The DOI matches its Crossref record; 24 of the 24 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The social function of Attic tragedy
Abstract
The time is long gone when literary men were happy to treat literature, and tragic poetry in particular, as something which exists serenely outside time, high up in the empyrean of unchanging validity and absolute values. Nowadays it is conventional, and seems natural, to insist that literature is produced within a particular society and a particular social setting: even its most gorgeous blooms have their roots in the soil of history. Its understanding requires us to understand the society which appreciated it, and for which it came into existence. In the particular case of the tragic poetry of Athens, the most influential body of recent criticism focuses on the relation of the drama to the realities of political and social life.
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- Ethical, I think, rather than political. The question of the status and function of the chorus is interestingly discussed by J. Gould and S. Goldhill in Silk, Tragedy and the Tragic,pp. 217ff., 244ff. Gould points out that choruses, often exotic in personnel and always excluded from authority and action, could not be felt as standing for the authority of the democratic polis; some choruses, composed of foreign slave women, must have been ‘perceived by the citizen body as doubly, or even triply, marginal’ (p. 220). Goldhill replies that choruses nevertheless do speak with ‘the full weight of a collective authority’. Most tragedy is not set in Athens or about Athenians: ‘allresponse to tragedy involves projection, sympathy, idealization—a negotiation of “the other” to find meaning for the self (p. 253).
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Cited by
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Barker, E. (2009) · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199542710.001.0001 · Cited by 275
The Bad Citizen in Classical Athens
Christ, M. R. (2006) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511618277 · Cited by 226
Civic ideology and the problem of difference: the politics of Aeschylean tragedy, once again
Goldhill, S. D. (2000) · The Journal of Hellenic Studies · doi:10.2307/632480 · Cited by 213
Clark, A. J. (2007) · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199226825.001.0001 · Cited by 207
Fearn, D. (2007) · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199215508.001.0001 · Cited by 190
Metadata
- Authors
- Griffin, J.
- Affiliations
- University of Oxford (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Griffin, Jasper
- Venue
- The Classical Quarterly
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 1998-05
- Volume
- 48
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 39-61
- ISSN
- 0009-8388 (ISSN-L)
- 1471-6844
- OpenAlex
- W2158400044
- Cited by
- 228
- References
- 22
- Citations by year
- 2025: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 19 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 7 · 2012: 5
- FWCI
- 32.24
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- The Classical Quarterly (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Classics › Classical Antiquity Studies
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Classical Philosophy and Thought
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Classical Studies and Philology
- Keywords
- Attic tragedy, social function of literature, ancient Greek drama, Athens, literary history, tragic poetry, reception of tragedy
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