The Clouds And Peace Of Aristophanes Translated Into English Prose By A Graduate Of The University Of Oxford

Originating from a study of the people's attitude in the first thirty years of the nineteenth century toward the classics, English Translations from the Greek by Finley Melville Kendall Foster lists the significant translations published during those years. In order to have the necessary material for a close study of the original list, extensive research was conducted for around fifty years. The result of these discoveries is embodied in the list of translations that make up this book's contents. Foster hopes to educate people about and make them familiar with the various kinds of Greek literature that have been popular at different times during the last four hundred and thirty years. He has in no way attempted to discuss the standards or the benchmarks of a good translation, the reason being that the making of an English version of a Greek original presents difficulties little distinct from those of translation from any other language into English.

Flying to Heaven to demand an end to war, building Cloudcuckooland in the sky, descending to Hades to retrieve a dead tragedian - such were the cosmic missions on which Aristophanes, the father of comedy, sent his heroes of the classical Athenian stage. The wit, intellectual bravura, political clout and sheer imaginative power of Aristophanes' quest dramas have profoundly influenced humorous literature and satire, but this volume, which originated at an international conference held at the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama at Oxford University in 2004, is the first interdisciplinary study of their seminal contribution to the evolution of comic performance. Interdisciplinary essays by specialists in Classics, Theatre, and Modern Literatures trace the international performance history of Aristophanic comedy, and its implication in aesthetic and political controversies, from antiquity to the twenty-first century. The story encompasses Jonson's satire, Cromwell's Ireland, German classicism, British Imperial India, censorship scandals in France, Greece and South Africa, Brechtian experiments in East Berlin, and musical theatre from Gilbert and Sullivan to Stephen Sondheim.