DOCSLIB.ORG

IV. Ted Hughes' Oresteia

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
IV. Ted Hughes' Oresteia Your unpublished thesis, submitted for a degree at Williams College and administered by the Williams College Libraries, will be made available for research use. You may, through ths form, provide instructions regarding copyright, access, dissemination and reproduction of your .thesis. -The faculty advisor to the student writing the thesis wishes to claim joint authorship in this work. In each section, please check the ONE statement that reflects your wishes. I. PUBLICATIONAND QUOTATION: LITERARYPROPERTY RIGHTS A student author automatically owns the copyright to hidher work, whether or not a copyright symbol and date are placed on the piece. The duration of U.S. copyright on a manuscript--and Williams theses are considered manuscripts--is the life of the author plus 70 years. -I/we do not choose to retain literary property rights to the thesis, and I wish to1 assign them immediately to Williams College. Sclccting tilii; option will assign copyrighi ro the Col!egc. This in no way prcc!ildcs a st~rdcnt author fiorii late; pub1ishir;g hiither work; tllc tuclerit \voulri, howcue;. tteed to contzct the Archives ii~ra perr-nis.ijt>nSonn. hrchiv~:.; \voulti be free in this case to also gr';int pci?~?issio~l to anotlrcr i-esearriier to put-)iir;hsxnaii sectior~sftonr tile thesic. Rsreiy wo~rlc!there be ~IIJ:reasoil fhr thc Ari:llivi:s to grant permission to itnothcr parry ro pi~hlisl~the thesi3 in its rntiroly; ii..such a citustion :I~OSC,tile Archives woirid he irr touch with thc author to let them know that such a i-ccjircs?hati been ~n:aric. -Ilwe wish to retain literary property rights to the thesis for a period of three years, at which time the literary property rights shall be assigned to Williams College. Sclci.iing rhii clption gives ihtr author :a feu: yc;ils io m;rkc i.xcIirsive use 1-r-frhethesis in up-cuniijlg projxts: articles; later rcqcarch, ctc. I/we wish to retain literary property rights to the thesis for a period of 5 years, or until my death, whichever is the later, at which time the literary property rights shall be assigned to Williams College. y..i... L ~~tillgttiis option a!low.; the ;juthirr grc;,t flcltibili~yin estenciing c-rr .;tiorie?iir:g etie tirrlc of his/hcr a~itorilaticcopyright pcriod. .Sc?ri?e ctudcnts are interested in using tireir thesiv in g3d~atii schuti'i work. In this case; it .;\;onld makc scrisc i'nr Ihcrn ttt critcr a ntlnibc-r such as '10 years' in tile blank: and line oirl Ihc wnrtls 'or until rriy death. wl~ichcvcris the iakr.' In arty event.. it Is easier for tlic Ar-chivcc ii) adn~inistcrcopyright on a ~nantrccripiif thc period ends with tllc indivirlual's cicath--our staff won't havc to search for cslatc execnrorr in this case--but this is e:~tiri:ly irp to e;i::h stirdent. 11. ACCESS The Williams College Libraries are investigating the posting of theses online, as well as their retention in hardcopy. __x Williams College is granted permission to maintain and provide access to my thesis in hardcopy and via the Web both on and off campus. Sdc~t~ngtR~c opt~on ‘kilos le.~,,irillcrc ,irousd tl-e uoild to ziiceic tho drgifal \cl\ion of youn work. SON, HUGHES, HEANEY: THREE VARIATIONS ON AESCHYLUS' ORESYTEi'A BY Caitlin M. Hanley David H. Porter, Advisor A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Classics WILLIAMS COLLEGE Williarnstown, Massachusetts 01 May 2007 To David H. Porter Table of Contents I. Introduction 11. Aeschylus' Oresteia 111. Harrison's Oresteia IV.Hughes' Oresteia V. Heaney's "Mycenae Lookout" VI. Conclusion VII. Bibliography I. Introduction During my junior year abroad at Oxford University, a Classics and Englislh department course offering entitled "Classical Reception in Twentieth Century English Poetry" immediately attracted my interest. As a Classics and English double- major, the opportunity to link my passion for both ancient and modem litera~turelieft me with no doubts as to the term's tutorial selection. My background in Classics has enriched my reading of English literature, and the more I read, the more I appreciate the classical influence on our modem literary traditions. More than that, my study of Classics has instilled in me a firm belief that life is a series of translations - links to the past are ever pertinent to both the present and future. Connecting these ancient and modem works was, for me, a constant reminder of the process of reception. Closely examining the modem adaptations and versions reinforced the intimate experience of reading and