Tragedy Today

Carey Perloff

doi:10.1632/pmla.2014.129.4.830

Tragedy Today

PMLA ◽

10.1632/pmla.2014.129.4.830 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 129 (4) ◽

pp. 830-833

Author(s):

Carey Perloff

Keyword(s):

Greek Tragedy ◽

Shared Values ◽

Recent Experience ◽

Ethical Norms ◽

Moral Absolutes

Irony and tragedy have always been uneasy bedfellows. thus, it is no surprise that in cynical eras such as ours, in which there are no moral absolutes, no clear beliefs, no accepted authority, and no commonly shared values or ethical norms, the act of producing a Greek tragedy requires a different lens. Even so, my recent experience shows that the plays continue to exert a peculiar hold on contemporary imaginations and can find startling resonances for modern audiences.

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The Romantic Inheritance

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198724193.013.4 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Edward Pechter

Keyword(s):

Greek Tragedy ◽

Thematic Content ◽

Romantic Poetry ◽

The World ◽

Ethical Norms ◽

Shakespearean Tragedy ◽

Ways Of Being

The romantics invested heavily in Shakespeare’s tragedies but less in Shakespearean tragedy, which belonged to the old dispensation: conventional rules fulfilling generic expectations. If Shakespeare’s ‘different genus’ demanded a ‘new word’, Coleridge’s candidate, ‘romantic Poetry’, was, like Schlegel’s ‘romantische Poesie’, disconnected from any established determinate kind. The romantics were sceptical about ethical norms no less than about aesthetic ones—hence their special attraction to Hamlet, whose protagonist, faced with exhausted traditions, had to find new ways of being in the world. Hence also their emphasis on individualized subjectivity. In Hegel, ‘the greatness of the characters’ central to Shakespeare and modernity supplants the objective structure of ‘world-governing’ authority on which Greek tragedy was based. But the romantics do more than swap one topic for another. In their most durable legacy, they shift from thematic content to interpretive experience, from textual and theatrical objects to the efforts required of subjects to engage them.

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The Orchestra as Acting Area in Greek Tragedy

Ramus ◽

10.1017/s0048671x00003489 ◽

1985 ◽

Vol 14 (2) ◽

pp. 75-84 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Graham Ley ◽

Michael Ewans

Keyword(s):

Greek Tragedy ◽

Close Relation ◽

Central Problem ◽

Classical Drama ◽

Considerable Experience

For some years past there has been a welcome change of emphasis towards the consideration of staging in books published on Greek tragedy; and yet with that change also a curious failure to be explicit about the central problem connected with all stagecraft, namely that of the acting-area. In this study two scholars with considerable experience of teaching classical drama in performance consider this problem of the acting-area in close relation to major scenes from two Greek tragedies, and suggest some general conclusions. The article must stand to some extent as a critique of the succession of books that has followed the apparently pioneering study of Oliver Taplin, none of which has made any substantial or sustained attempt to indicate where actors might have acted in the performance of Greek tragedy, though most, if not all, have been prepared to discard the concept of a raised ‘stage’ behind the orchestra. Hippolytus (428 BC) is the earliest of the surviving plays of Euripides to involve three speaking actors in one scene. Both Alcestis (438 BC and Medea (431 BC almost certainly require three actors to be performed with any fluency, but surprisingly present their action largely through dialogue and confrontation — surprisingly, perhaps, because at least since 458 BC and the performance of the Oresteia it is clear that three actors were available to any playwright.

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Female Characters in Fragmentary Greek Tragedy

10.1017/9781108861199 ◽

2020 ◽

Keyword(s):

Greek Tragedy ◽

Female Characters

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Reading Greek Tragedy

10.1017/cbo9780511627354 ◽

1986 ◽

Cited By ~ 146

Author(s):

Simon Goldhill

Keyword(s):

Greek Tragedy

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Acceptability of Assisted Suicide in Patients With Severe and Persistent Mental Illness

GeroPsych ◽

10.1024/1662-9647/a000248 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-8

Author(s):

Sophie Gloeckler ◽

Manuel Trachsel

Keyword(s):

Mental Illness ◽

Pilot Study ◽

Psychiatric Diagnosis ◽

Assisted Suicide ◽

Shared Values ◽

Psychiatric Nurses ◽

Attitudes And Beliefs ◽

Future Studies ◽

Persistent Mental Illness ◽

Moral Attitudes

Abstract. In Switzerland, assisted suicide (AS) may be granted on the basis of a psychiatric diagnosis. This pilot study explored the moral attitudes and beliefs of nurses regarding these practices through a quantitative survey of 38 psychiatric nurses. The pilot study, which serves to inform hypothesis development and future studies, showed that participating nurses supported AS and valued the reduction of suffering in patients with severe persistent mental illness. Findings were compared with those from a previously published study presenting the same questions to psychiatrists. The key differences between nurses’ responses and psychiatrists’ may reflect differences in the burden of responsibility, while similarities might capture shared values worth considering when determining treatment efforts. More information is needed to determine whether these initial findings represent nurses’ views more broadly.

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