Greek satyr play : five studies / Mark Griffith.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Griffith, Mark (Classicist), author.

Series:

California classical studies ; no. 3.

California classical studies ; no. 3

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Greek drama (Satyr play).

Greek drama (Satyr play)--History and criticism.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

xiii, 188 pages, 15 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, CA : California Classical Studies, 2015.

Summary:

With a new introduction and some revisions, these essays on Classical Greek satyr plays, originally published in various venues between 2002 and 2010, suggest new critical approaches to this important dramatic genre and identify previously neglected dimensions and dynamics within their original Athenian context. Griffith shows that satyr plays, alongside the ludicrous and irresponsible, but harmless, antics of their chorus, presented their audiences with culturally sophisticated narratives of romance, escapist adventure, and musical-choreographic exuberance, amounting to a zparallel universey to that of the accompanying tragedies in the City Dionysia festival. The class oppositions between heroic/divine characters and the rest (choruses, messengers, servants, etc.) that are so integral to Athenian tragedy are shown to be present also, in exaggerated form, in satyr drama, with the satyr chorus occupying a role that also inevitably recalled for the Athenian audiences their own (often foreign-born) slaves. Meanwhile the familiar main characters of tragedy (Heracles, Danae and Perseus, Hermes and Apollo, Achilles, Odysseus, etc.) are re-deployed in an engaging milieu of erotic encounters, miraculous discoveries, guaranteed happy endings, marriages, and painless release from suffering for all, both for the well-behaved heroes and also for the low-life, playful satyrs (the slaves of Dionysus). In their fusion of adventure and romance, fantasy and naïvete, Aphrodite and Dionysus, Athenian satyr plays thus anticipate in many respects, Griffith suggests, the later developments of Greek pastoral and prose romance.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 170-182) and indexes.

ISBN:

9781939926043

1939926041

OCLC:

932004045