaus and dips which resulted in performance leaps. For a third study, we show how the statistical methods of Changepoint Analysis plus a few simple heuristics may direct our (...) focus to periods of performance change for individuals. For the researcher, dips become the marker of exploration where performance suffers as new methods are invented and tested. Leaps mark the implementation of a successful new method and an incremental jump above the path plotted by smooth and steady log–log performance increments. The methods developed during these dips and leaps are the key to surpassing one's teachers and acquiring extreme expertise. (shrink)

The Decameron was written in the wake of the Black Death, a shattering epidemic which had shaken Florence's confident entrepreneurial society to its core. In a country villa outside the city, ten young noble men and women who have escaped the plague decide to tell each other stories. Boccaccio's skill as a dramatist is masterfully displayed in this virtuoso performance of one hundred tales, vivid portraits of people from all stations in life, with plots which revel in a bewildering variety (...) of human reactions. Themes are playfully restated from one story to another within an elegant and refined framework. One of Chaucer's most fruitful sources for the Canterbury Tales, Boccaccio's work artfully combines the essential ingredients of narrative: fate and desire, crises and quick-thinking. This new translation by Guido Waldman captures the exuberance and variety and tone of Boccaccio's masterpiece. 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. (shrink)

The concept of business ethics has continued to remain a major item on the agenda of corporate America for the last twenty years. Regrettably, this longevity of interest has not been matched by equal attention to the pedagogical methods and techniques used to address these issues. The current mode of teaching business ethics generally involves reliance on “war stories,” case studies, andseminars. Today’s dynamic environment creates pressures for higher levels of ethical behavior by business. Many ethical challenges faced by contemporary (...) managers are not easily resolved by existing guidelines, and require managers to expand their scope of analysis in attempting to arrive at satisfactory resolutions. Literature can be an especially alternative source of insights, as authors are able to highlight behaviors that may not be available from traditional sources. Historically, the use of literature in examining business ethics has been focused primarily on novels such as The Jungle, Babbit, and The Great Gatsby. Plays are more useful than novels in attempting to inculcate moral and ethical values since they more sharply address the interactions of characters, and the reader becomes more involved in their situations. The plays selected for analysis, Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, and David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, have intense plots and characters and allow the reader to observe a wide range motives, emotions, and traits. This untraditional approach to teaching business ethics enhances the ability to relate to the increasingly complex ethical issues facing the individual and the organization. (shrink)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that great works of literature have an impact on people's lives. Well known literary characters—Oedipus, Hamlet, Faustus, Don Quixote—acquire iconic or mythic status and their stories, in more or less detail, are revered and recalled often in contexts far beyond the strictly literary. At the level of national literatures, familiar characters and plots are assimilated into a wider cultural consciousness and help define national stereotypes and norms of behaviour. In the English speaking world, Shakespeare's (...) plays or the novels of Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Dickens, and Trollope, provide imaginative material that reverberates in people's lives every bit as much as do the great historical figures, like Julius Caesar, Elizabeth I, Horatio Nelson, or Winston Churchill. What is striking is how often fictional characters from the literary tradition—like the well-loved Elizabeth Bennett, Jane Eyre, Oliver Twist, Pip, Tess of the d'Ubervilles—enter readers' lives at a highly personal level. They become, as Martha Nussbaum puts it, our ‘friends’, and for many readers the lives of these characters become closely entwined with their own. Happy and unhappy incidents in the fictional worlds are held up against similar incidents in the real lives of readers and such readers take inspiration from the courage, ingenuity, or good fortune of their fictional heroines and heroes. Nowhere is it more true that life imitates art. (shrink)

In response to the ubiquitous graphs and maps of COVID-19, artists, designers, data scientists, and public health officials are teaming up to create counter-plots and subaltern maps of the pandemic. In this intervention, we describe the various functions served by these projects. First, they offer tutorials and tools for both dataviz practitioners and their publics to encourage critical thinking about how COVID-19 data is sourced and modeled—and to consider which subjects are not interpellated in those data sets, and why not. (...) Second, they demonstrate how the pandemic’s spatial logics inscribe themselves in our immediate material landscapes. And third, they remind us of our capacity to personalize and participate in the creation of meaningful COVID visualizations—many of which represent other scales and dimensions of the pandemic, especially the quarantine quotidian. Together, the official maps and counter-plots acknowledge that the pandemic plays out differently across different scales: COVID-19 is about global supply chains and infection counts and TV ratings for presidential press conferences, but it is also about local dynamics and neighborhood mutual aid networks and personal geographies of mitigation and care. (shrink)

