Open University Set Books

The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy (Cambridge Companions to Literature)

Product Description
This book presents ancient Greek tragedy in the context of late-twentieth-century reading, criticism and performance. The twelve chapters, written by seven distinguished scholars, cover tragedy as an institution in the civic life of ancient Athens, a range of approaches to the surviving plays, and changing patterns of reception, adaptation and performance from antiquity to the present.

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The Complete Greek Tragedies: Sophocles Vol II

Synopsis
Includes "Ajax", "The Women of Trachis", "Electra" and "Philocetes".

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The Context of Ancient Drama

Product Description
An easy-to-use guide to the nature and stagecraft of ancient plays

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Greek Theatre Performance: An Introduction

Product Description
In this book, David Wiles introduces ancient Greek theater to students and enthusiasts interested in knowing how the plays were performed. Theater was a ceremony bound up with fundamental activities in ancient Athenian life and Wiles explores those elements that created the theater of the time. Actors rather than writers are the book's main concern and Wiles examines how the actor used the resources of story-telling, dance, mask, song and visual action to create a large-scale event that would shape the life of the citizen community.

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Images of the Greek Theatre (Classical Bookshelf)

Synopsis
Greek theatre was one of the glories of the ancient world. It survives not only in cultural traditions, but in plays which can still be read and seen and in artistic images. This book examines the history of Greek theatre as seen through representations on painted pottery, terracotta figures, sculpture, mosiacs, metalware and gems. Depictions of performances, actors and their masks were frequent in classical times and continued to appear down to the fifth and sixth centuries AD and beyond, long after the plays had ceased to be staged. The remains of actual theatres and texts of surviving plays also help to give us an idea of how Greek drama developed from the choral origins and how it must have appeared in its heyday. Painted or sculpted representations may not be as literal as photographs, but they tell us much about Greek drama as its ancient admirers saw it. Terracottas and vase paintings often show details of costumes, masks, and stage settings. They also give glimpses of scenes from lost plays, as well as from famous and familiar ones.

Most important of all, they allow us to recapture, in part, how theatre was seen and experienced by its first audiences and how images of it informed their lives and cultures.

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Lysistrata and Other Plays (Penguin Classics)

Product Description
Writing at the time of political and social crisis in Athens Aristophanes was an eloquent yet bawdy challenger to the demagogue and the sophist. The Achanians is a plea for peace set against the background of the long war with Sparta. In Lysistrata a band of women tap into the awesome power of sex in order to end a war. The darker comedy of The Clouds satirizes Athenian philosophers, Socrates in particular, and reflects the uncertainties of a generation in which all traditional religious and ethical beliefs were being challenged.

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Medea and Other Plays (Oxford World's Classics)

Product DescriptionSynopsisAbout the Author
`the most tragic of the poets' Aristotle Euripides was one of the most popular and controversial of all Greek tragedians, and his plays are marked by an independence of thought, ingenious dramatic devices, and a subtle variety of register and mood. He is also remarkable for the prominence he gave to female characters, whether heroines of virtue or vice. In the ethically shocking Medea, the first known child-killing mother in Greek myth to perform the deed in cold blood manipulates her world in order to wreak vengeance on her treacherous husband. Hippolytus sees Phaedra's confession of her passion for her stepson herald disaster, while Electra's heroine helps her brother murder their mother in an act that mingles justice and sin. Lastly, lighter in tone, the satyr drama, Helen, is an exploration of the impossibility of certitude as brilliantly paradoxical as the three famous tragedies. This new translation does full justice to Euripides's range of tone and gift for narrative. A lucid introduction provides substantial analysis of each play, complete with vital explanations of the traditions and background to Euripides's world.'the most tragic of the poets' Aristotle Euripides was one of the most popular and controversial of all Greek tragedians, and his plays are marked by an independence of thought, ingenious dramatic devices, and a subtle variety of register and mood. He is also remarkable for the prominence he gave to female characters, whether heroines of virtue or vice. In the ethically shocking Medea, the first known child-killing mother in Greek myth to perform the deed in cold blood manipulates her world in order to wreak vengeance on her treacherous husband. Hippolytus sees Phaedra's confession of her passion for her stepson herald disaster, while Electra's heroine helps her brother murder their mother in an act that mingles justice and sin. Lastly, lighter in tone, the satyr drama, Helen, is an exploration of the impossibility of certitude as brilliantly paradoxical as the three famous tragedies. This new translation does full justice to Euripides's range of tone and gift for narrative. A lucid introduction provides substantial analysis of each play, complete with vital explanations of the traditions and background to Euripides's world.James Morwood is Grocyn Lecturer at Wadham College, Oxford.