writing. Each modem writing displayed the multi-faceted richness of the ancient work as every modem author extracted different elements for their modem versions. As I approached the text of Aeschylus' Oresteia for the first time, I was particularly stunned by the richness of his language, and the radical variatio~nson this text that modern adaptations by Tony Harrison, Ted Hughes, and Seamus Heaney play are a testimony to this richness. Tony Harrison and Ted Hughes, both vrrriting for actual stage productions of the Oresteia, provide translations that closely follow Aeschylus' text and plot line. Harrison produces a more dense, compound-laden English that is reminiscent of Aeschylus' Greek, whereas Hughes' translation adopts a language more transparent than Aeschylus' but nonetheless that captures Aeschylus' musicality and metaphorical richness. Seamus Heaney breaks away from the play form entirely to create a five-part poem "Mycenae Lookout." Employing images and themes from the Oresteia, Heaney freely writes about the political turmoil in his modem Ireland. A close look at these three texts displays the unique way in1 which each author represents Aeschylus in the twentieth century. The variations in these three modem versions of Aeschylus' Oresteia provoke several questions that I will set out to explore in the following paper. The modem works themselves present initial contrasts, as I will be working with two plays and one poem, two authors who have studied Greek and one who has not, and two authors who write towards an ending of purification that goes well beyond Aeschylus and one who more closely follows the resolution achieved in Aeschylus' text. Among the questions these differences raise for me are the following: What aspects of Aeschylus does each modem author retain, expand, or omit? How does a translator's kinowledge of ancient Greek influence a translation? How does a modem author's change in genre influence the work's reading? II. Aeschylus' Oresteia I. Aeschylus and his Oresteia: "I Speak to Those who understand...")' When approaching the Oresteia for the first time, one cannot help but be stunned by the density of language and the richness of imagery. One can read and re-read the text of the Oresteia only to be endlessly mystified by the complexity and infxicacy of the text, as if each rereading were like approaching the text for the first time. It is no surprise then that Aeschylus has been a source of inspiration for so many modern translations and adaptations. For one thing, Aeschylus takes the Greek language t~o new heights through his innovative compounding, persistent alliteration, and complex and often inverted imagery. Aeschylus inserts images in the very first lines of the watchman speech which both persist and transform through the end of the Eumenides. In the following, I will highlight specific aspects of Aeschylus' language anid imagery especially pertinent to my readings of Harrison, Heaney, and Hughes. The brevity of the section will not do justice to the complexities of Aeschylus' Oresteia, but it will provide a framework for subsequent discussion of the modem works. I will lexamjne three particular aspects of Aeschylus' trilogy: A) his blood imagery, B) his treatment of gender issues, and C) his move towards resolution (or lack thereof). 11. Language in Aeschylus: "For an Ox Stands Huge Upon my T'ongueV2 Throughout the Oresteia, Aeschylus astonishes the audience with the rich spectacle of his language, a density and compactness apparent from the outset of the 1Aeschylus, Ag. 37. Unless otherwise noted, the translations cited in this thesis I take from Aeschylus I: Oresteia. Ed. David Greene and Richmond Lattimore (Chicago 1953). ~~.35 trilogy. In the very first lines of the watchman speech, Aeschylus compresse:simages that will unfold and expand throughout the trilogy: (I ask the gods some respite from the weariness of this watchtime measured by years I lie awake elbowed upon the Atreidae's roof dogwise to mark the grand processionals of all the stars of night burdened with winter and again with heat for men, dynasties in their shining blazoned on the air, these stars, upon their wane and when the rest arise. I wait; to read the meaning in that beacon light, blaze of fire to carry out of Troy the rumor, and outcry of its capture; to such end a lady's male strength of heart in its high confidence ordains. Now as this bed stricken with night and drenched with dew I keep, nor ever with kind dreams for company: Since fear in sleeps place stands forever at my head Against strong closure of my eyes, or any rest.. .). In these first fifteen lines, we are immediately introduced to images and motifs that will unfold throughout the trilogy: KUVOS (images of the watchdog, hunting,%nd pursuit), bufiyup~v(images of processionals, assemblies, and meetings), hapnpoljs, AaClnados, kpnphov~as,odppohov, aby:v nup& (light shining out of darkness), gvdpooov (dew), ~uviv(bed, sexuality), and 8uv&o~as(power) The same opening speech also exemplifies another feature of Aeschylus' language, compounding: bpfiyup~v(Ag.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Iwas Lucky to Be in London in May and Catch
