Masks Of Dionysus

Tracing the interrelationship among play, poetic imitation, and power to the Hellenic world, Mihai I. Spariosu provides a revisionist model of cultural change in Greek antiquity. Challenging the traditional and static distinction made between archaic and later Greek culture, Spariosu's perspective is grounded in a dialectical understanding of values whose dominance depends on cultural emphasis and which shifts through time. Building upon the scholarship of an earlier volume, Dionysus Reborn, Spariosu her continues to draw on Dionysus--the "God of many names," of both poetic play and sacred power--as a mythical embodiment of the two sides of the classical Greek mentality. Combining philosophical reflection with close textual analysis, the author examines the divided nature of the Hellenic mentality in such primary canonic texts as the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Theogony, Works and Days, the most well-known of the Presocratic fragments, Euripides' Bacchae, Aristophanes' The Frogs, Plato's Republic and Laws, and Aristotle's Poetics and Politics. Spariosu's model illuminates the many of the most enduring questions in contemporary humanistic study and addresses modern questions about the nature of the interrelation of poetry, ethics, and politics.

Out of Athens sets ancient Greek culture next to the global ancient world of Vedic India, the Han dynasty in China, and the empires that survived Alexander the Great.--Publisher description.

William Storm reinterprets the concept of the tragic as both a fundamental human condition and an aesthetic process in dramatic art. He proposes an original theoretical relation between a generative and consistent tragic ground and complex characterization patterns. For Storm, it is the dismemberment of character, not the death, that is the signature mark of tragic drama. Basing his theory in the sparagmos, the dismembering rite associated with Dionysus, Storm identifies a rending tendency that transcends the ancient Greek setting and can be recognized transhistorically. The dramatic character in any era who suffers the tragic fate must do so in the manner of the ancient god of theater: the depicted self is torn apart, figuratively if not literally, psychologically if not physically. Storm argues that a newly objectified concept of the tragic can prove more useful critically and diagnostically than the traditional and more subjective tragic "vision." Further, he develops a theory of the tragic field, a model for the connective and cumulative activity that brings about the distinctive Dionysian effect upon character. His theory is supported with case studies from Agamemnon and Iphigenia in Aulis, King Lear, and The Seagull. Storm's examination of the dramatic form of tragedy and the existential questions it raises is sensitive to both their universal relevance and their historical particularity.

"Representing some of the most fruitful recent approaches to the phenomenon of Dionysus and well illustrated, this book will be essential reading for students and scholars of classical literature and ancient history, the history of ancient religion, art history, classical philology, and archaeology." -- Back cover

Euripides and Alcestis demonstrates the inherent presence of indeterminacy in Euripides' play, Alcestis. The author uses about eighty of the scholarly attempts to establish a determinate meaning of the play to exhibit the difficulty and lack of success in previous attempts at interpretation. She recognizes that the meaning of the play is surrounded by ambiguity and indeterminacy and provides an interpretation based on this knowledge. As an interpretation, the author focuses on Admetus' desire in relation to Alcestis' statue and his nature as a fifth century Athenian man while exposing Alcestis as a nonidentity. She also analyzes the issues of representation and spectatorship, showing that the theatrical performance is constructed in order to function as vehicles for the satisfaction of a dominant position-that of Admetus and the spectator of the performance.

A critical re-examination of the views of Plato, Aristotle, Hegel and Nietzsche on tragedy. Ancient Greek tragedy is revealed as surprisingly modern and experimental, while such concepts as mimesis, catharsis, hubris and the tragic collision are discussed from different perspectives.

This collection of essays on the writing of Robertson Davies addresses the basic problems in reading his work by looking at the topics of doubling, disguise, irony, paradox, and dwelling in "gaps" or spaces "in between." The essays present new insights on a broad range of topics in Davies' oeuvre and represent one of the first major discussions devoted to Davies' work since his death in 1995.