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Dramatic texts come with a natural structure of acts, scenes and speech clearly assigned to characters that lends itself to computational analysis: These explicit structures allow for straightforward formalizations without extensive preparatory work. Work on drama has therefore always been at the forefront of research in computational literary studies, with its pioneers analyzing drama quantitatively long before the digital age. Today, increasingly large digital text corpora are available and computational literary studies aims at a higher-scaled view on literary history, promising to analyze thousands of literary texts simultaneously. After decades of exploring the possibilities offered by computational methods, the field is now undergoing a phase of consolidation that takes stock of achievements and opportunities and critically reflects the computational methods and interpretations derived from data. Building on insights from the fields' tradition and current research approaches, this volume provides an overview of the status quo of computational drama analysis and explores possible routes for the future.
Recent scholarship has recognized that Philip II and Alexander the Great adopted elements of their self-fashioning and court ceremonial from previous empires in the Ancient Near East, but it is generally assumed that the advent of the Macedonian court as a locus of politics and culture occurred only in the post-Alexander landscape of the Hellenistic Successors. This volume of ground-breaking essays by leading scholars on Ancient Macedonia goes beyond existing research questions to assess the profound impact of Philip and Alexander on court culture throughout the ages. The papers in this volume offer a thematic approach, focusing upon key institutional, cultural, social, ideological, and icon...
This book focuses on the development of Attic comedy as it is evinced in four fragmentary plays by Aristophanes: Polyidus, Daedalus, Aeolosicon, and Cocalus. The significance of these plays lies in the fact that they present characteristics which are not prominent in the extant plays. They are mythological comedies that Aristophanes might have composed as parodies of tragedies. The four dramas exhibit elements largely present in Middle and New Comedy, such as the use and re-use of myths, the production of large-scale burlesque, domestic plots, unfolded outside Attica. This is a book directed to the wider audience, to all enthusiasts of Classics. It facilitates the understanding of an aspect of Aristophanes’ work, discernible only within his fragmentary dramas. This study thus revisits Old Comedy and enriches the scholarship with new insights and new discoveries regarding Aristophanes, his literary interactions, as well as his innovating and influential work.
A fundamental reappraisal of Plutarch’s attitude towards rhetoric. Plutarch was not only a skilled writer, but also lived during the Second Sophistic, a period of cultural renaissance. This book offers new insights into Plutarch’s seemingly moderate attitude towards rhetoric. The hypothesis explored in this study introduces, for the first time, the broader literary and cultural contexts that influenced and restricted the scope of Plutarch’s message. When these contexts are considered, a new perspective emerges that differs from that found in earlier studies. It paints a picture of a philosopher who may not regard rhetoric as a lesser means of persuasion, but who faces challenges in openly articulating this stance in his public discourse.
Readers of this book receive an overview of the main perspectives and research of recent decades in the fruitful collaboration between Classics and Cognitive studies. It is intended as a stocktaking of various branches of Classics, such as literary criticism and poetics, linguistics, ancient history and archaeology. Four major research areas or clusters have been chosen for the presentation of the chapters. Chapter one discusses recent studies of 'cognitive' materiality and material agency in relation to the human mind, chapter two the so-called 'spatial turn' and cognition and the perception of space in place in relation to antiquity, chapter three imagination and vision and cognitive appro...
Theopompos was one of the leading comic playwrights of late fifth- and early fourth-century Athens, competing actively with the great Aristophanes and winning several victories. This volume presents the first complete translation and commentary on his surviving fragments. He participated in important trends during the transition from Old to Middle Comedy, including tragic and epic parody and an interest in the figure of the hetaira; among other gems, his fragments include the oldest extant reference to the philosopher Plato.
Volume I of Franco Montanari's "Kleine Schriften" comprises some 66 papers on ancient scholarship, a topic which he decisively helped establishing as an extremely important field of study; they include general surveys of Alexandrian and Pergamene philology, major contributions to ancient Homeric scholarship (with a particular emphasis on Aristarchus), ancient scholarship on Hesiod and Aeschylus, as well as an important number of editions and notes on papyrological scholarly texts. Volume II consists of 42 contributions to Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Pindar, Aeschylus, Herodotus, Euripides, the Athenaion Politeia, Lucian, Nonnus, philosophical papyri, the reception of antiquity and portraits of contemporary scholars.
Ephippus is an outstanding playwright of Greek Middle Comedy. He won a single Lenaean victory ca. 378-376 BC and continued being productive until the late 340s. His twenty-eight surviving fragments reveal a wide thematic range: myth burlesque (with a special fondness for Heracles), political allegory, sympotic themes, personal mockery, satire of philosophy (Plato), hetairai. His corpus features seven hapax terms, as well as the highest percentage of anapaestic dimeter lines of all poets of Middle Comedy.
This work is part of the Fragmenta Comica series which aims to provide commentaries and translations to all the surviving fragments and testimonia of the comic poets of ancient Greece. This volume offers the first scholarly commentary and sustained study of several late fourth-century BCE poets of the so-called New Comedy – among them Philippides of Athens, a writer and dramatist highly esteemed in antiquity, known especially for his acrimonious clashes with Athenian demagogues and his influential friendship with foreign kings. All fragments are subject to close textual, linguistic and stylistic analysis, and are interpreted against the wider literary, social and historical background of the period. This volume will be a valuable reference work for scholars and students of ancient comedy, as well as anyone interested in ancient literature more generally and the broader historical and cultural contexts in which these texts were written.
The contributions included in this volume deal with the indirect tradition of classical Greek texts in anthologies, lexica and scholia. The innovative approach taken consists in considering the indirect sources as texts worth studying in their own right, rather than as repositories of older, more important texts. The indirect tradition in scholarly literature is thus considered in terms of its broader historical and cultural implications.