This thesis offers a materialist account of dramatic genre. It shows how English revenge tragedies were mediated by the social circumstances of their early modern dramatic production, and how in turn such circumstances found expression in dramatic form. Its method draws on Marxist critical theory, but the work also makes extensive use of traditions in English social history and more conventional literary criticism. Influenced by Walter Benjamin’s early work, 'Urprung des deutschen Trauerspiels', in which ‘origin’ (Ursprung) is distinguished from ‘genesis’ (Entstehung), the dissertation offers an account of the genre’s dialectical relationship with the social realities and legal circumscriptions accompanying theatrical performance at the time revenge plays became popular. Focusing on the characterization of avenging protagonists, the dissertation suggests how the ambivalent disposition of such figures to narrative and scene drew on historical problems of social and occupational identity in early modern England. The first chapter dwells on the ambiguities of the avenger’s marginalisation in Thomas Kyd’s seminal revenge play, The Spanish Tragedy. This chapter realizes the problem of revenge as one relating to the household, and in turn connects this to the image of the early professional theatre as a disorderly house. Building on this analysis of the historical grounds of Hieronimo’s disenfranchisement and revenge, the second chapter explores the resources of characterization provided for such avengers by the dramatic tradition of the Vice which, by the 1570s and 1580s, had become associated with the professional actor. The third chapter examines how the idiom of the ruin in the two tragedies of John Webster might invite a Benjaminian analysis of the revenge play as a vulnerable allegory of production. This chapter looks to link revenge plays’ representations of death to contingencies of performance. The final two chapters are connected by an interest in the relationship between characterization and forms of historical risk. Chapter 4 explores the duel at Hamlet’s climax from a variety of perspectives, arguing that its debased nature as a ritual of valour interacted in highly sophisticated ways with the problems of intentionality and invention associated with earlier revenge plays as well as with performance itself. The final chapter builds on the arguments of Chapter 4 while recalling many of the arguments made earlier in the thesis. Demonstrating the dialectical interaction of the actor-as-servant and the servant-intriguer, this fifth chapter situates the study of such characterization within the historiographical controversies surrounding the early-modern wage labourer. This dissertation aims (i) to provide innovative criticism of English revenge tragedy, insisting upon the genre’s dialectical foundation in processes of dramatic production; (ii) to outline a viable, dialectically materialist genre criticism; (iii) to show how changes in socio-economic dependencies produced specific dramaturgical effects, particularly as these related to the process of characterization.

Ao comparar a visibilidade da figura feminina na tragédia do período clássico (508 – 338 a.C) com o espaço destinado às mulheres concretas da Atenas do mesmo período, deparamo-nos com um intrigante contraste, já que a participação destas na vida pública era restrita aos cerimoniais religiosos. Amplamente representada na tradição literária antiga - nos versos de um amplo leque de poetas - a figura de Helena possibilita múltiplas interpretações a respeito de seu caráter e culpabilidade nos eventos desencadeadores da Guerra de Tróia. Dos três tragediógrafos atenienses cujas composições foram significativamente preservadas, Eurípides foi o único que pôs em cena a rainha espartana, nas peças Troianas (415 a.C), Helena (412 a.C) e Orestes (408 a.C). Eurípides teve duas características bastante contraditórias marcando sua composição: a oratória, instrumento cívico masculino (uma voz); e a representação do feminino, corpo ausente do espaço cívico (uma realidade muda). Pensando na sistematização do discurso como um instrumento cívico que entra em destaque no século V a.C. em Atenas, assim como nas representações cômicas e trágicas - outro elemento típico da identidade cívica da pólis - podemos ver em Eurípides um “laboratório” rico para discutir o paradoxo da representação do feminino no espaço trágico. Nessa dissertação, Helena é uma amostra da representação poliédrica do feminino na tragédia, direcionando a atenção precisamente para o ethos da personagem, ou seja, para a imagem de si que ela projeta no seu discurso nas três peças em que é representada por Eurípides. / Comparing the visibility of the female figure in tragedy during the Classic period (508-338 B.C) with the space for the concrete women of Athens in the same period, we come across an interesting contrast, since their participation in public life was restricted to religious ceremonies. Widely represented in ancient literary tradition – in the lines of many poets – Helen‟s figure creates multiple interpretations of her character and blame for the events that triggered the Trojan War. Among the three Athenian tragedians whose compositions were significantly preserved, Euripides was the one who placed the Spartan queen on the scene: in Trojan Women (415 B.C), Helen (412 B.C) and Orestes (408 B.C). Euripides had two rather contradictory characteristics marking his composition: oratory, a male civic tool (a voice); and the female representation, missing body of civic space (a voiceless reality). Thinking about the systematization of speech as civic tool that gets highlighted in the fifth century B.C. in Athens, as well as in comic and tragic representations (an other typical element of the polis civic identity), we can see in Euripides a rich “laboratory” to discuss the paradox of the female representation in tragic space. In this dissertation, Helen is a sample of the female polyhedral representation in tragedy, driving our attention directly to the ethos of Helen, in other words, to the self-image that she projects through her speech in the three plays in wich she appears represented in Euripides.

