Tragic Failures : : Alexandrian Responses to Tragedy and the Tragic / / Evina Sistakou.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Plus DeG Package 2016 Part 1
• VerfasserIn: Sistakou, Evina,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter, , [2016]; ©2016
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Series: Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes , 38
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (XII, 249 p.)

This is the first study considering the reception of Greek tragedy and the transformation of the tragic idea in Hellenistic poetry. The focus is on third-century Alexandria, where the Ptolemies fostered tragedy as a theatrical form for public entertainment and as an official genre cultivated by the Pleiad, whereas the scholars of the Museum were commissioned to edit and comment on the classical tragic texts. More importantly, the notion of the tragic was adapted to the literary trends of the era. Released from the strict rules established by Aristotle about what makes a good tragedy, the major poets of the Alexandrian avant-garde struggled to transform the tragic idea and integrate it into non-dramatic genres. Tragic Failures traces the incorporation of the tragic idea in the poetry of Callimachus and Theocritus, in Apollonius’ epic Argonautica, in the iambic Alexandra, in late Hellenistic poetry and in Parthenius’ Erotika Pathemata. It offers a fascinating insight into the new conception of the tragic dilemmas in the context of Alexandrian aesthetics.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction: From Tragedy to the Tragic -- 1. Tragedy, from Athens to Alexandria -- 2. The Metaclassical Tragic -- 3. Alexandrian Tragedy -- 4. Callimachus Displaces the Tragic -- 5. Redefining the Tragic in the Idylls of Theocritus -- 6. Tragedy into Epic in Apollonius’ Argonautica -- 7. In the Metatragic Cosmos of the Alexandra -- 8. The Romantic Tragic -- Conclusion: Tragic Failures and Hellenistic Challenges -- Bibliography -- Index