Academic literature on the topic 'Classical drama (Comedy) – History and criticism'

Theatre in the German Democratic Republic was an essential part of the state propaganda machine and was strictly controlled by the cultural bureaucracy and by the party. Until the early sixties, ancient plays were rarely staged. In the sixties, classical Greek drama became officially recognised as part of cultural heritage. Directors free to stage the great classical playwrights selected ancient plays, on one hand, to escape the grim socialist reality, on the other to criticise it using various forms of Aesopian language. Two important dramatists and three examples of plays are presented and discussed: an adaptation of an Aristophanic comedy (Peter Hack’s adaptation of Aristophanes’ Peace at the Deutsche Theater in Berlin in 1962), a play based on a Sophoclean tragedy (Heiner Müller’s Philoktet, published in 1965, staged only in 1977), and a short didactic play (Lehrstück) based on Roman history (Heiner Müller’s Der Horatier, written in 1968, staged in 1973 in Hamburg in West Germany, and in the GDR only in 1988). At the end there is a brief look at a production of Aeschylus Seven against Thebes at the BE in 1969.

Comedy’, from Greek komoidia, is a word with a complex cultural history. Its modern, as opposed to its ancient, use covers all formally marked varieties of performed humour, whether scripted or improvised, group or solo, in any medium: theatre, film, television, radio, stand-up, and various hybrids and mutations of these. It is also, by extension, applied more loosely to novels and other non-performance texts that share recognizable features of plot, theme, or tone with the classical tradition of comic drama; and used more loosely still as a casual synonym for humour’. As a countable noun, however, the word is restricted to works with a narrative line; thus sketch shows, stand-up, and variety acts can be comedy’ but not comedies’.

For at least several decades of its official history of performance at state festivals—the period usually and, in part for this very reason, known as that of Old Comedy—Athenian comic drama was marked by an exceptional degree of indulgence in ridicule and vilification of named or recognizable individuals: ὀνομαστὶ κωμωιδεῖν, as it became termed by Hellenistic scholarship. In character and extent this practice belongs to a cluster of generic features (alongside, most notably, obscenity and outspoken comment on topical political issues) which give urgency to the question of the relation between the comic stage and the laws, mores, and values current in Athenian society of the time.

For the fi rst time, we publish an unknown review written by Aleksandr Nikitenko, a member of Imperial Academy of Sciences, of the comedy by Alexander Ostrovsky «The Forest». This review was compiled on behalf of the commission that distributed Aleksey Uvarov’s awards for the playwrights after Alexander Ostrovsky submitted his play to the competition. Review by Aleksandr Nikitenko was read at a meeting of the commission; its copy has been discovered in his personal archive. Alexander Ostrovsky participated in the competition for Aleksey Uvarov’s award for more than 15 years, but he achieved success only twice: with his «The Storm» in 1860 and with the drama «Sin and Sorrow Are Common to All» in 1863. Aleksandr Nikitenko, himself a member of the academic commission, for several years was reviewing all the works that competed for the prize, and almost always gave negative conclusions about them. He reacted sharply negatively to «The Forest» as well. In the article, Aleksandr Nikitenko’s review is considered in the context of literary, critical and theatrical criticism of the comedy by Alexander Ostrovsky, which were released shortly after its publication and production. The publication was prepared on the basis of archival documents found in St. Petersburg department of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Manuscript Department of the Institute of Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Abstract This article examines Erasmus’ additions to the Adagia in 1533 drawn from comedic playwrights Plautus and Terence. Although Erasmus generally expressed a preference for Terence, Plautus is cited more frequently overall in the Adages and the 133 borrowings from Plautus in the 1533 additions drastically outnumber the 22 from Terence. While scholars have noted this numerical discrepancy, few have hazarded concerted attempts to explain it. This article analyzes the different Plautine and Terentian references in the additions of 1533 and reads them in the context of Erasmus’ other educational writings on classical literature and particularly on characters in comedy. Ultimately, two explanations for Erasmus’ apparent preference for Plautus in 1533 present themselves. First, Plautus presented memorable characters who illustrated the tension between eloquence and morality that characterized the debate in Erasmus’ time over comedy’s role in education. Second, Giambattista Pio’s 1500 edition of Plautus with commentary provided Erasmus with other motivations, such as the opportunity for textual criticism, to focus on Plautus.