Tomando como base teórica os Estudos da Recepção de Clássicos, esta pesquisa de mestrado centrou-se durante três anos na tragédia latina Medeia, de Sêneca, incluindo sua tradução em português e uma análise abrangente de aspectos retóricos, para identificar elementos que se tenham provado elos permanentes na cadeia de recepção de peças de teatro da Antiguidade clássica. Esta investigação assumiu como textos mediadores nesse intervalo de vinte séculos tanto o repertório shakespeariano como o Teatro da Crueldade de Antonin Artaud, sendo que ambos foram em alguma medida apropriados por dramaturgos do século XX como Heine Müller, Sarah Kane e Ted Hughes. Todos os três se voltaram para Sêneca antes de escrever suas respectivas peças Medeamaterial, Phaedras Love e Senecas Oedipus, que também foram objeto deste estudo. / Taking into account the concepts of the Reception Studies of Classics, this three-year long Masters Degree investigation centered on Seneca\'s Medea Latin tragedy, including its translation into Portuguese and a thoroughly analysis of rhetorical aspects, in order to identify elements which have proven themselves as permanent links into the Reception chain of Ancient theatre plays. This research took as mediating texts in this 20th century span transmission net William Shakespeare\'s repertory and Antonin Artaud\'s Cruelty Theatre, both of which have in some extent been appropriated by 20th century playwrights such as Heiner Müller, Sarah Kane and Ted Hughes, the three of them having gone back to Seneca before setting up their Medeamaterial, Phaedra\'s Love and Seneca\'s Oedipus plays, respectively, which also make up the corpora of this study.

Aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles, en Italie, une ample production de tragédies voit le jour, parmi lesquelles de nombreuses pièces consacrées à des héroïnes éponymes. Nés de procédés complexes de réécriture (de mythes, de récits historiques, de sources religieuses et littéraires), ces personnages, qui posent sur scène la question du rapport entre la femme et le pouvoir, mobilisent le jugement des auteurs et du public sur des débats capitaux pour la société de l’époque. Par des démarches d’écriture particulières, plus ou moins explicites, le théâtre tragique se fait ainsi théâtre politique, puisqu’il élève la cité à la dignité d’un spectacle qui s’interroge sur ses mécanismes civiques et culturels. / Tragedy was a genre that flourished in Italy in the 16th and 17th century of which numerous examples were dedicated to the eponymous heroines. Created in the process of rewriting (réécriture) of myths, historical narratives and various religious and literary sources, those characters bring up questions concerning the relation between women and power encouraging authors and their public to take part in the debates that are crucial for the contemporary society. Through more or less explicit literary means, tragic theater becomes a political theater for it raises the city to the dignity of the spectacle that reflects on its civic and cultural mechanisms.

O presente trabalho têm como ponto de partida uma reflexão sobre os processos criativos do diretor grego Theodoros Terzopoulos e o cruzamento desta referência com minha pesquisa como encenador. Terzopoulos e seu método, notadamente suas montagens de tragédias clássicas gregas, serviram de filtro para uma investigação prática nas áreas da encenação e interpretação teatrais, tendo como meta última desenvolver um olhar mais pessoal e aprofundado sobre o fazer teatral. Os resultados da pesquisa são analisados à partir da encenação de Fim de Partida, de Samuel Beckett. / The present work has as starting point a reflexion about the creative process of the greek theatre director TheodorosTerzopoulos and the cross over of his work and my own researches as a director. Terzopoulos and his method, specially his works on classical greek tragedies was the filter to a pratical investigation on stagecraft and acting, where the development of more personal and deeper view was the final aim. The result of this research was analysed with the stagecraft of Samuel Beckett\'s Endgame.

