Book contents
- Ancient Theatre and Performance Culture around the Black Sea
- Frontispiece
- Ancient Theatre and Performance Culture around the Black Sea
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Map
- Part I Approaches
- 1 Introduction: Embarking on a Voyage around Black Sea Theatre
- 2 The Spread of Greek Theatre to the West – and to the North-East?
- 3 The Northward Advance of Greek Horizons
- Part II Places
- Part III Plays
- Part IV Performative Presences
- Epilogue: Dancing around the Black Sea: Xenophon, Pseudo-Scymnus and Lucian’s Bacchants
- References
- Black Sea Index
2 - The Spread of Greek Theatre to the West – and to the North-East?
from Part I - Approaches
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 November 2019
- Ancient Theatre and Performance Culture around the Black Sea
- Frontispiece
- Ancient Theatre and Performance Culture around the Black Sea
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Map
- Part I Approaches
- 1 Introduction: Embarking on a Voyage around Black Sea Theatre
- 2 The Spread of Greek Theatre to the West – and to the North-East?
- 3 The Northward Advance of Greek Horizons
- Part II Places
- Part III Plays
- Part IV Performative Presences
- Epilogue: Dancing around the Black Sea: Xenophon, Pseudo-Scymnus and Lucian’s Bacchants
- References
- Black Sea Index
Summary
The camera of scholarship keeps on changing focus and exposure. In the study of Greek theatre and its context in time and place the resetting has been particularly marked in recent years. After a period of relatively uncontextualised close reading in the wake of the New Criticism, the dominant approach between (roughly) 1980 and 2005 turned almost exclusively to fifth-century Athens. Drawn by the gravitational pull of the indisputable birthplace and metropolis, wellspring of almost every tragedy and comedy that we still have, attention homed in on that unique occasion of the first performance, set within the historical, cultural and ideological preoccupations of the original audience. Everywhere other than Athens faded into the unfocussed background. The chapters collected in Winkler and Zeitlin (1990) are often regarded as emblematic of this phase.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019