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The Oresteia (Hackett Classics)

ReviewProduct DescriptionSynopsisAbout the Author
Though it's tempting to imagine the late English poet laureate's long tortured relationship with the image of (his wife) feminist heroine Sylvia Plath as its subtext, this vivid free-verse translation of Aeschylus' dark and bloody tragic trilogy (comprising Agamemnon, Choephori, and Eumenides) more properly evinces Hughes's wide range of interests and mastery of classic literatures. His nearly conversational rhythms produce an arresting mixture of colloquialism and formality, enlivened by strong imagery (as in the matricidal Orestes' declaration that "This house has been the goblet / That the demon of homicide, unquenchable, / Has loved to drain"), and only infrequently weakened by astonishing woodenness - as in Clytemnestra's cool reply to the Chorus who lament her murder of her husband: "You think I'm an irresponsible woman? / You are making a mistake"). Perhaps not the ultimate "acting edition" it claims to be, but, still, an essential further installment in the always interesting oeuvre of a gifted poet who was also a diligent scholar. (Kirkus Reviews)Aeschylus, the earliest of the great Attic tragedians, presented his Oresteia at Athens' City Dionysia festival in 458 BCE. Born in the last quarter of the sixth century, Aeschylus had fought with the victorious Greeks in one and probably both of the Persian Wars (190 and 480-79). He died around 456 at about seventy years of age in Gela, Sicily. His epitaph records his role as a soldier at Marathon, not his artistic achievements, but these were many. The author of more than seventy plays, he won his first of thirteen tragic victories in 484. Of these plays, only seven remain. The Oresteia is Aeschylus' only complete surviving trilogy; the satyr play with which it was first performed, Proteus, is lost. Peter Meineck has aimed to translate the Oresteia for the modern stage.Aeschylus, the earliest of the great Attic tragedians, presented his Oresteia at Athens' City Dionysia festival in 458 BCE. Born in the last quarter of the sixth century, Aeschylus had fought with the victorious Greeks in one and probably both of the Persian Wars (190 and 480-79). He died around 456 at about seventy years of age in Gela, Sicily. His epitaph records his role as a soldier at Marathon, not his artistic achievements, but these were many. The author of more than seventy plays, he won his first of thirteen tragic victories in 484. Of these plays, only seven remain. The Oresteia is Aeschylus' only complete surviving trilogy; the satyr play with which it was first performed, Proteus, is lost. Peter Meineck has aimed to translate the Oresteia for the modern stage.Aeschylus; Translated by Peter Meineck

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Plays: Vol 5 (Methuen Classical Greek Dramatists): Andromache, Herakles' Children"and Herakles Vol 5 (Classical Dramatists)

Synopsis
Published in the new Methuen Classical Dramatists series Written at the height of the Peloponnesian War, the three plays in this volume highlight the trivial causes and dire consequences of war and the fate of the innocent. In Andromache, Hektor's widow struggles to survive as the concubine of her husband's killer. Herakles' Children and Herakles show his two young families, without his powerful protection at the mercy of his enemies. Full of humanity and subtle characterisation, these new translations by Robert Cannon and Kenneth McLeish which are intended both for performer and student, Euripides is reaffirmed as a fresh and compelling dramatist.

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Plays and Fragments (Penguin Classics)

Product Description
The greatest writer of Greek New Comedy and the founding father of European comedy, Menander (c.341-290 BC) wrote over one hundred plays, of which only one complete play and substantial fragments of others survive. Until the twentieth century he was known to us only by short quotations in ancient authors. Since 1907 papyri found in the sand of Egypt have brought to light more and more fragments and in 1958 the papyrus text of a complete play was published, The Bad-Tempered Man (Dyskolos). His romantic comedies deal with the lives of ordinary Athenian families. This new verse translation is accurate and highly readable, providing a consecutive text by using surviving words in the damaged papyri.

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Sophocles (Greek Tragedy in New Translations)