This thesis examines the place, influence, and deployment of archaic Greek thought in Sophocles’ extant tragedies, paying close attention to the ethical and theological content of the plays as well as to their dramatic and literary fabric. I use archaic thought as an umbrella term for a constellation of ideas on the human condition and the gods which is first attested, in Greece, in Homeric epic, but has a long and variegated existence in other contexts and after the archaic period. The thesis consists of six chapters, divided in two parts. The first part provides a general conceptual framework, which is then applied in the detailed readings of Sophocles constituting the second part. The first chapter examines some of the main texts of archaic Greek thought, and offers an interpretation of it as a coherent nexus of ideas gravitating around the core notions of human vulnerability, short-sightedness, and the principle of alternation. Using the examples of Homer’s Iliad and Solon’s Elegy to the Muses, I argue that the narrative structure of archaic poetry can be used to formulate and “perform” archaic ideas. The second chapter formulates the principal argument of the thesis: that archaic thought is central to the ethical and religious content of tragedy as well as to its dramatic and literary fabric, that is, to the form of tragedy as a complex artefact designed to be performed on stage. I explore possible models for the interaction between archaic thought and literature and tragedy, from Aristotle’s Poetics to recent interpretations of tragedy as a hybrid of other literary and intellectual forms. I then examine the ways in which archaic ideas are deployed and performed in tragedy, both in passages that are explicitly archaic in content and diction, and in the complex interactions of dramatic form and intellectual content. This general discussion is illustrated with preliminary readings of four Sophoclean plays: Ajax, Oedipus Tyrannus, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus. The third chapter contextualises the approach adopted in the thesis as a whole by exploring two interpretations of Sophocles in German Idealist thought: Solger’s reading of Ajax and Hölderlin’s reading of Oedipus Tyrannus. It argues that these analyses, albeit under anachronistic conceptual categories such as “the tragic”, seize on some of the fundamental questions of archaic and tragic ethics and theology: the relationship between the human and divine spheres, and the limits of language and human understanding. In Chapters 4, 5, and 6, I offer detailed readings of Trachiniae, Antigone, and Electra, three plays chosen to reflect the diversity of contexts in which archaic ideas exist in Sophocles. I argue that archaic thought is central to the intellectual and dramatic fabric of all three plays, even though the deployment and emphasis of archaic patterns and ideas differs from one tragedy to the next.

This thesis examines the characterization of Trojans in fifth-century Attic tragedy with a particular focus on their ability to shed light on the contemporary Athenian sense of identity. I argue against the notion that Trojans are displaced Persians, for they maintain a strong connection to their mythological heritage. The evidence I present draws on fifth-century Attic tragedies but also on the Iliad, iconography, and fragmentary tragedies. My discussion of passages from the Iliad creates a context for interpreting Trojan characters in fifth-century tragedy by establishing the tradition that tragedians could draw on as the background against which to set their Trojan characters. The iconographic evidence similarly adds depth to the project by stepping away from a textual focus to create a wider understanding of how Trojans were visually conceptualized. The fragmentary tragedies provide a tantalizing glimpse into the portrayal of Trojan men, who are otherwise almost entirely absent from tragedies. As a result, my discussion of tragedy focuses on Trojan women, and I suggest that they are representatives of an idealized culture designed to evoke an idealized sense of Athenian cultural identity. I examine Euripides’ Andromache to compare the portrayal of Spartans, contemporary fifth-century Athenian enemies, with that of Trojans to demonstrate the differences between them. Following that, I address the gendered nature of the aftermath of the Trojan War by focusing on one particularly feminine theme in each of three plays: exchange in Andromache, nostalgia in Trojan Women, and mourning in Hecuba. Finally, I discuss the role played by class in considering Trojan characters. Only Euripides’ Orestes presents a (male) character who was a slave in Troy before the fall, and this provides an excellent opportunity to contrast the treatment of that character with the treatment of the royal Trojan women. The purpose of this examination of Trojan characters is to demonstrate that there was an intellectual curiosity about them and their role in contemporary society. I argue in favour of a sympathetic treatment of Trojan characters, or more specifically, against the notion of a “Phrygianization of Troy,” and restore to the Trojans their own unique identity.

This thesis examines the characterization of Trojans in fifth-century Attic tragedy with a particular focus on their ability to shed light on the contemporary Athenian sense of identity. I argue against the notion that Trojans are displaced Persians, for they maintain a strong connection to their mythological heritage. The evidence I present draws on fifth-century Attic tragedies but also on the Iliad, iconography, and fragmentary tragedies. My discussion of passages from the Iliad creates a context for interpreting Trojan characters in fifth-century tragedy by establishing the tradition that tragedians could draw on as the background against which to set their Trojan characters. The iconographic evidence similarly adds depth to the project by stepping away from a textual focus to create a wider understanding of how Trojans were visually conceptualized. The fragmentary tragedies provide a tantalizing glimpse into the portrayal of Trojan men, who are otherwise almost entirely absent from tragedies. As a result, my discussion of tragedy focuses on Trojan women, and I suggest that they are representatives of an idealized culture designed to evoke an idealized sense of Athenian cultural identity. I examine Euripides’ Andromache to compare the portrayal of Spartans, contemporary fifth-century Athenian enemies, with that of Trojans to demonstrate the differences between them. Following that, I address the gendered nature of the aftermath of the Trojan War by focusing on one particularly feminine theme in each of three plays: exchange in Andromache, nostalgia in Trojan Women, and mourning in Hecuba. Finally, I discuss the role played by class in considering Trojan characters. Only Euripides’ Orestes presents a (male) character who was a slave in Troy before the fall, and this provides an excellent opportunity to contrast the treatment of that character with the treatment of the royal Trojan women. The purpose of this examination of Trojan characters is to demonstrate that there was an intellectual curiosity about them and their role in contemporary society. I argue in favour of a sympathetic treatment of Trojan characters, or more specifically, against the notion of a “Phrygianization of Troy,” and restore to the Trojans their own unique identity.

Based on author's thesis. / Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 225-238) and index.

Inaug.-Diss.--München, 1937.