    The Scream REBECCA NEMSER I was lucky to be in London in May and catch Fram , Tony Harrison’s latest play,* in its short but spectacu - lar run at the Olivier Theatre at London’s National Theatre. The play, all in rhyming verse, begins in Westminster Abbey, with moonlight shining through the stained glass of the great Rose Window, casting a reflection of Aeschylus on the cold stone floor. In walks the ghost of Gilbert Murray (Jeff Rawle), rising up from his grave and carrying a tragic mask. Murray, the early-twentieth-century Oxford professor and classicist, was also a humanitarian, deeply involved in the League of Nations and the United Nations and co-founder of Oxfam. But since his death fifty years ago, his once-admired verse translations of Aeschylus and Euripides have been scorned, and the world he tried to save has been ravaged by even more unimaginable horrors. So instead of decomposing in his urn, he has spent his afterlife composing this play. He calls up the spirit of Sybil Thorndike (Sian Thomas, as splendid as the character she plays), the actress who tri - umphed on the London stage as Clytemnestra, Hecuba, and Medea in Murray’s once wildly popular versions, and whisks her off to the Olivier stalls of the National Theatre—for Fram is not just a play within a play, but a theater within a theater. Most of all, it is a poem about poetry. The hero of the play is Fridtjof Nansen (Jasper Britton), Murray’s long-ago friend (and admirer of his translations)— the dashing Norwegian scientist, artist, and Arctic explorer *Tony Harrison, Fram .
    [Show full text]
  • 2016 Latham Caroline 123237
    This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Reanimating Greek Tragedy How Contemporary Poets Translate for the Stage Latham, Caroline Susan Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 27. Sep. 2021 Reanimating Greek Tragedy How Contemporary Poets Translate for the Stage Caroline Susan Latham Degree: Doctor of Philosophy in Classics Research (Field of study: the modern reception of Greek tragedy) 1 Abstract This thesis starts from the premise that modern poets have proved effective translators of Greek tragedy for the stage and is a hermeneutic consideration of why and how they succeeded.
    [Show full text]
  • On Not Being Tony Harrison: Tradition and the Individual Talent of David Dabydeen
    On Not Being Tony Harrison: Tradition and the Individual Talent of David Dabydeen LEE M.JENKINS ^^)NE OF THE MORE unusual critical responses to T. S. Eliot is surely David Dabydeen's claim that "Eliot is the parent of Carib• bean poetry." Indeed, Dabydeen himself feels the need to qualify his remark before he makes it, when he says that Eliot assumes this parental role "in a peculiar sense" (Grant 211). On a thematic level, much of the work of the British-based Indo-Caribbean poet Dabydeen is to do with absent parents (the poet's actual parents, his parent country of Guyana and the Caribbean parent language, Creole; now living in England, Dabydeen shares with Eliot the sta• tus of metoikos, or resident alien); on a formal level, his poetry is less a quest for origins than it is a turbulent — by turns loving and loathing, respectful and rebellious — relationship with Eliot and other literary progenitors from Homer to Tony Harrison.1 Dabydeen's agon with Eliot is evident from his first collection, Slave Song (1984). The poet's use of Creole in this collection is, on one level, a testament of authenticity and, paradoxically given Dabydeen's tide, a proclamation of emancipation from the influ• ence of Eliot and Western literary tradition: this black vernacular is a language which, despite its "capacity for a savage lyricism" per• mits no level of abstraction, so "you cannot have the Four Quartets in Creole" (Binder 171, 170). Notwithstanding this, the innova• tion of contemporary Black British and Caribbean poetry suggests a certain continuity with Eliot; prior to these poetries, Dabydeen has argued, "the last great innovator in British poetry this century has been T.
