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
Ugly Productions: An Aesthetics of Greek Drama

Ugly Productions: An Aesthetics of Greek Drama

Duncan, A. C.

Hardcover

Literary CriticismTheater HistoryPlays

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0472133594
ISBN13: 9780472133598
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Published: Feb 24 2025
Pages: 292
Weight: 1.36
Height: 1.01 Width: 6.41 Depth: 9.22
Language: English
Amidst a culture otherwise obsessed with beauty, the Greek theater provided a unique space for Athenians to play with ugliness--to try these anti-ideals on for size. Such imaginative play was considered dangerous by some, such as Plato, who feared its corrupting influence; others, including Aristotle, saw the theater's provocation and release of emotions as educational and even therapeutic. Sophocles' and Euripides' fifth-century audiences could not help but directly confront the ugliness of their drama, but as cultural memory of embodied productions faded, an abstracted contrast emerged between beautiful tragedy and ugly comedy--a pernicious aesthetic polarization that persists to this day. A. C. Duncan's Ugly Productions embraces the materiality of the theater, arguing that dramatic aesthetics are best understood within affective frameworks where beauty or ugliness are produced through a dynamic interplay of verbal and visual modalities. Duncan reframes the Greek concept of the ugly not as mere anti-beauty, but as an affective disposition positively associated with such painful emotions as pity, fear, grief, and abjection.

Through studies of the figures of Xerxes, Electra, Philoctetes, Ajax, Heracles, and other tragic figures, Ugly Productions offers detailed analyses of the various ways ugliness was produced in performance with each chapter serving as an in-depth guide for studying the aesthetics of these works. Duncan confronts the historical neglect of ugliness in critical discourses, calling for a revaluation of negative aesthetics and renewed interest in the uglier aspects of these canonical works of theater.

Also from

Duncan, A. C.

View All

Also in

Plays

View All