This afterword to ‘Artes Poeticae: Formations and Transformations, 1500–1650’ surveys some of the organizing themes and questions that bind the various chapters of this special issue of CRJ. Particular attention is paid to the various, arguably evolving, attitudes to rules inherited from or retrospectively sourced in classical antiquity by early modern writers and commentators. The afterword attributes much of the early modern contestation over rules to lexical minutiae in (principally) Aristotelian and Horatian poetics and considers how writers in the period 1500–1650 derive literary-critical capital from those moments when familiar categories and definitions break down.
{"title":"Afterword: Bending the Rules","authors":"C. Stamatakis","doi":"10.1093/CRJ/CLAA018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CRJ/CLAA018","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This afterword to ‘Artes Poeticae: Formations and Transformations, 1500–1650’ surveys some of the organizing themes and questions that bind the various chapters of this special issue of CRJ. Particular attention is paid to the various, arguably evolving, attitudes to rules inherited from or retrospectively sourced in classical antiquity by early modern writers and commentators. The afterword attributes much of the early modern contestation over rules to lexical minutiae in (principally) Aristotelian and Horatian poetics and considers how writers in the period 1500–1650 derive literary-critical capital from those moments when familiar categories and definitions break down.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43803759","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines Lucrezia Marinella’s literary-theoretical declaration at the beginning of the 1602 Vita di Maria Vergine by contextualizing her claims within contemporary debates on whether epic, particularly Christian epic, can be written in a style of high prose. It demonstrates that although Marinella seems to rely more heavily on Aristotle’s Rhetoric, her choices in writing this epic in a high prose style were greatly influenced by the Poetics and contemporary discussions surrounding the text (along with a misunderstanding of the text itself). The essay also contains (as an appendix) the first English-language translation of Marinella’s literary theoretical preface, ‘To the Readers’.
{"title":"‘Defying Gravity’: Prose Epic and Heroic Style in Lucrezia Marinella’s 1602 Vita di Maria Vergine","authors":"B. Brazeau","doi":"10.1093/CRJ/CLAA029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CRJ/CLAA029","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article examines Lucrezia Marinella’s literary-theoretical declaration at the beginning of the 1602 Vita di Maria Vergine by contextualizing her claims within contemporary debates on whether epic, particularly Christian epic, can be written in a style of high prose. It demonstrates that although Marinella seems to rely more heavily on Aristotle’s Rhetoric, her choices in writing this epic in a high prose style were greatly influenced by the Poetics and contemporary discussions surrounding the text (along with a misunderstanding of the text itself). The essay also contains (as an appendix) the first English-language translation of Marinella’s literary theoretical preface, ‘To the Readers’.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49257512","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In a brief essay on Cato the Younger, Montaigne draws together five excerpts from Latin verse in Cato's honour; by the time he returned to the essay in his final years, those excerpts elicited some of the author's richest remarks on poetry and the poetic sublime. This essay argues that the anthology, in its various shapes and forms, offered early modern readers a way of doing literary criticism. Taking its cue from Montaigne's essay, it focuses on a number of English anthologies, associated with John Bodenham, and often known as the ‘Wits’ series, printed at around the turn of the seventeenth century. It argues that the commonplace-book structure of these volumes acted as a spur to detailed stylistic analysis. Anthologies encouraged their readers to compare poets with one another, working out what they had in common, and what made each one distinct; in this, they fostered the sort of critical scrutiny discussed in Scaliger's Poetics, and put into practice in the theatrical exchanges of the ‘Poets' War’. But as in Montaigne's case, they could also spark reflections about those verses that lay beyond criticism's reach, in the numinous realm of the sublime.
