Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition Through Tragedy

Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition Through Tragedy

Coffelt, Nancy

Paperback

Series: Oxford Classical Monographs

Literary CriticismLinguistics

ISBN10: 0198147805
ISBN13: 9780198147800
Publisher: Clarendon Press
Published: Sep 5 1991
Pages: 294
Weight: 0.84
Height: 0.74 Width: 5.46 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
Incest, polygamy, murder, sacrilege, impalement, castration, female power, and despotism are some of the images used by Athenian tragedians to define the non-Greek, barbarian world. This book explains for the first time the reasons behind their singular fascination with barbarians. Edith Hall sets the Greek plays against the historical background of the Panhellenic wars, and the establishment of an Athenian empire based on democracy and slavery. Analyzed within the context of contemporary anthropology and political philosophy, Hall reveals how the poets conceptualized the barbarian as the negative embodiment of Athenian civic ideals. She compares the treatment of foreigners in Homer and in tragedy, showing that the new dimension which the idea of the barbarian had brought to the tragic theater radically affected the poets' interpretation of myth and their evocation of the distant past, as well as enriching their reportoire of aural and visual effects. Hall argues that the invented barbarian of the tragic stage was a powerful cultural expression of Greek xenophobia and chauvinism that, paradoxically, produced and outburst of creative energy and literary innovation.

2 different editions

Also available

Also from

Coffelt, Nancy

View All

Also in

Literary Criticism

View All