Suspense in ancient Greek literature / edited by Ioannis M. Konstantakos and Vasileios Liotsakis.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Liotsakis, Vasileios, editor.

Kōnstantakos, Iōannēs M., 1972- editor.

Series:

Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes ; 113

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Greek literature, Hellenistic--History and criticism.

Greek literature, Hellenistic.

Classical literature--History and criticism.

Classical literature.

Suspense in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (450 pages)

Place of Publication:

Berlin ; Boston : De Gruyter, [2021]

Summary:

The use of suspense in ancient literature attracts increasing attention in modern scholarship, but hitherto there has been no comprehensive work analysing the techniques of suspense through the various genres of the Classical literary canon. This volume aspires to fill such a gap, exploring the phenomenon of suspense in the earliest narrative writings of the western world, the literature of the ancient Greeks. The individual chapters focus on a wide range of poetic and prose genres (epic, drama, historiography, oratory, novel, and works of literary criticism) and examine the means by which ancient authors elicited emotions of tense expectation and fearful anticipation for the outcome of the story, the development of the plot, or the characters' fate. A variety of theoretical tools, from narratology and performance studies to psychological and cognitive approaches, are exploited to study the operation of suspense in the works under discussion. Suspenseful effects are analysed in a double perspective, both in terms of the artifices employed by authors and with regard to the responses and experiences of the audience. The volume will be useful to classical scholars, narratologists, and literary historians and theorists.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Preface

Contents

Introduction

Part I: Literary Criticism

ἵν' ὁ θεατὴς προσδοκῶν καθῇτο: What Did Ancient Critics Know of 'Suspense'?

Part II: Archaic Poetry

Homeric Suspense

Suspense, Orality, and Hymnic Narrative: The Case of the Homeric Hymns

Part III: Tragedy

Waiting for Xerxes: Information Economics and the Composition of a Suspense Plot out of Familiar Events in Aeschylus' Persae

Narrative Suspense in Sophocles: The Moral Perplexity of Duelling Narratives in Philoctetes

Affective Suspense in Euripides' Ion

Part IV: Comedy

Staged Suspense: Scenic Spectacle, Anxious Expectation, and Dramatic Enthralment in Aristophanic Theatre

Part V: Historiography

Suspense in Herodotus' Narrative of the Battle of Thermopylae

The Thucydidean Question, Structuralism, and 'Neo-Unitarianism': Near Misses and Suspense in the History

Suspense in Conspiracy Narratives: Polybius and Appian

Part VI: Oratory

Suspense in Lysias

Narrative and Suspense in Public Forensic Orations

Part VII: Novel

Suspense in the Ancient Greek Novel

Bibliography

List of Contributors

Index Νominum et Rerum

Index Locorum

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

3-11-071552-X