{"title":"Marvels and Commonplaces in the Elizabethan Anthologies","authors":"T. Tregear","doi":"10.1093/CRJ/CLAA019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CRJ/CLAA019","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In a brief essay on Cato the Younger, Montaigne draws together five excerpts from Latin verse in Cato's honour; by the time he returned to the essay in his final years, those excerpts elicited some of the author's richest remarks on poetry and the poetic sublime. This essay argues that the anthology, in its various shapes and forms, offered early modern readers a way of doing literary criticism. Taking its cue from Montaigne's essay, it focuses on a number of English anthologies, associated with John Bodenham, and often known as the ‘Wits’ series, printed at around the turn of the seventeenth century. It argues that the commonplace-book structure of these volumes acted as a spur to detailed stylistic analysis. Anthologies encouraged their readers to compare poets with one another, working out what they had in common, and what made each one distinct; in this, they fostered the sort of critical scrutiny discussed in Scaliger's Poetics, and put into practice in the theatrical exchanges of the ‘Poets' War’. But as in Montaigne's case, they could also spark reflections about those verses that lay beyond criticism's reach, in the numinous realm of the sublime.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47788064","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The period 1500–1650 is the period during which Europe’s poetic traditions — of ultimately Greco-Roman (i.e. Mediterranean Basin) origin — first came to be systematically exported outside the strictly European geographical sphere: the new contexts offered by the Portuguese- and especially Spanish-controlled zones of the rapidly expanding Iberian imperial world is where this first took place. This chapter moves away from the time-honoured Eurocentrisms of some of the more traditional approaches to early modern poetics by insisting upon 1500–1650+ as precisely the period during which the European literary tradition began to take on a life, or lives, of its own elsewhere across the globe. After surveying the key literary-historical developments in this connection, the chapter proceeds to consider how the Americas themselves came to be figured and indeed forged as a new zone of poetic activity — a new poetic(s) space — in early modern Ibero-American poetry itself. The selection of tropes identified and surveyed in this part of the chapter is offered as a sample of the dynamic literary phenomena that make up what we can call the poetics of the New World.
{"title":"The Other Arena: Poetics Goes Global in the Iberian Atlantic, 1500–1650+","authors":"Maya Feile Tomes","doi":"10.1093/CRJ/CLAA027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CRJ/CLAA027","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The period 1500–1650 is the period during which Europe’s poetic traditions — of ultimately Greco-Roman (i.e. Mediterranean Basin) origin — first came to be systematically exported outside the strictly European geographical sphere: the new contexts offered by the Portuguese- and especially Spanish-controlled zones of the rapidly expanding Iberian imperial world is where this first took place. This chapter moves away from the time-honoured Eurocentrisms of some of the more traditional approaches to early modern poetics by insisting upon 1500–1650+ as precisely the period during which the European literary tradition began to take on a life, or lives, of its own elsewhere across the globe. After surveying the key literary-historical developments in this connection, the chapter proceeds to consider how the Americas themselves came to be figured and indeed forged as a new zone of poetic activity — a new poetic(s) space — in early modern Ibero-American poetry itself. The selection of tropes identified and surveyed in this part of the chapter is offered as a sample of the dynamic literary phenomena that make up what we can call the poetics of the New World.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47997551","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article puts the bear back in Horace, demonstrating the role bears have played from antiquity through the Renaissance as the great disruptor of the classical literary artefact, simplex et unum. The first section of the article treats bear’s place in ancient poetics. The second section exposes its role in Horace’s corpus, demonstrating how it instantiates both historical interpretive conflicts over one of Aristotle’s definition of the poet’s vocation and a wide range of Roman cultural and literary developments in the late first-century bce. The third and final section finds Horace’s bear stalking Renaissance artes poeticae and starring as the unstable genre-crossing centre of Shakespeare’s ‘The Winter’s Tale’ (1611). This article shows that Shakespeare’s bear has as much to do with the history of poetics (and the War of the Poets) as with the material history of stagecraft, which has often been the intriguing focus of scholarship on the bear. In addition to heightening our sense of the monstrous qualities of Augustan literature, and to troubling our notions about the classicism of classical literature, this article clarifies how classical poetics could function, in its own time and thereafter, as both analytic field and a literary genre sui generis.