    [Show full text]
  • House of Atreus Syllabus
    Greek 114: Honors Seminar in Greek Drama The House of Atreus in Greek Tragedy: Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Sophocles’ Electra, Eurpides’ Orestes Grace Ledbetter This seminar is a close reading of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Sophocles’ Electra, and Eurpides’ Orestes. We will also read the entire Oresteia, Eurpides’ Electra and Iphigeneia plays in English. Copies of these Greek and English texts are available in the bookstore, in addition to Aristotle’s Poetics and Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, which we will also consider in the course of our discussions. Required texts: 1) J. D. Denniston and D. L. Page, Aeschylus Agamemnon, Clarendon. 2) J. H. Kells, Sophocles Electra, Cambridge. 3) T. M. Falkner, Euripdes’ Orestes, Bryn Mawr Commentaries. 4) Fagles, trans, Oresteia 5) Eur. Electra, Iphegeneia in Aulis, Iphigeneia in Tauris in English 6) Aristotle, Poetics. 7) Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy. Work for the Course: 1) weekly translation and reading assignments 2) approximately bi-weekly oral presentations on specific passages or other readings. 3) three 8-10 page papers, integrating secondary literature, which will be due during weeks when there is no Greek reading assignment. 4) final exam: translation only. Syllabus: Week 1 background readings and video of Tony Harrison’s and Peter Hall’s Agamemnon (National Theater of Great Britain). P. Wilson, “Powers of horror and laughter: the great age of drama” in O. Taplin, ed. Literature in the Greek World, Oxford, 2000 Cambridge History of Classical Literature: Greek Literature. tragedy chapters Gantz, Early Greek Myth. (The Line of Tantalos; Agamemnon; Orestes; Iphigeneia). Aeschylus’ Oresteia in English. Fagles translation Agamemnon 1-39 in Greek Week 2 Agamemnon 1-354 (with Denniston-Page; Fraenkel) R.
    [Show full text]
  • Tony Harrison's Prometheus: a View from the Left
    Tony Harrison’s Prometheus: A View from the Left EDITH HALL Fire and poetry, two great powers that mek this so-called gods’ world OURS! Old Man, who has become Pro- metheus, to an audience of miners1 IN 1998 TONY HARRISON’S first feature film was screened at some esoteric venues, broadcast on uk Channel 4 television, and subsequently disappeared almost completely from public view. Outside the uk it has made little impres- sion. Nobody got very excited about Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound in 1820, either. Yet I am convinced that the eye of history will later view Harrison’s Prometheus as the most im- portant artistic reaction to the fall of the British working class as the twentieth century staggered to its close, a fall symptomatic of the international collapse of the socialist dream. The film also offers the most important adaptation of classical myth for a radical political purpose for years, and (with the possible exception of his stage play The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus) the most brilliant artwork Tony Harrison has yet produced. Harrison believes that the ancient Greek tragedy entitled Prometheus Bound is by Aeschylus, the poet of the Athenian democratic revolution. Aeschylus’ Prometheus is wilful, stub- born, audacious, gloomy, inspirational, intellectual, poetic, and has a diachronic view of history allowing him to see far away across the world, far into the past and equally far into the future. Harrison’s film is also wilful, stubborn, audacious, gloomy, inspirational, intellectual, poetic, with an interna- tional perspective and diachronic view of history. It escorts its audience on a procession of arresting images leading from northern England to eastern Europe and Greece, via the bomb- 130 tony harrison’s PROMETHEUS ing of Dresden, the collapse of socialism and the Holocaust.
