Elektra S Adventures In Tragedy

Funny and smart with all the angst and sass of adolescence and a colorful cast of characters, this is a refreshing contemporary coming-of-age YA about one Greek-American girl's odyssey home. Sixteen-year-old Elektra Kamenides is well on her way to becoming a proper southern belle in the small Mississippi college town she calls home. That is, until her mother decides to uproot her and her kid sister Thalia and start over in California. They leave behind Elektra's father--a professor and leading expert on Greek mythology, and Elektra can't understand why. For her, life is tragedy, and all signs point to her family being cursed. Their journey ends in Guadalupe Slough, a community of old Chicano families and oddball drifters sandwiched between San José and the southern shores of San Francisco Bay. The houseboat that her mother has bought, sight unseen, is really just an ancient trailer parked on a barge and sunk into a mudflat. What would Odysseus do? Elektra asks herself. Determined to get back to Mississippi at all costs, she'll beg, lie, and steal to get there. But things are not always what they seem, and home is wherever you decide to make it.

A spellbinding reimagining of the story of Elektra, one of Greek mythology’s most infamous heroines, from Jennifer Saint, the author of the beloved international bestseller, Ariadne. Three women, tangled in an ancient curse. When Clytemnestra marries Agamemnon, she ignores the insidious whispers about his family line, the House of Atreus. But when, on the eve of the Trojan War, Agamemnon betrays Clytemnestra in the most unimaginable way, she must confront the curse that has long ravaged their family. In Troy, Princess Cassandra has the gift of prophecy, but carries a curse of her own: no one will ever believe what she sees. When she is shown what will happen to her beloved city when Agamemnon and his army arrives, she is powerless to stop the tragedy from unfolding. Elektra, Clytemnestra and Agamemnon’s youngest daughter, wants only for her beloved father to return home from war. But can she escape her family’s bloody history, or is her destiny bound by violence, too?

Theatrical performance is the most ephemeral of arts. Once a production closes, the living work of art disappears. Fortunately, some productions leave behind enough evidence to reconstruct in words and pictures what a performance was like and to conjecture what the audience saw and heard. Between 1889 and 1995 in America, productions of Sophocles' Electra became the project of some of the most significant directors, actresses, and producers of their day. In reconstructing eleven major productions, this book seeks to accomplish two goals: first, to preserve, albeit in imperfect written form, the productions themselves; and, second, by tracing the history of Electra's production, to highlight some of the most pivotal figures in the development of American theater, including several key women often neglected by theater historians. Along the way, for those who celebrate Greek tragedy in production, this book will allow the reader to sit vicariously in the audience and enjoy eleven Electra productions on the American stage. E. Teresa Choate is an Associate Professor and Assistant Chair at the Department of Theatre in the School of Visual and Performing Arts at Kean University.

The main problem facing critics of Sophokles' Elektra has always been understanding the presentation of the vengeance and the nature of justice it represents. This volume addresses the ethical issues of this play through an analysis of the language and argumentation which the characters use to explain and justify their behaviour. The focus is on the examination of the themes of aidôs and dolos, and the way in which each contributes to our overall understanding of the vengeance as an act which, for all its justice, remains shameful. By exploring the union between these two contradictory elements, this study exposes the ethical complexity of Sophokles' treatment of the vengeance theme. Dolos & Dikê contains a useful critique of recent interpretative approaches to the play, a full bibliography, and a complete index of passages cited.

Shakespeare's Hamlet--written 1,000 years after the classical Greek period--follows a narrative pattern similar to that of the Greek Electra myth, and it isn't the only story to do so. We see signs of Electra's influence again in the 20th-century works of Oscar Wilde, Eugene O'Neill and T.S. Eliot, among others. This revised and updated edition will look more closely at the influence of Electra on popular culture throughout history and the questions it poses regarding oppositions such as logic versus instinct, night versus day and repression versus freedom.

Among the best-known Greek tragedies, Electra is also one of the plays students of Greek often read in the original language. It tells the story of how Electra and her brother, Orestes, avenge the murder of their father, Agamemnon, by their mother and her lover. H. M. Roisman and C. A. E. Luschnig have developed a new edition of this seminal tragedy designed for twenty-first-century classrooms. Included with the Greek text are a useful introduction, line-by-line commentary, and other materials in English, all intended to support intermediate and advanced undergraduate students. Electra's gripping story and almost contemporary feel help make the play accessible and interesting to modern audiences. The liberties Euripides took with the traditional myth and the playwright's attitudes toward the gods can inspire fruitful classroom discussion about fifth-century Athenian thought, manners, and morals. Roisman and Luschnig invite readers to compare Euripides' treatment of the myth with those of Aeschylus and Sophocles and with variant presentations in epic and lyric poetry, later drama, and modern film. The introduction also places the play in historical context and describes conventions of the Greek theater specific to the work. Extensive appendices provide a complete metrical analysis of the play, helpful notes on grammar and syntax, an index of verbs, and a Greek-English glossary. In short, the authors have included everything students need to support and enhance their reading of Electra in its original language.

This book presents a cultural history of the Greek tragedy and its influence on subsequent Greek and Roman art and literature.

Alphabetically arranged, the volume contains entries on classical plays and playwrights; theatrical conventions; persons (real or mythical) and places mentioned; and terms used. Entries for the plays include historical data, lists of translations, summaries, and critical commentaries. Information from ancient sources on fragmentary and lost plays is included.