Product DescriptionSynopsis
In this new translation, Sophocles early masterpiece comes boldly to life. In Greek tradition, Aias is the outmoded warrior whom time passes by. In Sophocles play, he becomes the man who moves resolutely beyond time. Most previous versions and interpretations have equivocated over Sophocles bold vision. This version attempts to translate precisely that transformation of the hero from the bygone figure to the man who stops time. In Homer, Aias is the immovable bulwark of the Achaians, second only to Achilles in battle prowess and size. But when Achilles dies, his armor is given to the wily Odysseus, not Aias. Shamed, and driven to madness, Aias dies a dishonorable death by suicide. He becomes, in death, the symbol of greatness lost; his death signals the end of a heroic age; in the visual arts, draped hideously over his huge sword, he becomes a momento mori. Sophocles plays upon his audiences expectation of all this. In the first scene Aias appears as the Homeric warrior turned mad butcher. It is harder to imagine a more degraded image of the hero. But with each scene, Aias moves from darkness into greater and greater light, and speaks, contrary to the audiences expectations, more like a Heraclitean philosopher of the worlds flux than the laconic figure known from Homer. In fact, Sophocles Aias clearly sees his madness and the betrayal by the Greeks as merely symptomatic of a world in which nothing remains constant, not loyalties, not oaths, not friendship, not love. Not content to live in a world where nothing lasts, he resolves to live and therefore to die in accord with the more absolute law of his own inner nature. He thereby transforms his death into destiny, dying with his grip on the absolute rather than living on in a world of uncertainties. In death, he thus becomes the paradigm of permanence, of the human possibility of snatching the eternal from the desperately fleeting. This version embodies, and the introduction and notes hope to elucidate, how Sophocles brings this tragic vision of human greatness powerfully to life.In this new translation, Sophocles early masterpiece comes boldly to life. In Greek tradition, Aias is the outmoded warrior whom time passes by. In Sophocles play, he becomes the man who moves resolutely beyond time. Most previous versions and interpretations have equivocated over Sophocles bold vision. This version attempts to translate precisely that transformation of the hero from the bygone figure to the man who stops time. In Homer, Aias is the immovable bulwark of the Achaians, second only to Achilles in battle prowess and size. But when Achilles dies, his armor is given to the wily Odysseus, not Aias. Shamed, and driven to madness, Aias dies a dishonorable death by suicide. He becomes, in death, the symbol of greatness lost; his death signals the end of a heroic age; in the visual arts, draped hideously over his huge sword, he becomes a momento mori. Sophocles plays upon his audiences expectation of all this. In the first scene Aias appears as the Homeric warrior turned mad butcher. It is harder to imagine a more degraded image of the hero.

But with each scene, Aias moves from darkness into greater and greater light, and speaks, contrary to the audiences expectations, more like a Heraclitean philosopher of the worlds flux than the laconic figure known from Homer. In fact, Sophocles Aias clearly sees his madness and the betrayal by the Greeks as merely symptomatic of a world in which nothing remains constant, not loyalties, not oaths, not friendship, not love. Not content to live in a world where nothing lasts, he resolves to live and therefore to die in accord with the more absolute law of his own inner nature. He thereby transforms his death into destiny, dying with his grip on the absolute rather than living on in a world of uncertainties. In death, he thus becomes the paradigm of permanence, of the human possibility of snatching the eternal from the desperately fleeting. This version embodies, and the introduction and notes hope to elucidate, how Sophocles brings this tragic vision of human greatness powerfully to life.

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Staging Women: Three Plays by Aristophanes: "Lysistrata", "Women at the Thesmorphoria" and "Assemblywomen" (New Classical Canon)

SynopsisFrom the Back CoverAbout the Author
Aristophanes' comic plays, Lysistrata, Women at the Thesmophoria and Assembly women contain the earliest portrayals of actual women in the European literary tradition, and are the only such portrayals that survive from classical Athens. These plays provide a glimpse of women not only in their familiar domestic roles but also in relation to household and city religion and government, war and peace, theatre and festival, and, of course, to men. In all three plays we find an inversion of the real world, where women and men have changed places. Aristophanes' comic gynecocracies put male fantasies of feminism - often intersecting with those of myth, tragedy and Platonic idealism - into sharp and memorable focus, and so help us to redefine our understanding of the troubling realities to which these comic fantasies were a response.Aristophanes' comic plays, Lysistrata, Women at the Thesmophoria and Assemblywomen contain the earliest portrayals of actual women in the European literary tradition, and are the only such portrayals that survive from classical Athens. These plays provide a unique glimpse of women not only in their familiar domestic roles but also in relation to household and city religion and government, war and peace, theater and festival, and, of course, to men. In all three plays we find a fantastic but provocatively plausible inversion of the actual world, where women and men have changed places. Aristophanes' comic gynecocracies put male fantasies of feminism--often intersecting with those of myth, tragedy and Platonic idealism--into sharp and memorable focus, and so help us to redefine our understanding of the troubling realities to which these comic fantasies were a response.

In Staging Women the eminent Aristophanic scholar Jeffrey Henderson presents, for the first time in a single volume, all three plays in new translations. Unlike earlier versions, which typically censor, translate around, or otherwise misrepresent these texts, Henderson preserves intact all of Aristophanes' blunt and often obscene language, rough satire, social and political protest and provocative fantasy. In addition, each play is supplied with an introduction and explanatory notes. The volume includes introductory material about Aristophanes, his comic theater and the women in Aristophanic comedy. An appendix contains translations of fragments bearing on the portrayal of women in Aristophanes'lost plays.Jeffrey Henderson is Professor of Classical Studies at Boston University. He is the author of The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy and a critical edition, with commentary, of Aristophanes' Lysistrata, as well as numerous essays and articles on Aristophanes, Old Comedy and its social and historical background.

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