Abstract In this article, I first discuss the reception of Aeschylus’ satyr plays in classical drama, the evidence for their reperformance, and their place in ancient criticism and scholarship. In the final section, I analyze the factors that contributed to the positive reputation of Aeschylean satyr play. Although the evidence is often very limited, I attempt to establish a framework for understanding this ancient reception. Here I propose that the importance placed on satyr play in Aeschylus’ reception in antiquity can be viewed as an extension of his image as the father of tragedy, through both the association of satyr play with the origins of tragedy and its place in the tetralogy.

Acting style is arguably the most elusive of the theatre's always ephemeral traces – not least because each generation, while proclaiming its own actors to be more ‘natural’ than their predecessors, has tended in its criticism, as in actors' memoirs, to take style as a ‘given’. Anecdotage and plot synopsis have accordingly taken precedence over analysis of how performers actually worked and appeared on stage – let alone prepared their performances. Here, Simon Trussler introduces a project being launched at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he is Reader in Drama, to utilize the immense storage capacity of the CD-ROM both to record the evidence, verbal and pictorial, that has come down to us from the past, and to assess its relevance to present approaches to acting and to the playing of the classical repertoire. Specifically, the project aims to explore the ways in which the national identity – the quality of ‘Englishness’ – has been both reflected in and influenced by the ways in which it has been rendered on stage. In the succeeding article, Nesta Jones outlines the history and development of the English acting tradition, and some of the issues its consideration raises in relation to the Goldsmiths project. Simon Trussler was one of the founding editors of the original Theatre Quarterly in 1971, and has been co-editor of New Theatre Quarterly since its inception. The most recent of his many books on theatre and drama, The Cambridge Illustrated History of British Theatre, was runner-up for the 1994 George Freedley Award of the Theatre Libraries Association, being cited as ‘an outstanding contribution to the literature of the theatre’.

Following his Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature (1994) and the Shorter Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature (2000), the Columbia History of Chinese Literature intends to complement these two widely used readers. Edited by Victor H. Mair, the 55 chapters of this single-volume history of Chinese literature are chronologically arranged with thematic chapters interspersed. Indeed, a closer look at the chapters reveals that the book at hand follows the traditional dictum of wen shi zhe bu fenjia, i.e. that literature, history and philosophy should not be separated but regarded as one field of studies. Hence the scope of this history goes far beyond the scope of what is traditionally subsumed under the heading of literature. In addition to the topics (all genres and periods of poetry, prose, fiction, and drama) that one expects in a book of this sort, wit and humour, proverbs and rhetoric, historical and philosophical writings, classical exegesis, literary theory and criticism, traditional fiction commentary, as well as popular culture, the impact of religion upon literature, the role of women, and the relationship with non-Chinese languages and peoples (ethnic minorities, Korea, Japan, Vietnam) feature as topics of individual chapters.Most of the chapters are written by leading specialists in those areas and are highly informative as well as concisely presented. Moreover, a number of chapters are thought-provoking enough to inspire questions that may lead towards a more focused research on hitherto neglected or less well-documented topics. In this sense, The Columbia History of Chinese Literature may also be perceived as a potential major impetus for further developments in the study of pre-modern and modern Chinese literature and related fields. Since the volume aims at bringing the riches of China's literary tradition into focus for a general readership, the majority of chapters can probably be best described as outlines of specific developments that should encourage readers to consult more specialized publications.

