You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Comedy criticism has lacked a theoretical underpinning both to facilitate the work of interpretation and to generate a satisfactory mode of discourse. In The Catharsis of Comedy, Dana F. Sutton takes the initial steps toward the creation of a comprehensive theory that embraces a number of theoretical constructs and analytical techniques. Sutton begins with an examination of the ideas of such thinkers as Aristotle, Herbert Spencer, Sigmund Freud, and Krishna Menon. Once the workings of comic catharsis are described, Sutton relates his new theory to other theories of comedy and humor, including the ideas of festival comedy set forth by Barber and Bakhtin, Lionel Abel's metatheater, and Konrad Lorenz's suggestion that humor originated in primate expressions of hostility. The result is a theory of enormous potential for the analysis of specific comedies, coupled with the creation of a vocabulary with which analytical discoveries can be discussed.
This dissertation argues that conduct and behavior were believed essential for determining one's post-mortem fate from the earliest periods of both ancient Egypt and ancient Greece. Part one of this four-part study examines Plato's eschatological myths and provides a complete catalog and brief discussion of all references in them to conduct and behavior that affect one's fate in the afterlife. Part two traces the evolution of the concept of the afterlife from Homer to the Dramatists, also cataloging all references to the afterlife that mention conduct and behavior. This part of the study demonstrates that the concept of reward and retribution in an afterlife, based on conduct in this life, i...
Afterlife argues that proper conduct was believed essential for determining one's post-mortem judgment from the earliest periods in ancient Egypt and Greece. Part one examines Plato's eschatological myths regarding conduct as it affects one's afterlife fate. Part two traces the evolution of afterlife beliefs from Homer to the Dramatists and demonstrates that post-mortem reward and retribution, based on one's conduct, is already found in Homer. Pythagoreanism and Orphism further develop the afterlife beliefs that will have such enormous impact on Plato and later Christianity. The third part examines Egyptian religious texts of the 5th to 18th Dynasties for their understanding of virtues and v...
In this broadly conceived study, Ralf Remshardt delineates the theatre’s deep connection with the grotesque and traces the historically extensive and theoretically intensive relationship between performance and its “other,” the grotesque. Staging the Savage God: The Grotesque in Performance examines the aesthetic complicity shared by the two in both art and theatre and presents a general theory of the grotesque. Performing the grotesque is both a challenge to a culture’s order and the affirmation of certain ethical principles that it recognizes as its own. Remshardt investigates the aesthetics and ideology of grotesque theatre from antiquity—in works such as The Bacchae and Thyeste...
From ca. 1300 a new genre developed in European literature, Neo-Latin drama. Building on medieval drama, vernacular theatre and classical drama, it spread around Europe. It was often used as a means to educate young boys in Latin, in acting and in moral issues. Comedies, tragedies and mixed forms were written. The Societas Jesu employed Latin drama in their education and public relations on a large scale. They had borrowed the concept of this drama from the humanist and Protestant gymnasia, and perfected it to a multi media show. However, the genre does not receive the attention that it deserves. In this volume, a historical overview of this genre is given, as well as analyses of separate plays. Contributors include: Jan Bloemendal, Jean-Frédéric Chevalier, Cora Dietl, Mathieu Ferrand, Howard Norland, Joaquín Pascual Barea, Fidel Rädle, and Raija Sarasti Willenius.
Includes sections "resenas de libros", "revistas" and bd. frankfurt am main, J.D. Sauerlander, 1842-86.
This volume presents closely connected articles by Elaine Fantham, which deal with Roman responses to Greek literature on three major subjects: the history and criticism of Latin poetry and rhetoric, women in Roman life and dramatic poetry and the poetic representation of children in relation to their mothers and teachers. The volume opens with papers on Roman comedy: Menaechmi, Trinummus, Hautontimorumenos, papers on women of the demimonde in Truculentus and Eunuchus, Cistellaria and Poenulus. The second part deals with rhetoric, including the subject of imitation as a stylistic feature, the study of performance comparing oratory and comedy and of declamation. Papers on Ovid's Fasti include a study of failed rape-scenes and papers concerned with women's cults. The last part (Senecan tragedy, Lucan, Statius) focuses on Lucan's Civil War and his treatment of Caesar as well as Statius' Thebaid and Achilleid.