Contemporary Complex Cinema. Complex conditions: the resurgence of narrative complexity ; Complex cinema as brain-candy for the empowered viewer ; Narrative taxonomies: simple, complex, puzzle plots -- Cognitive Approach to Contemporary Complex Cinema. Why an (embodied-)cognitive approach? ; Various forms of complexity and their effects on sense making ; Problematizing narrative linearity ; Complicating narrative structures and ontologies ; Under-stimulation and cognitive overload ; Contradictions and unreliabilities ; A cognitive approach to classifying complexity ; Deceptive unreliability and the twist film (...) ; Disorienting but solvable puzzle films ; Impossible puzzle films -- Narrative Complexity and Dissonant Cognitions. The concept of cognitive dissonance ; Cognitions in dissonance: from social psychology to narrative engagement ; Types of dissonance in narrative comprehension ; Narrative incongruities ; Narrative impossibilities ; Cognitive access to impossible storyworlds: immersed and reflected operations ; 'Impossibilities' and embodied cognition ; Disrupting viewers' reliance on image schemas by perceptual impossibility ; Disrupting viewers' reliance on image schemas by formal impossibility -- Taming Dissonance: Cognitive Operations and Interpretive Strategies. Cognitive dissonance versus narrative coherence ; Reducing dissonance: interpretation and naturalization ; Foregrounding ; Narrating agency and authorship ; Artefact emotions and metareflexive appreciation ; Interpretation as dissonance reduction ; Coping with dissonance: frame-switches and poetic and aesthetic readings ; Frame-switching as hermeneutic play in impossible puzzle films ; Switching between narrative and symbolical readings: Enemy and Mulholland Drive ; Cognitive hesitation and the fantastic -- Impossible Puzzle Films: Between Art-Cinema and (Post-) Classical Narration. From art-cinema to puzzle films ; Art-cinema as a narrative mode ; Dissonance in modernist art-cinema ; Art-cinema as a cognitive reception frame ; Narrative complexity and meaning-making in art-cinema ; Impossible puzzle films and (post-)classical narration ; High degree of tellability ; Identification with goal-oriented characters ; Strong reliance on classical genre elements ; Adherence to classical narrative cohesion devices ; Inclusion of quasi-rational frames of naturalization -- Wallowing in Dissonance: The Attractiveness of Impossible Puzzles. Hermeneutic play and interpretive multiplicity ; Orientation, navigation, mapping ; Game logic and the fascination in failure ; Effort justification ; Diegetization of decoupling ; Fascination in infinity ; Destabilized ontological certainty ; Eudaimonic motivations and intrinsic needs. (shrink)

Milan Kundera is one of the most influential writers in contemporary world literature. In his novels, there are many symbolic metaphors related to numbers, dreams, and animals. Combing through the plots of Kundera’s novels, we can discover that among all the numbers, seven and twenty are used most frequently. These two numbers have rich metaphorical meanings. Besides, there are many other digital metaphors in Kundera’s novels, including 6, 4, etc. Apart from number symbols, Kundera has also inserted various kinds of (...) dream symbols in his artistic creation. For Kundera, dreams are not just an individual’s physical and psychological activities, but also a continuation and supplement of real life. It can be concluded that dream narration is a perfect medium for the author to express his philosophical ideology. In addition, dream symbols also serve as an important medium for Kundera to demonstrate narrative skills and present important themes. In Kundera’s novels, animal symbols are integrated with the plots, revealing the personal traits of the relevant characters, and mirroring their spiritual world at the same time. Besides, Kundera also expressed his ecological ethics through the narration of animals’ death. In conclusion, the metaphorical meanings of different symbols in Kundera’s novels play an active role in highlighting the themes, revealing the inner thoughts of the characters, showing the special features of the characters, and expressing the author’s philosophical thoughts. These symbols help Kundera to break the limitations of time and space, which has become an important part of his polyphonic art. What’s more, Kundera has also tried to expand the original metaphorical meanings of these symbols to create some new poetic meanings. (shrink)