Although celebrated in its time as a worthy contribution to the poetic experiments of the late Elizabethan age, Thomas Kyd’s 1594 Cornelia, translated from Robert Garnier’s Cornélie (1574), has long been held by modern criticism as a minor work in the playwright’s career. Previous attempts to rehabilitate the dramatic and poetic values of Kyd’s translation have focused on the metaphoric networks that underlie Kyd’s appropriation of Garnier’s play or on the political aspects of Kyd’s treatment of historical figures and themes. This article examines more specifically Kyd’s approach to Garnier’s epic similes—many of which are actually borrowed from both classical authors and contemporary poets. By exploring the inter-generic and intertextual connections established in Kyd’s translation, this article maps out the literary and cultural trajectories involved in the appropriation and emulation of Continental tragic models, thus highlighting Kyd’s experiments with various kinds of drama, clarifying the play’s connection with the productions of the Sidney-Herbert “circle,” and establishing its significance in late Elizabethan literary culture.
 En 1594 paraissait Cornelia, traduction de la tragédie de Robert Garnier Cornélie (1574) par Thomas Kyd. Bien que célébrée en son temps comme une contribution importante aux expérimentation poétiques et dramatiques propres à l’ère élisabéthaine, Cornelia a été longtemps considérée par la critique comme une pièce mineure dans la carrière dramatique de Kyd. Depuis quelques temps, cependant, on assiste à une certaine réhabilitation de l’oeuvre, avec la mise en valeur des réseaux métaphoriques qui traversent la traduction et des enjeux politiques qui sous-tendent, chez Kyd, la réinterprétation des figures et thématiques antiques du théâtre de Garnier. On s’intéresse ici particulièrement à la traduction des comparaisons épiques qui abondent chez Garnier, et qui sont souvent elles-mêmes imitées des auteurs classiques, ou de poètes contemporains. En mettant en valeur les liens intertextuels et les croisements génériques établis par Kyd, on offre ici un aperçu des trajectoires culturelles qui marquent chez lui l’appropriation et l’émulation du modèle tragique français. On vise ainsi à souligner la dimension expérimentale de l’écriture dramatique de Kyd, à clarifier ses relations avec les Sidney-Herbert et leur fameux ‘cercle’ littéraire, et à réévaluer la place de Cornelia dans le contexte littéraire de la fin de l’ère élisabéthaine.

Cities have been magnets for a wide diversity of talent and have captured the human imagination as centers of intellectual and cultural achievement since humans began to live together. To learn from the city means to engage with its assets and riches, but also with its pressing problems, contradictions, and paradoxes. It also means to reflect upon urban settings as places where civilizations often meet and define themselves, and where populations and infrastructure change over time, sometimes slowly, but in other cases, rapidly.
 Precisely because they are multi-layered, multi-dimensional, complex and challenging, cities offer rich opportunities for study abroad students to learn, no matter their disciplinary interests. The environmental issues and public health concerns manifested in cities, for example, offer many opportunities for disciplinary and interdisciplinary inquiry in the sciences, social sciences, as well as in the humanities, if to a lesser degree. The social fabric of cities, as well as their social inequities and other problems, can appeal to students in the social sciences, while the many varieties of cultural expression, both “high” and “low”, found it cities invite both exploration and creation. Cities’ many layers of history, their locations in particular geographical locales, their changing infrastructure and transitions in population, all can teach students to ask about how places (urban and non-urban) came to be what they are today, and how they might be in the future. Investigations of the city also allow students to think about who they are in relationship to others, what their relationship is to places, and which roles they will play in determining the future of the cities and other places they will call home in the future. In short, the cities where students study abroad can serve as laboratories for learning, rather than simply temporary residences or arenas for taking pleasure. The contributors to this volume are doing just this kind of work: asking how and why cities are appropriate venues for study abroad, and experimenting with ways to allow cities to become arenas for learning.
 The role of cities as sites for learning is not, of course, new. It was in Classical Athens (480–336 BCC), for example, that Western conceptions of philosophy, history, drama, and education emerged. Without the city, it would be hard to imagine the intellectual development and the enduring educational legacy of Socrates (e.g.dialectical reasoning, learning through persistent questioning and analysis, intellectual self-discipline, autonomous thinking, self-examination, self-criticism, high standards of moral conduct, intellectual honesty, and life-long learning). Cities in the Middle Ages (400–1400) hosted universities, where learning was considered sacred, not merely practical. Thus, Timbuktu became a vibrant center of learning, with libraries that rivaled anything in Christian Europe and the highest literacy rate in Africa. A quantum leap in cultural evolution, commercial vitality, technical innovation and new consciousness of humans at the center of the action took place over a two hundred year period beginning around 1450. This would have been unthinkable without great Renaissance cities such as Florence and Venice. Indeed, for the nature of learning, arguably the farthest-reaching long-term consequence of the Renaissance was the development of the scientific method, a truly intellectual and conceptual revolution that made human beings think differently about the world and themselves. Similarly, many of the great intellectual and practical breakthroughs of the Scientific Revolution (1500–1700) are nearly unthinkable without the city. Emerging from the intellectual cauldron of the city were, among others, the great minds of Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Newton, Descartes, Galileo, and Bacon. The goal of education, if we follow Bacon, is knowledge in the service of improving the human condition. This continues to this day to be a goal of many study abroad students. Finally, the intellectual achievements that characterize the Enlightenment (1700–1800): secularism, cosmopolitanism, skepticism, security for the individual through the rule of law, personal freedom and autonomy, deep respect for human dignity, and intellectual and scientific inquiry are based in the interactions with others that are essential components of urban life.
 The articles in this volume offer their own contemporary examples of study abroad and the city, considered through an impressive range of approaches.The articles provide a balance between different theoretical and pedagogical approaches to the topic.
 Theoretical perspectives on the cities are central to a number of discussions in the volume. Lance Kenny, in “First City, Anti-City: Cain, Heterotopia, and Study Abroad,” argues that the time has come to underpin the practice of study abroad with theoretical perspectives. As an example, he suggests that the work of theorists such as Foucault (heterotopias) and Virilio (the anti-city) can provide study abroad students with the analytical tools to “know” the city. Rodriguez and Rink use Walter Benjamin’s notion of the flâneur to incorporate technology as a way for students to engage with the city. Benjamin’s writing on the flâneur is also introduced to students studying abroad in Athens by Augeri et al., who also draw on Dubord’s derive and psychogeography to provide students with frameworks for understanding urban realities and their reactions to them. Augeri et al. turn to de Certeau’s work on walking as rhetorical practice, while Patrick McGuire and James Spates demonstrate how the urban sociologist Jane Jacobs’ work helps students understand cities as shaped by culture and the residents who live in them.
 To discuss the impacts of globalization on cities, Gristwood and Woolf draw on theoretical writings about the city (Raban), fiction and poetry (Kurieshi, Brecht, Eliot, Ackroyd, Zephaniah), writers writing about writing (Sandhu and Upstone, for example), perspectives from geography (Halbert and Rutherford, Massey, Wills et al.) and sociology (Castells, Jacobs, Sassen), and government statistics. Milla Cozart Riggio, Lisa Sapolis, and Xianming Chen also look at how globalization is transforming cities and discuss how their home city, Hartford, is used as the starting point for students’ engagement with cities and globalization.
 Other articles focus on pedagogical approaches to assisting American students abroad engage with their study abroad cities. Scott Blair points out that American students frequently have never learned to read a map, and delineates how mapping can be employed as a tool for analysis, as well as for fostering intercultural learning and tolerance for diversity and.engaged experiential learning. Mieka Ritsema, Barbara Knecht, and Kenneth Kruckemeyer also point to mapping as a useful tool for engaging students with cities encountered during study abroad. Thomas Ricks offers strategies for understanding Jerusalem’s multi-layered history through its contemporary reality. Evidence for the power of experiential learning in study abroad cities is offered by Thomas Wagenknecht. Wagenknecht’s interviews with educators in Germany, however, find that experiential learning has not yet earned the status of “academic” learning, and calls for more evidence about its outcomes.
 Finally, two articles discuss the impact of engaging home-campus faculty themselves as learners in cities abroad. Anne Ellen Geller, discussing a faculty writing institute, shows how engagement with daily life in contemporary Rome helps faculty understand and value the study abroad experience. Elizabeth Brewer discusses Beloit College’s faculty members’ experimentation with mapping, walking, and ethnographic research methods, including participant-observation.
 It has been humbling and enriching to read the rich work being undertaken on the city and study abroad and to work with the authors who contributed to this volume. It is hoped that the examples and discussions offered in this volume not only will be productive in themselves for readers, but also will generate new discussion, ideas, and practices.
 Elizabeth Brewer
 Beloit College
 
 Michael Monahan
 Macalester College
 Brethren Colleges Abroad

Studies of the English Renaissance reveal a patriarchal structure that informed its politics and its literature; and the drama especially demonstrates a patriarchal response to what society perceived to be the problem of women's efforts to grow beyond the traditional medieval view of "good" women as chaste, silent, and obedient. Thirteen comedies, whose creation spans roughly the same time frame as the pamphlet wars of the so-called "woman controversy," from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries, feature women who have no public power, but who find opportunities for varying degrees of power in the private or domestic setting.

Among the diverse fabric of masculinities that prestigious authors such as Pedro Calderon de la Barca, Tirso de Molina and Agustin Moreto weave into their plots, fashion proves to be a common thread and a particularly useful tool. Thus, as I approach the idea of "Fashionable Masculinities" and investigate a few "macho" and/or not so "macho men" in Early Modern drama I hope to go beyond the traditional interpretations, stereotypes and icons often associated with men---in particular, Spanish men in Golden Age drama. This will be achieved by revisiting typical cases and compared through research and documentation of atypical representations of maleness that could be considered displacements and/or subversions of the social matrix. In effect, this study explores how the male ideal is shaped and judged both by the essence of his personality, as well as his physical appearance (i.e.: clothing, hairstyle, mannerisms, discourse and voice). As such, it becomes evident that masculinity is moulded, influenced, enhanced, exaggerated and even muted as it is subject to the whim of different fashions prevalent at a specific moment in time. Moreover, a multitude of social, cultural, racial and historical factors determine the always changing image of the so called "macho man".<br>Therefore, in order to explore distinct representations of masculinity I approach three different comedias by three different playwrights while comparing how the main character's masculinity fared in three very important spaces: physical, social and sexual. I focus my attention on Saber del mal y del bien by Calderon. Secondly, Don Gil de las calzas verdes by Tirso and explored El lindo don Diego by Moreto. Each one the these represents a different degree of palatable male identities given this particular social construct.

Traditionally in the field of aesthetics the genres of tragedy and comedy have been depicted in antithetical opposition to one another. Setting out from the hypothesis that antitheses are aspects of a deeper unity where one informs the construction of the other’s image this thesis questions the hierarchy of genre through a form of ludic postmodernism that interrogates aesthetics in the same way as comedy interrogates ethics and the law of genre. Tracing the chain of signification as laid out by Derrida between theatre as pharmakon and the thaumaturgical influence of the pharmakeus or dramatist, early modern comedy can be identified as re-enacting Renaissance versions of the rite of the pharmakos, where a scapegoat for the ills attendant upon society is chosen and exorcised. Recognisable pharmakoi are scapegoat figures such as Shakespeare’s Shylock, Malvolio, Falstaff and Parolles but the city comedies of this period also depict prostitutes and the unmarried as necessary comic sacrifices for the reordering of society. Throughout this thesis an attempt has been made to position Shakespeare’s comic drama in the specific historical location of early modern London by not only placing his plays in the company of his contemporaries but by forging a strong theoretical engagement with questions of law in relation to issues of genre. The connection Shakespearean comedy makes with the laws of early modern England is highly visible in The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure and The Taming of the Shrew and the laws which they scrutinise are peculiar to the regulation of gendered interaction, namely marital union and the power and authority imposed upon both men and women in patriarchal society. Thus, a pivotal section on marriage is required to pinion the argument that the libidinized economy of the early modern stage perpetuates the principle of an excluded middle, comic u-topia, or Derridean ‘non-place’, where implicit contradictions are made explicit. The conclusion that comic denouements are disappointing in their resolution of seemingly insurmountable dilemmas can therefore be reappraised as the outcome of a dialectical movement, where the possibility of alternatives is presented and assessed. Advancing Hegel’s theory that the whole of history is dialectic comedy can therefore be identified as the way in which a society sees itself, dramatically representing the hopes and fears of an entire community.