{"title":"Exit Pursued by Horace: Bears, Shakespeare, and the Classical Tradition","authors":"Aaron J. Kachuck","doi":"10.1093/CRJ/CLAA026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CRJ/CLAA026","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article puts the bear back in Horace, demonstrating the role bears have played from antiquity through the Renaissance as the great disruptor of the classical literary artefact, simplex et unum. The first section of the article treats bear’s place in ancient poetics. The second section exposes its role in Horace’s corpus, demonstrating how it instantiates both historical interpretive conflicts over one of Aristotle’s definition of the poet’s vocation and a wide range of Roman cultural and literary developments in the late first-century bce. The third and final section finds Horace’s bear stalking Renaissance artes poeticae and starring as the unstable genre-crossing centre of Shakespeare’s ‘The Winter’s Tale’ (1611). This article shows that Shakespeare’s bear has as much to do with the history of poetics (and the War of the Poets) as with the material history of stagecraft, which has often been the intriguing focus of scholarship on the bear. In addition to heightening our sense of the monstrous qualities of Augustan literature, and to troubling our notions about the classicism of classical literature, this article clarifies how classical poetics could function, in its own time and thereafter, as both analytic field and a literary genre sui generis.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44684346","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Literary historians tend to associate a poetics of rule-following with seventeenth-century neoclassicism, and with the sixteenth-century Italian commentators and theorists on whom the neoclassical critics drew; but thinking about the value and limitations of rules for writing is a pervasive and philosophically distinctive feature of pre-modern poetics more generally. Drawing on texts from different national literatures, on the literary theory of classical antiquity, on reflections on rule-following in non-literary early modern disciplines, and on some of the rich thinking on rules by modern philosophers, this article attempts to identify and describe some of the distinct kinds of rule-making and rule-following that constituted the discipline and practice of poetics in the sixteenth-century. To do so it focuses on three texts: Jodocus Badius Ascensius’ edition of Horace’s Ars poetica (1503), which divides the text up into ‘regulae’; Julius Caesar Scaliger’s Poetices libri septem (1561), which probes the ways in which ancient texts might function as ‘normae’ to which literary practice might be referred; and Samuel Daniels’ Musophilus (1599), which deeply if idiosyncratically meditates on the poet’s obligations and freedoms, and voices a profound scepticism about a literary practice that conforms to rules inherited from prior writers or imposed by critics.
{"title":"‘Non per instituir altri’? Attitudes to Rule-Following in Sixteenth-Century Poetics","authors":"M. Hetherington","doi":"10.1093/CRJ/CLAA021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CRJ/CLAA021","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Literary historians tend to associate a poetics of rule-following with seventeenth-century neoclassicism, and with the sixteenth-century Italian commentators and theorists on whom the neoclassical critics drew; but thinking about the value and limitations of rules for writing is a pervasive and philosophically distinctive feature of pre-modern poetics more generally. Drawing on texts from different national literatures, on the literary theory of classical antiquity, on reflections on rule-following in non-literary early modern disciplines, and on some of the rich thinking on rules by modern philosophers, this article attempts to identify and describe some of the distinct kinds of rule-making and rule-following that constituted the discipline and practice of poetics in the sixteenth-century. To do so it focuses on three texts: Jodocus Badius Ascensius’ edition of Horace’s Ars poetica (1503), which divides the text up into ‘regulae’; Julius Caesar Scaliger’s Poetices libri septem (1561), which probes the ways in which ancient texts might function as ‘normae’ to which literary practice might be referred; and Samuel Daniels’ Musophilus (1599), which deeply if idiosyncratically meditates on the poet’s obligations and freedoms, and voices a profound scepticism about a literary practice that conforms to rules inherited from prior writers or imposed by critics.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42414492","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The decades around 1600 saw a Europe-wide vogue for artists, writers, orators, and actors to fully identify with their sitters, subjects, or characters, the practice often being justified with the Horatian dictum, ‘If you want me to cry, mourn first yourself’ (Russell and Winterbottom 1972: 282 [Ars 101]). Among the more extreme manifestations are the young sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who in 1617 burnt himself while preparing to carve the martyrdom of St Lawrence on a gridiron, and the French actor Montdory, famous for full-throttle mad scenes, who in 1637 suffered a paralytic stroke to the tongue and right arm while acting Herod (Bernini 1713: 15; Bernini 2011: 103; Wiley 1960: 103–6).1 The philosopher and heretic Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639) cited Horace’s dictum in his treatise of rhetoric (Campanella 1954: 751, 763), adding yawning to the roster of expressions — ‘if you want me to yawn, yawn first yourself…’. When Campanella was in the Inquisition’s prison, he became notorious for mimicking people’s physiognomy, sometimes only on the basis of a verbal description, claiming it enabled him to read their mind. He would grimace as he imagined he possessed their features and even hair, so that visitors thought he was suffering the permanent affects of torture, or was insane (Campanella 2007: 116–17; Gaffarel 1629: 266–70). The purpose of this essay is two-fold. I want to historicize this ‘baroque’ fashion, arguing that the rediscovery of Aristotle’s Poetics helped put what I term sympathetic mimicry centre stage. I will also analyse four relevant scenes from Shakespeare — three of which centre on portrait painting — in which the issue of sympathetic mimicry is explored in various ways. I shall argue that Shakespeare exhibited both fascination and scepticism for this classical technique and the raw power it unleashes, and that he particularly associated it with painters.