Three of Aristophanes' eleven extant comedies use the typical comic device of role reversal to imagine worlds in which women are "on top." Freed from the social constraints which keep them enclosed within the house and silent in the public realms of discourse and action, women are given a field and context on the comic stage. They issue forth to lay their plans, concoct their plots, and exercise their power over men.The Lysistrate and the Ecclesiazousae stage of the intrusion of (...) women into the public spaces of Athens, the Acropolis and Agora, respectively, as an intrusion into the political and economic life of the city. The Thesmophoriazousae, however, resituates the battle of the sexes in another domain, that of aesthetics, and, more precisely, that of theatre itself. Instead of the collective confrontation of men and women, the play directs the women's actions against a single male target, the tragic poet, Euripides.Froma I. Zeitlin, an associate professor of classics at Princeton University, is the author of several articles on Greek tragedy and on the ancient novel. Her monograph, Under the Sign of the Shield: Language, Structure, and the Son of Oedipus in Aeschylus' "Seven against Thebes," is forthcoming, and she is presently completing The Divided World: Gender and System in Aescylean Drama. (shrink)

Anyone who picks up a collection of fragments of comic poetry is likely to be struck by the large number of references to eating fish. There are shopping-lists for fish, menus for fish and recipes for fish-dishes, with the ingredients and method of preparation graphically described. Aristophanes and others dwell in several places on the charms of eel wrapped in beet-leaves. Other writers describe preparations for a great fish-soup, or the dancing movements of fish as they are fried. Undoubtedly Athenaeus (...) is responsible for this preponderance among the fragments of Comedy of passages concerned primarily with food, especially fish, but some of the fragments are rather long in themselves and indicate, at the very least, that cooks were important characters in many plays, and that dinner-parties must have figured significantly in many plots. Outside Comedy, references to fish-consumption are somewhat fewer in number, but perhaps even more surprising when they do occur. It seems strange that Demosthenes, in discussing Philocrates' betrayal of his city, should think it at all relevant to state that he spent his ill-gotten gains on fish, or that Aeschines, attacking Timarchus on a capital charge, should dwell on his fondness for fish. Moreover, references to fish occur also in philosophy and the Hippocratic corpus. In fact, the frequency with which ancient authors seem to have written about fish reveals almost a preoccupation. The consumption offish clearly held a significance for the Athenians which needs to be uncovered and explained. (shrink)

Originally published in 1979. Adultery is a dominant feature in chivalric literature; it becomes a major concern in Shakespeare's last plays; and it forms the central plot of novels from Anna Karenina to Couples. Tony Tanner proposes that transgressions of the marriage contract take on a special significance in the "bourgeois novels" of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His interpretation begins with the general topic of adultery in literature and then zeroes in on three works—Rousseau's La Nouvelle Héloïse, Goethe's (...) Die Wahlverwandtschaften, and Flaubert's Madame Bovary. His interpretation encompasses the role of women, the structure of the family, social mores, and the history of sexuality. (shrink)

