Plague and the Athenian Imagination : Drama, History, and the Cult of Asclepius

by: Mitchell-Boyask, R.

Price: 62,00 EURO

1 copy in stock

 The great plague of Athens that began in 430 BCE had an enormous effect on the imagination of its literary artists and on the social imagination of the city as a whole. In this 2007 book, Professor Mitchell-Boyask studies the impact of the plague on Athenian tragedy early in the 420s and argues for a significant relationship between drama and the development of the cult of the healing god Asclepius in the next decade, during a period of war and increasing civic strife. The Athenian decision to locate their temple for Asclepius adjacent to the Theater of Dionysus arose from deeper associations between drama, healing and the polis that were engaged actively by the crisis of the plague. The book also considers the representation of the plague in Thucydides' History as well as the metaphors generated by that representation which recur later in the same work

Cover
Contents
Preface
Prologue
Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Death, myth and drama before the plague
Chapter 3 Materials i: The language of disease in tragedy
The rarity of loimos in tragedy
The use of nosos in tragedy
Aeschylus and nosos
Nosos in sophocles and euripides
Aristophanic comedy and the plague
Medicine, politics and tragic drama
Chapter 4 Plague, cult and drama: Euripides' Hippolytus
Chapter 5 Oedipus and the plague
Chapter 6 The Trachiniae and the plague
Dating problems
A parody of heracles in the clouds
Heracles as plague victim
The plague and the apotheosis of heracles
Music, closure and cult
Sophocles, heracles and athenian imperialism
Chapter 7 Materials ii: The cult of Asclepius and the Theater of Dionysus
Asclepius and the god of theater
The uniqueness of the athenian asklepieion
Asklepieion-theater configurations in other poleis
Chapter 8 Disease and stasis in Euripidean drama: Tragic pharmacology on the south slope of the Acropolis
Sickness and stasis in euripides' heracles
Nosological imagery in euripidean drama
Nosos in the phoenissae
Pharmakon sôtr̊ias
Heracles ii: text and context
Tragic drama, scapegoating and ostracism
Chapter 9 The Athenian Asklepieion and the end of the Philoctetes
Lemnos and athens
Sophocles' philoctetes and athenian cults
Asclepius and asklepieion: remapping the action of the philoctetes
Poetry and performance
Sophocles' philoctetes and the athens of 409 bce
Epilogue: philoctetes, freedom and the threat of tyranny in 410
Chapter 10 Conclusions and afterthoughts
Works Cited
Index
Last Page

Subjects:
Aesculapius (Roman deity)
Aesculapius (Roman deity) Cult
Criticism, interpretation, etc
Cults
DRAMA Ancient, Classical & Medieval
Drama Social aspects
Drama Social aspects Greece Athens History
Greece Athens
Greece, Ancient
Greek drama (Tragedy)
Greek drama (Tragedy) History and criticism
Greek drama (Tragedy) Themes, motives
Greek drama (Tragedy) Themes, motives History
History
Literature and society
Literature and society Greece Athens History
Littérature et société Grèce Athènes Histoire
Peste dans la littérature
Plague in literature
Théâtre (Genre littéraire) Aspect social Grèce Athènes Histoire
Tragédie grecque Histoire et critique

Plague and the Athenian Imagination : Drama, History, and the Cult of Asclepius

by: Mitchell-Boyask, R.

• ISBN-13: 9780521873451 / 9780521873451
• ISBN-03: 0521873452 / 0-521-87345-2
• Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008

Price: 62,00 EURO

1 copy in stock