Presenting a new approach to Euripides' plays, this book explores the
playwright's ancient tragedies in relation to quotation culture.
Treating extant works and lost works side-by-side, Matthew Wright
presents a selective survey of ways in which Euripidean tragedy was
quoted within antiquity, both in social contexts (on the comic stage,
at symposia, in law courts, in education) and in different literary
genres (drama, biography, oratory, philosophy, literary scholarship,
history and anthologies). There is also a discussion of the connection
between quotability and classic status, where Wright asks what
quotations can tell us about ancient reading habits. The implication
is that Euripides actively participated in quotation culture by
deliberately making certain portions of his plays stand out as
especially quotable. Within classical antiquity, Euripides was the
most widely quoted author apart from Homer. His plays are full of
'quotable quotes', which were repeated so often that they acquired a
life of their own. Hundreds of famous verses from Euripidean drama
circulated widely within the ancient world, even after the plays in
which they originally featured became forgotten or vanished
completely. Indeed, the majority of Euripides' tragedies now survive
only in the form of scattered quotations, otherwise known to us as
'fragments'. It is this corpus of fragmentary quotations, along with
his extant plays, that makes Euripides such an interesting case study
in the world of quotation culture. This book is the first of its kind
to understand Euripides' work through this lens, as well as opening up
quotation culture as a major theme of interest within classical
scholarship.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781350441187
Publisert
2024
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Vendor
Bloomsbury Academic
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter