Greek Fragments in Postmodern Frames: Rewriting Tragedy 1970-2005Greek Fragments in Postmodern Frames takes as its subject adaptation of Greek tragedy in the last decades, arguing that rewritings of Greek tragic texts in this period can be used as a tool to uncover a significant dialogue with postmodernism. Despite the large number of staged and written adaptations of Greek tragic texts in recent years, the idea still persists that tragedy is incompatible with postmodernism, with the long-standing debate over the demise of the genre in the modern era undergoing a recent resurgence with the claim that postmodernism precludes tragedy both as an aesthetic form and as a way of perceiving the world. This volume focuses on the adaptation of Greek tragedy between 1970 and 2005 and explores a wide range of adaptations from a variety of different countries: the plays under discussion are characterized by an extended intertextual engagement with their prototype texts - instead of simply adapting the Greek myth, they rewrite the classical text in ways akin to the renegotiation of authorship and textuality proffered by poststructuralist thought. Such adaptive strategies are not only integral to the wider problematics of interrogating the authority of the classical canon and the power structures embedded in its reception, but also have also given rise to the development of peculiar tragic modes and tropes towards the end of the twentieth and into the twenty-first century. In analysing these tropes and demonstrating the ways in which Greek tragic texts have been rethought and rewritten in the adaptions presented, this volume seeks on the one hand to show how tragedy continues to provide a means of articulating contemporary cultural and political preoccupations, while on the other it draws upon a cultural materialist methodology to resist fixed definitions of tragedy and to question established frames and representations. |
Contents
Tragic TransFormations Greek Tragedy and Postmodernism | 1 |
Tragedy and Modern Critical Debate | 13 |
Viewing through the Frame of Tragedy | 39 |
Tragic Absences and Metatheatrical Performances | 73 |
From AuthorGod to Textual Communion | 103 |
Textual Fragments and Sexual Politics | 131 |
Conclusion | 167 |
Bibliography | 173 |
| 187 | |
| 191 | |
Other editions - View all
Greek Fragments in Postmodern Frames: Rewriting Tragedy 1970-2005 Eleftheria Ioannidou Limited preview - 2016 |
Greek Fragments in Postmodern Frames: Rewriting Tragedy 1970-2005 Eleftheria Ioannidou Limited preview - 2016 |
Common terms and phrases
adaptations of Greek Aeschylus aesthetic Alcestis ancient play ancient text Antigone antiquity Apolline argues Armitage Artaud audience Bacchae Benjamin Berkoff Brecht canon challenge characters chorus Churchill's Cixous Cixous’s classical text Clytemnestra contemporary Crimp critical critique Cruel and Tender cultural deconstructive demise of tragedy dialogue Dionysiac Dionysus discourses discussion dramatic text Eagleton Electra Eumenides Euripidean Euripides female feminist filicide Fischer-Lichte Fugard gender Greek plays Greek text Greek tragedy Harrison Heracles Ibid idea Iolaos Kennelly Kennelly’s literary male Matesis means Medea Medeamaterial metaphor metatheatrical modern monologue Mouthful of Birds Müller's myth Nietzsche Nietzschean notion Oedipus offers parjure past performance playwrights political postmodern poststructuralism poststructuralist production provides Rame reading reality recent rewritings reception reference relationship representation resists rewritings of Greek ritual role scene social Sophocles Soyinka sparagmos stage Staïkos Steiner story suffering theatre theatrical theory tragic genre tragic hero translation versions of Greek violence women