{"title":"Parallel Lives: Shakespeare and the Debate Over Emotional Involvement","authors":"J. Hall","doi":"10.1093/CRJ/CLAA017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CRJ/CLAA017","url":null,"abstract":"The decades around 1600 saw a Europe-wide vogue for artists, writers, orators, and actors to fully identify with their sitters, subjects, or characters, the practice often being justified with the Horatian dictum, ‘If you want me to cry, mourn first yourself’ (Russell and Winterbottom 1972: 282 [Ars 101]). Among the more extreme manifestations are the young sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who in 1617 burnt himself while preparing to carve the martyrdom of St Lawrence on a gridiron, and the French actor Montdory, famous for full-throttle mad scenes, who in 1637 suffered a paralytic stroke to the tongue and right arm while acting Herod (Bernini 1713: 15; Bernini 2011: 103; Wiley 1960: 103–6).1 The philosopher and heretic Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639) cited Horace’s dictum in his treatise of rhetoric (Campanella 1954: 751, 763), adding yawning to the roster of expressions — ‘if you want me to yawn, yawn first yourself…’. When Campanella was in the Inquisition’s prison, he became notorious for mimicking people’s physiognomy, sometimes only on the basis of a verbal description, claiming it enabled him to read their mind. He would grimace as he imagined he possessed their features and even hair, so that visitors thought he was suffering the permanent affects of torture, or was insane (Campanella 2007: 116–17; Gaffarel 1629: 266–70). The purpose of this essay is two-fold. I want to historicize this ‘baroque’ fashion, arguing that the rediscovery of Aristotle’s Poetics helped put what I term sympathetic mimicry centre stage. I will also analyse four relevant scenes from Shakespeare — three of which centre on portrait painting — in which the issue of sympathetic mimicry is explored in various ways. I shall argue that Shakespeare exhibited both fascination and scepticism for this classical technique and the raw power it unleashes, and that he particularly associated it with painters.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42216013","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article offers a reading of the coverage of the 2013–14 Ashes series by way of exploring the limits of classical reception. Focusing on the poetics of recusal (recusatio, praetritio) and their place in advertising memory sanctions as site of contested power, I suggest that although the coverage lacks explicit reference to classical material, it nevertheless can be read as classical by analogy, and as such ought to be treated as a case of classical reception.
{"title":"Not cricket, not classics? A case study in the limits of reception","authors":"A. H. Lushkov","doi":"10.1093/CRJ/CLAA022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CRJ/CLAA022","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article offers a reading of the coverage of the 2013–14 Ashes series by way of exploring the limits of classical reception. Focusing on the poetics of recusal (recusatio, praetritio) and their place in advertising memory sanctions as site of contested power, I suggest that although the coverage lacks explicit reference to classical material, it nevertheless can be read as classical by analogy, and as such ought to be treated as a case of classical reception.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44179012","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Heidegger, perhaps the most influential philosopher of the last century, sought to do something with the Greeks never done before: to establish a new tradition of thinking. He saw in their literature and philosophy a concern with what is most essential and vital to man, and which has been glossed over and forgotten in modern thought. Controversial as his readings are, the exploration given here of Heidegger’s attempt to revive the spirit of Greek thinking reveals not only the fundamentally receptive nature of his philosophy but also the philosophical import of classical reception. While few would argue that Heidegger initiated a new tradition, he set in motion an intellectual crisis surrounding how the ills of modernity are rooted in modes of thought we must overcome. By making the Greeks the solution to this, Heidegger shifted the so-called ‘discourse of modernity’ to an assessment of the Greek’s impact on thinking today and their potential for us to think anew. As such, he made classical reception the vehicle for both understanding and critiquing the form of Modernity and its thinking. Therein lies the value of Heidegger for classical reception, because he gives it the intellectual impetus to confront what man is today.