    [Show full text]
  • The Land That Rises Dialect As Unheimlich Vol 1 K0835401 Morris
    THE LAND THAT RISES: DIALECT AS UNHEIMLICH IN BRITISH WRITING CATHERINE MORRIS A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Kingston University September, 2018 Volume 1 Abstract This thesis is in two parts. The first is a critical analysis of the use of dialect as unheimlich in British writing. Using Freud’s essay, The Uncanny (1919), as its basis, this thesis will argue that the use of dialect creates tension within a text between the representation of home, and of that which may be considered unhomely. Reading a range of British texts psychoanalytically alongside sociolinguistic studies, this thesis seeks to show how an author’s choice of dialect-use within their literary form is bound up with an unheimlich mind-set of dialect within both writer and reader, whilst considering the cultural and historical contexts in which these attitudes are based. A range of unheimlich notions may be read from dialect, and its use is to be repressed or rejected as abject and replaced with the more accessible standard English associated with education, adulthood, civilisation and power. Yet it might also be read that, through standard English, the ‘strange’ has been brought into our homes and our mouths, made familiar through the hegemonic appropriation of the ‘mother tongue’. Whilst the hearing of spoken accents and dialects within various medias has become increasingly common, negative connotations remain, especially when presented in the written form; what might be familiar to the ear remains strange to the eye. Its use divides readers as to its necessity and desirability, suggesting there is a long way to go before dialects are accepted fully in literary terms.
    [Show full text]
  • Classics, Class, and Cloaca: Harrison's Humane Coprology
    Classics, Class, and Cloaca: Harrison’s Humane Coprology EDITH HALL In 1975, Tony Harrison published his transla - tion of a selection of epigrams by Palladas, a fourth-century citizen of Alexandria and one of the last pagan poets. Harri - son had been inspired by Peter Jay’s modern verse transla - tions of ancient Greek epigrams, mostly drawn from the Greek Anthology. 1 Palladas’ cynical voice clearly struck a chord in the alienated young Harrison, who described it at the time as “the authentic snarl of a man trapped physically in poverty and persecution, and metaphysically in a deep sense of the futile.” 2 Through this separate edition Harrison rescued the distinctive individual voice of the ancient poet from centuries of anthologized oblivion. Amongst the verses Harrison chose to translate (which include satirical lines on the problems involved in reading canonical literature, misog - ynist tirades, and meditations on the brevity of life) is this succinct assault on another poet: Where’s the public good in what you write, raking it in from all that shameless shite, hawking iambics like so much Betterbrite ? (Harrison’s no. 43 = The Greek Anthology 11 .291 ) Bad poetry, composed to make money, is “shameless shite,” which rhymes with Betterbrite . The poet whom Palladas is attacking is compared with someone selling lamp oil, and it seems that Harrison has here invented a new product, inspired by the famous British “direct sales” company Betterware, whose inexpensive range of cleaning and other household arion 15.2 fall 2007 112 classics, class, and cloaca products was (and still is) sold by door-to-door salesmen and is culturally associated with aspirational, petit bourgeois house - wives.