Innokenty Annensky (1855-1909) was better known to his contemporaries as a classics teacher and translator than as a poet; but, with the exception of two or three obituary articles, nothing has been written on his work as a classicist. His work has often been misconstrued and he has been described as an outstanding scholar. It has not been generally appreciated that his interest in the scholarly world was not really academic; he saw classical texts as models for his own literary works, and as inspiration for the 'Slavonic renaissance' he looked forward to with F.F. Zelinsky. This thesis covers Annensky's classical education, the essays he wrote on classical literature, and his translations of classical texts. Particular attention is given to the essays and translations which were intended to be published in Teatr Evripida, the first complete Russian version of Euripides. Annensky wrote no essay explicitly devoted to the subject of classicism. But from his essays on classical literature and the remarks on classical literature in his essays on modern literature it is possible to extrapolate his views on the nature of the classical tradition and on how he thought classical literature should be imitated. I show that Annensky's attitude to the classics was idiosyncratic and paradoxical. On the one hand, the classical world was viewed elegaically as an ideal of lost perfection; on the other, it was one of many cultural traditions on which he drew in his literary works and which was adapted in accordance with Modernist poetics. The discussion of Annensky's views on classicism is accompanied by information about the system of classical education in Russia 1870-1910, and about the history of classical scholarship and of literary classicism in Russia. Annensky's essays are compared with those of a representative scholar, Zelinsky, and a representative Symbolist, Vyacheslav Ivanov.

Whereas scholarly malcontents and naifs in late Renaissance drama represent the actual notion of university graduates during the time period, scholarly tricksters have an obscure social origin. Moreover, their lack of motive in participating in the plays' events, their ambivalent value structures, and their conflicting dramatic roles as tricksters, reformers, justices, and heroes pose a serious diffculty to literary critics who attempt to define them. By examining the Western dramatic tradition, this study first proposes that the scholarly tricksters have their origins in both the Vice in early Tudor plays and the witty slave in classical comedy. By incorporating historical, cultural, anthropological, and psychological studies, this essay also demonstrates that the scholarly tricksters are each a Jacobean version of the archetypal trickster, who is usually associated with solitary habits, motiveless intrusion, and a double function as selfish buffoon and cultural hero. Finally, this study shows that their ambivalent value structures reflect the nature of rhetorical training in Renaissance schools.

How has comedy evolved around the globe from earliest times to today? Chapter 4 offers a chronology of comedy. Distinguishing among laughter, comedy, and humor, it finds evidence of humor in ancient texts and imagery, tracing the evolution of comic genres through classical Greek drama, Sanskrit poetry, early China, medieval Europe, and feudal Japan. The chronology continues with an account of popular festivals of laughter, comedic stage performances, and precursors of the comic novel, showing how they led to modern literary and cinematic forms as well as televised sitcoms and live standup. Motion pictures borrowed silent gags and witty wordplay from vaudeville, channeled the freewheeling energy of picaresque stories into episodic road movies, adapted the amatory impulses of Shakespeare’s romantic comedies to the screen, and turned the Carnivalesque spirit into scenes of cinematic mischief and mayhem.