Theater outside Athens: Drama in Greek Sicily and South Italy

Description

This volume brings together archeologists, art historians, philologists, literary scholars, political scientists, and historians to articulate the ways in which western Greek theater was distinct from that of the Greek mainland and, at the same time, to investigate how the two traditions interacted. The chapters intersect and build on each other in their pursuit of a number of shared questions and themes: the place of theater in the cultural life of Sicilian and South Italian 'colonial cities;' theater as a method of cultural self-identification; shared mythological themes in performance texts and theatrical vase-painting; and the reflection and analysis of Sicilian and South Italian theater in the work of Athenian philosophers and playwrights. Together, the essays explore central problems in the study of western Greek theater. By gathering a number of different perspectives and methods, this volume offers the first wide-ranging examination of this hitherto neglected history.

Kathryn Bosher is Assistant Professor of Classics at Northwestern University, Illinois.

'This is the first substantial interdisciplinary statement of the scale and significance of Greek theatrical activities outside 'Greece'.' The Times Literary Supplement 'Theater outside Athens is an important contribution to the growing bibliography on ancient theatre in the wider Greek world ... [This book] offers a number of intriguing and innovative perspectives that open up new ways of looking at Greek theater outside Athens, and new ways of looking at Athenian drama as well.' Paola Ceccarelli, sehepunkte.de 'While the magisterial surviving plays of Athenian tragedy and comedy may seem like marble monuments, they are really very fragile things ... As we journey outside of Athens, the evidence for ancient theater's history disintegrates even more into fragments. What remains are fragile vase paintings, the often casually remembered lines or stories of long-lost playwrights, performances, and plays, and the traces of long-ruined theaters set in imposing landscapes. In Theater outside Athens ... archaeologists, historians, and literary critics painstakingly reassemble such pieces to unearth the history of a theater that thrived in the courts of tyrants and the cities of the western Greek world. Far from being peripheral, this recovered world has the potential to unsettle our assumptions about the Athenian theatre itself.' Rebecca Bushnell, Common Knowledge '... this volume manages to be both comprehensive and accessible ... its chapters [provide] important insights into a variety of issues. Agreeably interdisciplinary, it offers a welcome shift of focus from the predominant Athenocentrism of the majority of approaches to Greek drama. It should be of use to classicists, ancient historians, archaeologists, and theatre studies specialists alike.' Vayos Liapis, Phoenix '... the volume is important for research on ancient Greek theatre ...' Kostas Valakas, The Classical Review