    [Show full text]
  • PRR David Cohen Judges Announced FINAL
    ! New release: for release 00:00 23rd May 2017 David Cohen Prize for Literature: 2017 judges announced The David Cohen Prize for Literature is proud to announce the judges for 2017. Now in its 25th year, the prize is singular in its approach: it is awarded every two years in recognition of a living writer’s lifetime achievement in literature, and has consequently earned its position in the literary canon as the “UK Nobel for literature”. The winner of the prize is nominated and selected by a panel of judges comprising authors, literary critics and academics. Their identity may now be revealed. Under the chair’s eye of Mark Lawson, the judges are: Kate Bassett, Gillian Clarke, Professor Simon J. James, Alan Johnson, Denise Mina and Anita Sethi. They met together for the first time on 18th May. Managed by New Writing North, the award will be announced in London on 8 November 2017. Comments from the judges include: Alan Johnson: “I'm honoured to be asked to judge this prestigious award. Some of the greatest names in British and Irish literature have been recognised through the David Cohen Prize but there are so many writers to honour and so few generic awards to be made. It will be fun to have a role in determining the latest recipient.” Professor Simon James: “Many literary prizes give the opportunity to make a judgement on the quality of a single work; the David Cohen prize, unusually, allows the opportunity to recognise, and applaud a lifetime's work. Most professors of literature evaluate writing from the past - it is very exciting to be able to celebrate the work of a living writer, and I am delighted to be involved in this year's prize.” Anita Sethi: “I'm delighted to be a Judge for the David Cohen Prize for Literature 2017 which has a prestigious history of honouring some fantastic writers including Doris Lessing, Hilary Mantel, VS Naipaul and Harold Pinter.
    [Show full text]
  • The Classical Plays of Tony Harrison
    Banging the Lyre: The Classical Plays of Tony Harrison by Hallie Rebecca Marshall A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in The Faculty of Graduate Studies (Comparative Literature) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) March 2010 ©Hallie Rebecca Marshall, 2009 Abstract British poet Tony Harrison (b. 1937) is the most significant English verse playwright of the second half of the twentieth century and an important figure in the reception of classical literature on the British stage. This dissertation explores Harrison’s classical plays in relationship to their Greek and Latin models, positioning them amidst his other poetic works, and examining their cultural and historical contexts. The intent of this study is to examine these plays from a number of perspectives: intertexuality, exploring the ways in which Harrison engages with both classical literature and his own non-dramatic poetry; genre, arguing that Harrison uses not only Greek tragedy as a model, but also the other fifth-century dramatic genres of satyr play and Old Comedy, as well as nondramatic poetry, such as Latin epigrams; social and political contexts, establishing the importance of Harrison’s socio-economic and educational background in understanding the form and content of his dramatic verse, and exploring the ways in which he engages with a range of modern political issues, from the British class system to historical and contemporary military conflicts; performance, discussing Harrison’s interpretation and appropriation of fifth-century Athenian performance conventions, such as masks, as well as the influence that collaborators have had on the development of his unique theatrical style; and reception, articulating Harrison’s place within the history of the performance of English verse translations on the twentieth- century British stage, associating his work with the productions of translations by Gilbert Murray, differentiating his work from the classical adaptations of T.S.
    [Show full text]
  • V. – Tony Harrison's Poetic Dialectic
    Lingua ac Communitas | ISSN 1230-3143| Vol. 21 | 2011 | 21-32 Wojciech Klepuszewski V. – Tony Harrison’s Poetic Dialectic Tony Harrison’s long poem v. published in 1985, and televised by Channel Four in 1987 was a milestone in his literary career, not only be- cause of the reception it received, but also because Harrison managed to use poetry as an effective tool for a debate concerning important social issues. Soon after it was published, Martin Booth called v. ‘the most outstand- ing social poem of the last 25 years’1, though it was not until a year later, when a reading of the poem by Tony Harrison, directed by Richard Eyre, was aired that the public could really face its true value and impact. The filming, appreciated by some, caused widespread opposition on the part of those readers who felt appalled by its diction, namely the overt and ample |21 use of expletives. As it turned out, however, a great number of those who expressed their outrage had not actually acquainted themselves with the poem. As Tony Harrison notes in an interview: …the Daily Mail phoned around people who’ve never read the poem and don’t know me from Adam, and they shoot off their mouth, and they’re happy to be quoted, condemning something they know nothing about. That’s how it started.2 1 Booth, Martin. 