{"title":"Heidegger, classical reception and the discourse of modernity: a crisis in thinking","authors":"J. M. Walsh","doi":"10.1093/CRJ/CLAB006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CRJ/CLAB006","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Heidegger, perhaps the most influential philosopher of the last century, sought to do something with the Greeks never done before: to establish a new tradition of thinking. He saw in their literature and philosophy a concern with what is most essential and vital to man, and which has been glossed over and forgotten in modern thought. Controversial as his readings are, the exploration given here of Heidegger’s attempt to revive the spirit of Greek thinking reveals not only the fundamentally receptive nature of his philosophy but also the philosophical import of classical reception. While few would argue that Heidegger initiated a new tradition, he set in motion an intellectual crisis surrounding how the ills of modernity are rooted in modes of thought we must overcome. By making the Greeks the solution to this, Heidegger shifted the so-called ‘discourse of modernity’ to an assessment of the Greek’s impact on thinking today and their potential for us to think anew. As such, he made classical reception the vehicle for both understanding and critiquing the form of Modernity and its thinking. Therein lies the value of Heidegger for classical reception, because he gives it the intellectual impetus to confront what man is today.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41712511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In Jules Dassin’s 1960’s film Never on Sunday, Ilia is a Greek prostitute at the port of Piraeus, who is very fond of Greek tragedy. Yet, while she has seen Euripides’ Medea fifteen times, she keeps denying that, at the end of the play, Medea kills her children. This article explores the reasons why Ilia insists on seeing the play again and again, while also insisting on recasting a revenge plot into a love story with a happy ending. Furthermore, it discusses gender dynamics in the film, focusing on Ilia’s firm opposition to all female oppression. Finally, it argues that, through Ilia’s misinterpretation of Medea, Never on Sunday invites discussion of the various disguises of human vulnerability and of an all too common fear—the fear of love.
在达辛(Jules Dassin) 1960年的电影《永不星期日》(Never on Sunday)中,伊利亚(Ilia)是比雷埃夫斯港的一名希腊妓女,她非常喜欢希腊悲剧。然而,尽管她已经看过欧里庇德斯笔下的美狄亚十五遍,但她一直否认,在戏剧的最后,美狄亚杀死了她的孩子。这篇文章探讨了伊莱娅坚持一遍又一遍地看这部剧的原因,同时也坚持把复仇的情节重新塑造成一个幸福结局的爱情故事。进一步探讨了影片中的性别动态,重点关注伊莱娅对所有女性压迫的坚决反对。最后,它认为,通过伊莱娅对美狄亚的误解,《星期日永不》引发了对人类脆弱的各种伪装的讨论,以及对一种非常普遍的恐惧——对爱的恐惧。
{"title":"Medea and other women in Jules Dassin’s Never on Sunday","authors":"Georgia Sermamoglou-Soulmaidi","doi":"10.1093/CRJ/CLAB003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CRJ/CLAB003","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In Jules Dassin’s 1960’s film Never on Sunday, Ilia is a Greek prostitute at the port of Piraeus, who is very fond of Greek tragedy. Yet, while she has seen Euripides’ Medea fifteen times, she keeps denying that, at the end of the play, Medea kills her children. This article explores the reasons why Ilia insists on seeing the play again and again, while also insisting on recasting a revenge plot into a love story with a happy ending. Furthermore, it discusses gender dynamics in the film, focusing on Ilia’s firm opposition to all female oppression. Finally, it argues that, through Ilia’s misinterpretation of Medea, Never on Sunday invites discussion of the various disguises of human vulnerability and of an all too common fear—the fear of love.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/CRJ/CLAB003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47801004","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}