Choral Mediations In Greek Tragedy

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

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

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

Ever since Aristotle opened the discussion on the role of the chorus in Greek tragedy, theories of the chorus have continued to proliferate and provoke debate to this day. The tragic chorus had its own story to tell; it was a collective identity, speaking within and to a collective citizen body, acting as an instrument through which stories of other times and places were dramatized into resonant heroic narratives for contemporary Athens. By including detailed case studies of three different tragedies (one each by Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles), Claude Calame's seminal study not only re-examines the role of the chorus in Greek tragedy, but pushes beyond this to argue for the 'polyphony' of choral performance. Here, he explores the fundamentally choral nature of the genre, and its deep connection to the cultic and ritual contexts in which tragedy was performed.

Choral Identity and the Chorus of Elders in Greek Tragedy challenges the commonly held view that choruses are marginalized by the roles they play in classical Athenian tragedy. Focusing on those tragedies that feature a chorus representing old men who are elders of the community where the action is taking place, Dhuga argues that these elders, as elders, are not necessarily marginal and can even become in some ways central to the represented action.

The Music of Tragedy offers a new approach to the study of classical Greek theater by examining the use of musical language, imagery, and performance in the late work of Euripides. Naomi Weiss demonstrates that Euripides’ allusions to music-making are not just metatheatrical flourishes or gestures towards musical and religious practices external to the drama but closely interwoven with the dramatic plot. Situating Euripides’ experimentation with the dramaturgical effects of mousike within a broader cultural context, she shows how much of his novelty lies in his reinvention of traditional lyric styles and motifs for the tragic stage. If we wish to understand better the trajectories of this most important ancient art form, The Music of Tragedy argues, we must pay closer attention to the role played by both music and text.

Paths of Song: The Lyric Dimension of Greek Tragedy analyzes the multiple and varied evocations of choral lyric in fifth-century Greek tragedy using a variety of methodological approaches that illustrate the myriad forms through which lyric is present and can be presented in tragedy. This collection focuses on different types of interaction of Greek tragedy with lyric poetry in fifth-century Athens: generic, mythological, cultural, musical, and performative. The collected essays demonstrate the dynamic and nuanced relationship between lyric poetry and tragedy within the larger frame of Athenian song- and performance-culture, and reveal a vibrant and symbiotic co-existence between tragedy and lyric. Paths of Song illustrates the effects that this dynamic engagement with lyric possibly had on tragic performances, including performances of satyr drama, as well as on processes of survival and reputation, selection and refiguration, tradition and innovation. The volume is of particular interest to scholars in the field of classics, cultural studies, and the performing arts, as well as to readers interested in poetic transmission and in cultural evolution in antiquity.

The first investigation of the relationship between the chorus of Greek tragedy and other types of choral song in Greek society. L. A. Swift not only provides new insights into individual plays, but also enriches our understanding of the role poetry and song played in ancient Greek life.