Aristophanes in Britain : old comedy in the nineteenth century /
This lively and wide-ranging study explores the reception of Aristophanes in the long-nineteenth century. It examines both political and aesthetic strands of this reception, and argues that Aristophanic reception in the period was always a process of speaking to contemporary issues - making Old Come...
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
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Oxford :
Oxford University Press,
[2023]
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| Series: | Classical presences.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Connect to the full text of this electronic book |
| Summary: | This lively and wide-ranging study explores the reception of Aristophanes in the long-nineteenth century. It examines both political and aesthetic strands of this reception, and argues that Aristophanic reception in the period was always a process of speaking to contemporary issues - making Old Comedy new. This book explores the reception of Aristophanes in Britain over the course of the long-nineteenth century, setting it firmly in the context of Victorian classicism more broadly and in the context of the reception of Greek tragedy in the same period. It proves the surprising extent to which Aristophanes was received, across a wide array of mediums, in Victorian Britain, and demonstrates that, over the course of the long-nineteenth century, Aristophanic reception was always a process of speaking to contemporary issues, whether political or aesthetic. A number of case studies are explored, including Wilde, Swinburne, W.S. Gilbert, Shelley, Gilbert Murray, Bernard Shaw, and Aubrey Beardsley. From the start of the long-nineteenth century, the British reception of Aristophanes was tied up in contemporary political debate, as writers activated Aristophanes in support of their own political positions. The second strand of Aristophanic reception, developed around the middle of the nineteenth century, actively de-politicized Old Comedy and instead received it through an aesthetic lens. The aesthetics of Aristophanes - with an emphasis on the beautiful and the archaeological - also lay behind school and university productions of Old Comedy during this period, so that only at the turn of the century was the political and artistic potential of Aristophanes able to find synthesis. |
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| Item Description: | Also issued in print: 2023. |
| Physical Description: | 1 online resource : illustrations (black and white). |
| Audience: | Specialized. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780191964640 0191964646 |