Crossroads in the Black Aegean
Title | Crossroads in the Black Aegean PDF eBook |
Author | Barbara Goff |
Publisher | Oxford University Press, USA |
Pages | 414 |
Release | 2007-11-15 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 0199217181 |
A study of African rewritings of Greek tragedy, this title asks why the plays of Sophocles' Theban Cycle are so often adapted by dramatists of African descent, and how plays that dilate on the power of the past can articulate the postcolonial moment.
Crossroads in the Black Aegean: Oedipus, Antigone, and Dramas of the African Diaspora
Title | Crossroads in the Black Aegean: Oedipus, Antigone, and Dramas of the African Diaspora PDF eBook |
Author | Barbara Goff |
Publisher | OUP Oxford |
Pages | 416 |
Release | 2007-11-15 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 0191607606 |
Crossroads in the Black Aegean is a compendious, timely, and fascinating study of African rewritings of Greek tragedy. It consists of detailed readings of six dramas and one epic poem, from different locations across the African diaspora. Barbara Goff and Michael Simpson ask why the plays of Sophocles' Theban Cycle figure so prominently among the tragedies adapted by dramatists of African descent, and how plays that dilate on the power of the past, in the inexorable curse of Oedipus and the regressive obsession of Antigone, can articulate the postcolonial moment. Capitalizing on classical reception studies, postcolonial studies, and comparative literature, Crossroads in the Black Aegean co-ordinates theory and theatre. It crucially investigates how the plays engage with the 'Western canon', and shows how they use their self-consciously literary status to assert, ironize, and challenge their own place, and that of the Greek originals, in relation to that tradition. Beyond these oedipal reflexes, the adaptations offer alternative African models of cultural transmission.
Crossroads in the Black Aegean
Title | Crossroads in the Black Aegean PDF eBook |
Author | Barbara E. Goff |
Publisher | |
Pages | 401 |
Release | 2007 |
Genre | African drama (English) |
ISBN | 9780191712388 |
A study of African rewritings of Greek tragedy, this title asks why the plays of Sophocles' Theban Cycle are so often adapted by dramatists of African descent, and how plays that dilate on the power of the past can articulate the postcolonial moment.
Antigone on the Contemporary World Stage
Title | Antigone on the Contemporary World Stage PDF eBook |
Author | Erin B. Mee |
Publisher | Oxford University Press on Demand |
Pages | 492 |
Release | 2011-06-16 |
Genre | Literary Collections |
ISBN | 0199586195 |
Sophocles' Antigone has been staged all over the world, and many of these productions have reconceived and remade the play to address local issues and concerns. This collection of essays explores the play's reception in numerous countries, as diverse as The Congo and Australia, Argentina and Japan.
'Your Secret Language'
Title | 'Your Secret Language' PDF eBook |
Author | Barbara Goff |
Publisher | A&C Black |
Pages | 192 |
Release | 2013-02-28 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 1780934661 |
This book is the first to examine the complex and contradictory history of Classics in Sierra Leone, Ghana and Nigeria. It investigates how Classical Studies, as an integral part of colonial education, enforced a notion of cultural inferiority on African subjects, but conversely played an enabling role in nationalist expression. The enquiry is structured around three main questions: how Classics contributed to the formation of a new class of Europeanising West Africans in the late 19th century; how Classics was implicated in the ideological struggles of the early twentieth century over the desirability of 'practical' or 'agricultural' education; and how the uses of Classics changed in the years leading up to independence.
The Politics of Adaptation
Title | The Politics of Adaptation PDF eBook |
Author | Astrid Van Weyenberg |
Publisher | Rodopi |
Pages | 263 |
Release | 2013 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 940120957X |
This book explores contemporary African adaptations of classical Greek tragedies. Six South African and Nigerian dramatic texts – by Yael Farber, Mark Fleishman, Athol Fugard, Femi Osofisan, and Wole Soyinka – are analysed through the thematic lens of resistance, revolution, reconciliation, and mourning. The opening chapters focus on plays that mobilize Greek tragedy to inspire political change, discussing how Sophocles’ heroine Antigone is reconfigured as a freedom fighter and how Euripides’ Dionysos is transformed into a revolutionary leader. The later chapters shift the focus to plays that explore the costs and consequences of political change, examining how the cycle of violence dramatized in Aeschylus’ Oresteia trilogy acquires relevance in post-apartheid South Africa, and how the mourning of Euripides’ Trojan Women resonates in and beyond Nigeria. Throughout, the emphasis is on how playwrights, through adaptation, perform a cultural politics directed at the Europe that has traditionally considered ancient Greece as its property, foundation, and legitimization. Van Weyenberg additionally discusses how contemporary African reworkings of Greek tragedies invite us to reconsider how we think about the genre of tragedy and about the cultural process of adaptation. Against George Steiner’s famous claim that tragedy has died, this book demonstrates that Greek tragedy holds relevance today. But it also reveals that adaptations do more than simply keeping the texts they draw on alive: through adaptation, playwrights open up a space for politics. In this dynamic between adaptation and pre-text, the politics of adaptation is performed.
Hypertheatre
Title | Hypertheatre PDF eBook |
Author | Olga Kekis |
Publisher | Routledge |
Pages | 330 |
Release | 2019-07-19 |
Genre | Performing Arts |
ISBN | 1351253964 |
Hypertheatre: Contemporary Radical Adaptation of Greek Tragedy investigates the adaptation of classical drama for the contemporary stage and explores its role as an active, polemical form of theatre which addresses present-day issues. The book’s premise is that by breaking drama into constituent parts, revising, reinterpreting and rewriting to create a new, culturally and politically relevant construct, the process of adaptation creates a 'hyperplay', newly repurposed for the contemporary world. This process is explored through a diverse collection of postmodern adaptations of Antigone, Medea, and The Trojan Women, analysing their adaptive strategies and the evidence of how these remakings reflect the cultures of which they are a part. Central to this study is the idea that each of these adaptations becomes an entirely new play, redefining its central female figures and invoking reconfigurations of femininity which emphasise individual women’s strengths and female solidarity. Written for scholars of Theatre, Adaptation, Performance Studies, and Literature, Hypertheatre places the Greek classics firmly within a contemporary feminist discourse.