1986. ‘The Personal as Universal’. Tribune, 21 February, p.10. 2 http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/johntusainterview/harrison_transcript.shtml; 1.08.2011 Wojciech Klepuszewski Years after, the fact was humorously recalled by Andy Parsons during one of his stand-up acts,
    [Show full text]
  • Rewriting the Greeks: the Translations, Adaptations, Distant Relatives and Productions of Aeschylus’ Tragedies in the United States of America from 1900 to 2009
    Rewriting the Greeks: The Translations, Adaptations, Distant Relatives and Productions of Aeschylus’ Tragedies in the United States of America from 1900 to 2009. Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Bethany Rose Banister Rainsberg, M.A. Graduate Program in Theatre The Ohio State University 2010 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Stratos E. Constantinidis, Advisor Dr. Bruce Heiden Dr. Joy Reilly Dr. Anthony Hill Copyright by Bethany Rose Banister Rainsberg 2010 Abstract The purpose of this study is to examine the practices of rewriting Aeschylus’ tragedies for American audiences and the manner in which these rewrites are “read” by stage directors who adapt them in their academic and non-academic theatre productions in the United States. In order to analyze the translation and performance practices of Aeschylus’ plays, this study will examine all English language translations, adaptations, and distant relatives of Aeschylus’ works for the twenty and twenty-first centuries and analyze key moments that connect and illuminate those works. The two central questions that drive this investigation are: (1) what kind of choices have the English-speaking translators made regarding the tragedies of Aeschylus, and (2) how have Aeschylus’ tragedies been rewritten by the practitioners of the American stage? Because of the proliferation and variance of Aeschylean translations into English, and research published to-date, an examination of these practices and texts provides a rich source for analyzing the larger issues of practice and critical evaluation of translation and performance. The seven tragedies of Aeschylus (Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides, Prometheus Bound, Persians, Suppliants, and Seven Against Thebes) and the manner in which they plays have been interpreted by translators and producers from 1900 to 2009 will provide the data for this study.
    [Show full text]
  • Stephen Spender Prize 2011
    Stephen Spender Prize 2011 for poetry in translation Stephen Spender Prize 2011 for poetry in translation Joint winners of the 14-and-under prize Commended Giles Robinson Anamay Viswanathan ‘Breakfast’ by Jacques ‘Children of the Sun and Wind’ Derek Lam Prévert (French) by Mohammed Ebnu (Spanish) ‘The Ballad of Mulan’, anon (Classical Chinese) Charlie Mack ‘A Dream for Winter’ by Arthur Rimbaud (French) Winners of the 18-and-under category Commended Iman Ahmedani First Joint second ‘From the Child to His Foot’ Andrew Wynn Owen Joel Farrance William Kennaway Phoebe Power by Pablo Neruda ‘The Whale’ ‘As’ ‘In the Jaws of ‘Blood Orange’ (Spanish) anon by Robert Desnos Luxury…’ by Jacques Prévert Oscar Davies (Anglo-Saxon) (French) by Petronius (Latin) (French) ‘Open Windows’ by Victor Hugo (French) Isobel Gooder ‘Good Advice for Lovers’ by Victor Hugo (French) Holly Whiston ‘Fragment 31’ by Sappho (Ancient Greek) Winners of the Open category Commended First Second Third Jane Draycott Meghan Purvis Martin Bennett Henry Stead ‘The Man in the Moon’, anon (Old English) ‘The Collar’ ‘Toto Merumeni’ from Medea Adam Elgar from Beowulf, by Guido Gozzano by Seneca ‘Sonnet 32’, by Gaspara Stampa (Italian) anon (Italian) (Latin) Meghan Purvis (Anglo-Saxon) ‘Modthryth’, from Beowulf (Anglo-Saxon) Sam Riviere ‘Tristia’, by Osip Mandelstam (Russian) Patricia Roseberry ‘The Murderer’s Wine’ by Charles Baudelaire (French) John Turner ‘Sagesse III, XII’, by Paul Verlaine (French) John Turner ‘Parsifal’, by Paul Verlaine (French) Introduction This was a curious year in that we had a wonderfully high before deciding the winners at a meeting that new judge number of entries but fewer than usual in the Open category: Patrick McGuinness described as ‘convivial and edifying the total was swollen by an unprecedented number of entries and funny in the right parts’.
    [Show full text]