Aristotle’s claim that poetry is ‘a more philosophic and better thing’ than history (Poet 9.1451b5-6) and his description of the ‘poetic universal’ have been the source of much scholarly discussion. Although many scholars have mined Poetics 9 as a source for Aristotle’s views towards history, in my contribution I caution against doing so. Critics of Aristotle’s remarks have often failed to appreciate the expository principle which governs Poetics 6-12, which begins with a definition of tragedy and then elucidates the terms (...) of that definition by means of a series of juxtapositions. The juxtaposition between poetry and history is one such instance which seeks to elucidate what sort of plot exemplifies a causal unity such that the events of a play unfold with likelihood or necessity. Within that context, Aristotle compares history and poetry in order to elucidate the object of poetic mimesis rather than criticize history as a discipline. Viewing Aristotle as antagonistic towards history fails to appreciate the expository structure of the Poetics and obscures the resource which history provides to the poet, a point which I explore by considering what Aristotle would have thought of an ‘historical’ tragedy like Aeschylus’ Persians. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Greek FriendshipDavid KonstanIn this paper I examine the nomenclature and conception of friendship among the ancient Greeks. More specifically, I challenge the current consensus that the classical Greek notion of friendship was wider or more inclusive than the modern. My focus will be on the significance of the terms philos (as noun) and philia, which do not, as is commonly assumed, denote the same range of relations. I shall (...) argue that philos in the classical period denotes something very like the modern sense of "friend," while philia refers to affectionate sentiments (not objective obligations) characteristic of a wide range of relationships, not excluding friendship proper. I examine evidence drawn primarily from Aristotle, Xenophon and the Greek orators in order to exhibit the uses of the nouns philos and philia, and look also at Sophocles' Antigone, since a number of recent interpretations of this play presuppose that kin are philoi and that philia represents the objective bond among them.In his recent book on Athenian finance, Paul Millett writes: "It is true that from the viewpoint of comparative sociology, to say nothing of our own experience, the all-inclusive quality of Greek friendship is anomalous."1 Millett cites the article on "Friendship" by Odd Ramsøy for the generalization that "most other important social relationships exclude friendship," which "tends to be incompatible with such relationships as those of mother and child, lovers, and employer and employee."2 Millett goes on to observe that Greek usage, as illustrated for example by Aristotle, admits of the term philos or "friend" in respect to "parents, brothers, benefactors, fellow-tribesmen and fellow-citizens," as well as to "husbands and wives, fellow-voyagers, comrades-in-arms, guest-friends, and cousins," and he adds that "perhaps the clearest illustration comes from the Memorabilia of Xenophon, plotting the extension of philia both inside and outside the family circle." [End Page 71]Millett expresses with exemplary clarity and a wealth of citations a point of view shared by virtually every scholar writing these days on Greek friendship. For example, Mary Whitlock Blundell, in her study of Sophoclean ethics, classifies Greek conceptions of friendship under three main heads or circles: the family, fellow-citizens, and "the third main group of philoi" that "approximates most closely to modern conceptions of a friend."3 Barry Strauss, in his history of fourth-century Athens, writes: "Friendship was of fundamental importance in Athenian society. Second only to parent-child and kinship ties in the intensity of its obligations, friendship is central to the thought of many ancient Greek writers."4 This seems to promise a distinction between kinship and friendship, but in the next sentence Strauss continues: "Philia, as the Greeks called it, is much broader in its meaning than the English 'friendship,'" and he goes on to quote with approval N. R. E. Fisher, who asserts: "Linguistically, the most general word for what belongs to a person, in his group or on his side, is philos (noun philia), which we usually translate 'friend,' but which, when applied to persons, systematically spans both kin and non-kin, those with whom one has links of mutual aid and benevolence."5 Sally Humphreys states the matter succinctly in a footnote:" Philos can refer both to kin and to friends."6 The philosophers too are in agreement on this point. Thus, Michael Pakaluk, in the introduction to a collection of philosophical essays on friendship, observes of Aristotle's treatise: "Religious societies, familial bonds, affinities among travellers, civility among citizens, arrangements of hospitality, and tacit contractual agreements-all of these are woven into his account of friendship."7The Greeks, then, are said not to have discriminated linguistically between a wide range of associations that we, and most societies, regard as categorically distinct. Friends are assimilated to relatives, fellow citizens, and just about anyone else with whom one shares some common experience or interest. This view, however, is inexact and misleading as stated. I shall argue that in Greek usage of the classical period and later, [End Page 72] just as in English today, kin and fellow citizens were not normally spoken of as friends or philoi, and that the categories were in fact distinct and... (shrink)

Megastable chaotic systems are somehow the newest in the family of special chaotic systems. In this paper, a new megastable two-dimensional system is proposed. In this system, coexisting attractors are in some islands, interestingly covered by megalimit cycles. The introduced two-dimensional system has no defined equilibrium point. However, it seems that the origin plays the role of an unstable equilibrium point. Therefore, the attractors are determined as hidden attractors. Adding a forcing term to the system, we can obtain chaotic solutions (...) and coexisting strange attractors. Moreover, the effect of three different values of the forcing term’s amplitude is studied. The dynamical properties of the designed system are investigated using attractor plots, bifurcation diagrams, and Lyapunov Exponents diagram. Phase portraits of the novel megastable oscillator are presented by FPGA design. Xilinx system generator block diagrams of the proposed system and trigonometric functions are also presented. (shrink)

