90,264 research outputs found

    A marriage made in Heaven? 'Racine' and 'love'

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    Commentators have traditionally stressed the importance accorded to love in Racine's tragedies, often viewing it in general as some blind, irrational force that deprives characters of the will to act. This article seeks to question this easy association, which originated in the particular set of circumstances that forged the idea of 'Racine' in opposition to that of 'Corneille'. It also suggests that the common view of love in Racine's tragedies provides an unsatisfactory critical perspective for interpreting a series of complex and quite distinctive plays, in each of which 'love' can be shown to play different roles

    Chance in the tragedies of Racine

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    In the Renaissance and early modern periods, there were lively controversies over why things happen. Central to these debates was the troubling idea that things could simply happen by chance. In France, a major terrain of this intellectual debate, the chance hypothesis engaged writers coming from many different horizons: the ancient philosophies of Epicurus, the Stoa, and Aristotle, the renewed reading of the Bible in the wake of the Reformation, a fresh emphasis on direct, empirical observation of nature and society, the revival of dramatic tragedy with its paradoxical theme of the misfortunes that befall relatively good people, and growing introspective awareness of the somewhat arbitrary quality of consciousness itself. This volume is the first in English to offer a broad cultural and literary view of the field of chance in this period. The essays, by a distinguished team of scholars from the U.S., Britain, and France, cluster around four problems: Providence in Question, Aesthetics and Poetics of Chance, Law and Ethics, and Chance and its Remedies. Convincing and authoritative, this collection articulates a new and rich perspective on the culture of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France

    Rewriting Greek Tragedies as Immigrant Stories

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    In this piece originally published in the New York Times, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner writes about Mojada, Luis Alfaro\u27s adaptation of the Greek tragedy, Medea. Mojada is part of a trilogy from Alfaro that attempts to bring his Latino community into modern theater by writing them into classical plays

    The Renaissance uses of a medieval Seneca: murder, stoicism, and gender in the marginalia of Glasgow Hunter 297

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    Examines, transcribes, and annotates the extensive marginalia in a medieval manuscript of Seneca\u27s tragedies made by Sir William Sinclair of Mey (1582-1643), exploring some of the links between the original text, the marginal additions, the events of Sinclair\u27s life, and the culture of Renaissance Scotland

    Subtle tragedies

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    LSE’s Wale Lawal explores the lack of options that face Nigerian voters in the 2015 democratic elections

    Project tragedies

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    Serious project failures can be tragedies. Borrowing the term from Aristotle, project management researchers sometimes refer to a peripety when a chaotic project suddenly finds a successful path towards completion. But Aristotle requires tragedies to have a sad ending, and in his Poetics, reversal (peripeteia) is paired with recognition (anagnorisis), which might be closer to the transitory event in chaotic projects. In late antiquity, we find a voyage described as a tragicomedy, when Synesius recounts his experiences of sailing from Alexandria. The narrative of his stormy voyage includes a turning point resembling what modern project researchers have understood as peripety

    Seeing the Sorrow Anew: Recapturing the Reality of Suffering Through Srebrenica

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    Those who know death know mourning. Those who know mourning know the meaning of empty spaces that we all wish had stayed filled. But do we, or even can we, as the few members of this society who habitually reflect upon the tragedies and triumphs of the past, fully understand the immensity of the suffering we dwell upon while wandering our battlefields? [excerpt

    Ejecta

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    Co-authored with artist Anthony Cervino, this book was produced on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name at CulturalDC\u27s Flashpoint Gallery in Washington, DC. The book is comprised of several curatorial essays as well as fictional and personal reflections, and an in-depth interview to examine issues of parenthood, professional successes, personal tragedies, and larger art-historical contexts.https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/books/1087/thumbnail.jp

    Seneca’s Challenge:Genre and Intertextuality in Senecan Tragedy and Statius’ Thebaid

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    In this dissertation I study the intertextual relationship between the poetic genres of epic and tragedy in Latin literature. The focus of my research are Seneca’s tragedies and Statius’ Thebaid. I argue that Seneca’s tragedies should be read as a systematic reflection on the epics of his predecessors Vergil (Aeneid) and Ovid (Metamorphoses). In the Aeneid, Vergil frequently alludes to tragedy, a genre in which heroes and cities often are destroyed, thereby questioning and complicating his epic narrative of Rome’s glorious destiny. Ovid develops this approach further through clever allusions to Vergil. Ovid’s allusions to Vergil can be read as a commentary on Vergil’s epic. Seneca, in turn, would write tragedies that alluded to both Vergil and Ovid. Seneca’s tragedies test the epic genre to its breaking point: heroes self-destruct, history is reversed and the epic gods are driven away. I show this through a close intertextual reading of four of Seneca’s tragedies (Hercules Furens, Oedipus, Thyestes and Phoenissae), in which I trace a development from the “early” to the “late” tragedies. I then move on to the most sustained epic reponse to Seneca’s tragic challenge: Statius’ Thebaid. Statius has to reinvent the epic genre following Senecan tragedy. I argue that a Senecan narrative can be traced through the Thebaid, in which Statius alludes to Senecan tragedy and comments on these tragedies and their impact on epic. At the end of Statius’ experiment, epic can continue, but it is forever changed by Senecan tragedy
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