Aristotle’s Poetics is the first philosophical account of an art form and is the foundational text in the history of aesthetics. The Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Aristotle and the Poetics is an accessible guide to this often dense and cryptic work. Angela Curran introduces and assesses: Aristotle’s life and the background to the Poetics the ideas and text of the Poetics , including mimēsis ; poetic technē; the definition of tragedy; the elements of poetic composition; the Poetics’ recommendations for tragic (...) plot patterns; catharsis ; epic and comedy; the nature of our emotional response to drama; the proper pleasure of tragedy; and the role that art plays in a human life the relevance of Aristotle’s work in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and philosophical psychology to the Poetics a comparison of Plato and Aristotle on the value of mimetic art the continuing importance of Aristotle’s Poetics to contemporary philosophy, aesthetics, and philosophy of film. (shrink)

The paper examines the surviving references to the setting of the rapes in New Comedy. It argues that the fact that rapes are commonly set in the course of nocturnal festival activities should not be seen merely as a convenient plot device. By using Menander's Epitrepontes as a case study, the paper suggests that there is a close relationship between the character of the festivals where rapes are set and a major theme in the plays themselves: namely, the maturation (...) of the young protagonists and their transition into adulthood. The paper also offers a reassessment of the evidence we have for the Tauropolia—the Attic festival where the rape is set in the Epitrepontes. (shrink)

Urban agriculture in Cuba has played an important role for citizens’ food supply since the collapse of the Eastern Block. Through the land reform of 2008 and the Lineamientos of 2011, the Cuban government has aimed to support agriculture in order to increase national food production and reduce imports. However, the implementation of the designed measures faced obstacles. Therefore, the research objective was to display how the government’s measures aiming to support domestic food production influenced urban agriculture. The qualitative research (...) comprised semi-structured interviews with 15 urban farmers in Havana and revealed the respondents’ experiences with the land reform and the Lineamientos and the potential of the reforms to implement food sovereignty. Findings show that the land reform has facilitated access to land for newcomer and existing farmers. However, availability of agricultural inputs has been limited and they were often expensive. Thus, urban farmers frequently produced farm inputs at their plots and applied sustainable farming practices to minimize their dependence on external inputs. The reforms have generated private marketing opportunities and have stimulated urban farmers to increase production. At the same time, subsidies have been reduced and consumers have faced increasing food prices. In conclusion, the land reform and the Lineamientos have created framework conditions for food sovereignty. However, the challenge is to increase the coherence of the theoretic aim and the practical implementation of the reforms. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Cynthia Willett HEGEL, ANTIGONE, AND THE POSSIBILITY OF ECSTATIC DIALOGUE In his lectures on aesthetics, Hegel argues that drama is the highest form of art. Only drama can resolve, or sublate (auflieben), an opposition between objective and subjective poles ofaesthetic experience.1 This opposition takes its penultimate form in the difference between epic and lyric poetry. Subjective feelings expressed in lyric and the objective representation ofevents in epic are sublated (...) in classical drama as ethical character and action. In this article I will examine both what Hegel does and does not say about the structure and function ofclassical drama in order to determine its role in the education of humanity, or what Hegel calls the "phenomenology of spirit." As it turns out, drama is not only a climactic moment in the development of spirit. The structure ofdrama also traces a paradigm and an historical origin for Hegel's dialectic. The ironic reversals and discoveries that emplot tragic drama also constitute dialectic. An immediate consequence of this parallel is mat, in accordance with Aristode's definition of tragic drama, dialectic demands the catharsis, or purging, of emotion from educated spirit.2 After establishing the analogy between dialectic and cathartic drama, I turn to the exemplary role that is played by Sophocles' Antigone in the Phenomenology ofSpirit. A reinterpretation of the play suggests that Hegel fails to see that emotional engagement, or the unsublated subjective feeling relegated to die lower art of lyric, in fact orients the dramatic action of Antigone. The resemblance between drama and dialectic suggests that desire can no more be purged from dialectic than from classical tragedy. As a consequence, Hegelian dialectic should be reconceived in terms of a notion of tragedy that is not cathartic but ecstatic. Philosophy and Literature, © 1990, 14: 268-283 Cynthia Willett269 In the AesUietks, Hegel places drama after epic and lyric as the third and final moment of the highest stage of art. Drama presents actions that are ethical and thus differs from the lyrical expression of feelings as well as the adventures narrated in epic (A, pp. 1158; 474). Hegel's definition of epic in terms of narration and description suggests that the language of epic functions as representation. Representational language externalizes, or objectifies, spirit's movement in a series ofevents which are related by the epic poet. This narration functions without the mediation ofa subject, which is to say without an "agent's inner will and character" (A, pp. 1160; 476). Lyric poetry, on the other hand, concerns feelings or "the inner life alone" (A, pp. 984; 254). In accordance with its subject matter, the language oflyric is not representational but expressive. Drama presents actions before an audience, such actions occurring primarily in the mode of speech (A, pp. 1159; 475). What we can characterize as the "speech-acts" performed in drama carry out intentions of, or ends soughtby, the main character. Drama advances dialectic because, as Hegel writes, "drama does not fall apart into a lyric inner life and an external sphere as its opposite, but displays an inner life and its external realization" (A, pp. 1 160; 476). First, events which occur episodically in epic attain the unity of a single action that comprises dramatic plot. Secondly, a "cleaned-up" version ofthe "chaotic" feelings expressed in lyric poetry develops into the intention of a character to adher to a universal ethical principle. It is important to emphasize that, according to Hegel, drama should not draw any of its effect from subjective emotions. Drama sublates lyrical feeling into ethical law. Only thus does drama bring together the epic-making events and lyrical subjectivity, notby wayofa mechanical synthesis, but in a metamorphosis enabling elements initially opposed to give rise to an original whole. The proximity ofdrama to dialectical thought appears in the contrast Hegel draws between dramatic action and action which is prosaic, or philosophically insignificant (A, pp. 1159; 475). Dramatic action, Hegel explains, "is notconfined to the simple and undisturbed accomplishment ofa specific aim; on the contrary, it rests entirely on collisions ofcircumstances, passions, and characters... which in turn necessitate a resolution of the conflict and discord" (A, pp. 1159; 475). On the other hand, a prosaic, or ordinary... (shrink)

_Dark Tongues _constitutes a sustained exploration of a perplexing fact that has never received the attention it deserves. Wherever human beings share a language, they also strive to make from it something new: a cryptic idiom, built from the grammar that they know, which will allow them to communicate in secrecy. Such hidden languages come in many shapes. They may be playful or serious, children's games or adults' work. They may be as impenetrable as foreign tongues, or slightly different from (...) the idioms from which they spring, or barely perceptible, their existence being the subject of uncertain, even unlikely, suppositions. The first recorded jargons date to the time of the Renaissance, when writers across Europe noted that obscure languages had suddenly come into use. A varied cast of characters -- lawyers, grammarians, and theologians -- denounced these new forms of speech, arguing that they were tools of crime, plotted in tongues that honest people could not understand. Before the emergence of these modern jargons, however, the artificial twisting of languages served a different purpose. In epochs and regions as diverse as archaic Greece and Rome and medieval Provence and Scandinavia, singers and scribes also invented opaque varieties of speech. They did so not to defraud, but to reveal and record a divine thing: the language of the gods, which poets and priests alone were said to master. _Dark Tongues _moves among these various artificial and hermetic tongues. From criminal jargons to sacred idioms, from Saussure's work on anagrams to Jakobson's theory of subliminal patterns in poetry, from the arcane arts of the Druids and Biblical copyists to the secret procedure that Tristan Tzara, founder of Dada, believed he had uncovered in Villon's songs and ballads, Dark Tongues explores the common crafts of rogues and riddlers, which play sound and sense against each other. (shrink)

The Fifth Element (1997) is a French science-fiction film in English, directed and co-written by Luc Besson. The title and the plot of the film refer to a central notion of Greek philosophy, that is, pemptousia, or quintessence. Pre-Socratic philosophers such as Thales, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes and others, were convinced that all natural beings – in fact, nature itself – consist in four primary imperishable elements or essences (ousiai), i.e., fire, earth, water, and air. To these four, Aristotle added aether, (...) a fifth essence (pemptousia). The introduction of aether gave birth to a great tradition in late Antique and Medieval philosophy, and eventually it came to signify not an additional primary element, but the core-essence of all beings, their fundamental ontological structure. Besson’s film draws its inspiration on this philosophical tradition but its cinematographic rendering of the concept of Quintessence is typical of the contemporaneous views on the core characteristics of matters. The modernity that stimulates the film is equally anti-transcendentalist and anti-essentialist. Thus, the fifth element of the film is existentially personified and genderized making the traditional philosophical significance of the term to be adjusted by modernity in an immanent and temporal context where in addition aesthetics plays a crucial role. (shrink)