This new verse translation of Aristophanes' comedies offers one of the world's great comic dramatists in a form that is both historically faithful and theatrically vigorous. Aristophanes' plays were produced for the festival theater of classical Athens in the fifth century BC and encompass the whole gamut of humor, from brilliantly inventive fantasy to obscene vulgarity. This edition includes a substantial general introduction and introductory essays for each of the plays, as well as full explanatory notes and an index of names.

Birds and Other Plays (Oxford World's Classics)

Literature & Fiction

Halliwell, Stephen

Aristophanes

Dramas & Plays

Oxford University Press

This is the first new edition in English for more than half a century of one of the most influential works in the entire history of aesthetics, the treatise On the Sublime, whose author is unknown but usually called Longinus. It was On the Sublime which was chiefly responsible, in the earlymodern period, for giving the vocabulary of 'sublimity' the important place which it has held ever since in critical discourse about literature, visual art, music, and the experience of nature. This edition contains a substantial introduction to the contents of the work; a newly edited Greek textwith facing English translation (designed to be both accurate and readable, and therefore of assistance to non-specialists); and a comprehensive commentary which deals with everything from details of language to the work's overarching ideas and arguments. The book undertakes the fullest and mostprobing engagement with On the Sublime yet attempted in any language. It advances many new interpretations and seeks to make sense of the treatise both as a remarkable document in its own right and in relation to the traditions of ancient Greek and Roman literature, philosophy, and criticism. Inaddition to supplying all the needs of scholars and students directly concerned with Graeco-Roman culture, the introduction and translation make the book also of value to the many other kinds of readers--philosophers of aesthetics, art-historians, literary critics, historians of ideas, and morebesides--who are interested in the ancient origins as well as the modern development of concepts of the sublime.

Pseudo-Longinus: On the Sublime

History & Criticism

Aristophanes is the only surviving representative of Greek Old Comedy, an exuberant form of festival drama which flourished in Athens during the fifth century BC. One of the most original playwrights in the entire Western tradition, his comedies are remarkable for their brilliant combination of fantasy and satire, their constantly inventive manipulation of language, and their use of absurd characters and plots to expose his society's institutions and values to the bracing challenge of laughter. This vibrant collection of verse translations of Aristophanes' works combines historical accuracy with a sensitive attempt to capture the rich dramatic and literary qualities of Aristophanic comedy. The volume presents Clouds, with its famous caricature of the philosopher Socrates; Women at the Thesmophoria (or Thesmophoriazusae), a work which mixes elaborate parody of tragedy with a great deal of transvestite burlesque; and Frogs, in which the dead tragedians Aeschylus and Euripides engage in a vituperative contest of 'literary criticism' of each other's plays. Featuring expansive introductions to each play and detailed explanatory notes, the volume also includes an illuminating appendix, which provides information and selected fragments from the lost plays of Aristophanes.

Aristophanes: Clouds, Women at the Thesmophoria, Frogs: A Verse Translation, with Introduction and Notes

Aristophanes is the only surviving representative of Greek Old Comedy, an exuberant form of festival drama which flourished in Athens during the fifth century BC. One of the most original playwrights in the entire Western tradition, his comedies are remarkable for their brilliant combination of fantasy and satire, their constantly inventive manipulation of language, and their use of absurd characters and plots to expose his society's institutions and values to the bracing challenge of laughter.\nThis is the third and final volume of a new verse translation of the complete plays of Aristophanes. It contains four of his most overtly political plays: Acharnians, in which an Athenian farmer rebels against the city's war policies; Knights, a biting satire of populist demagogues; Wasps, whose main theme is the Athenian system of lawcourts; and Peace, in which escape from war is symbolized in images of rustic fertility and sensuality. The translation combines historical accuracy with a sensitive attempt to capture the rich dramatic and literary qualities of Aristophanic comedy. Each play is presented with a thought-provoking introduction and extensive editorial notes to accompany the vivid translations, balancing performability with faithfulness to the original.

Aristophanes: Acharnians, Knights, Wasps, Peace: A Verse Translation, with Introductions and Notes

As well as producing one of the finest of all poetic traditions, ancient Greek culture produced a major tradition of poetic theory and criticism. Halliwell's volume offers a series of detailed and challenging interpretations of some of the defining authors and texts in the history of ancient Greek poetics: the Homeric epics, Aristophanes' Frogs, Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Poetics, Gorgias's Helen, Isocrates' treatises, Philodemus' On Poems, and Longinus' On the Sublime. The volume's fundamental concern is with how the Greeks conceptualized the experience of poetry and debated the values of that experience. The book's organizing theme is a recurrent Greek dialectic between ideas of poetry as, on the one hand, a powerfully enthralling experience in its own right (a kind of "ecstasy") and, on the other, a medium for the expression of truths which can exercise lasting influence on its audiences' views of the world. Citing a wide range of modern scholarship, and making frequent connections with later periods of literary theory and aesthetics, Halliwell questions many orthodoxies and received opinions about the texts analyzed. The resulting perspective casts new light on ways in which the Greeks attempted to make sense of the psychology of poetic experience - including the roles of emotion, ethics, imagination, and knowledge - in the life of their culture.

Between Ecstasy and Truth: Interpretations of Greek Poetics from Homer to Longinus

This new verse translation of Aristophanes' comedies offers one of the world's great comic dramatists in a form that is both historically faithful and theatrically vigorous. Aristophanes' plays were produced for the festival theater of classical Athens in the fifth century BC and encompass the whole gamut of humor, from brilliantly inventive fantasy to obscene vulgarity. This edition includes a substantial general introduction and introductory essays for each of the plays, as well as full explanatory notes and an index of names. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

As well as producing one of the finest of all poetic traditions, ancient Greek culture produced a major tradition of poetic theory and criticism. Halliwell's volume offers a series of detailed and challenging interpretations of some of the most defining authors and texts in the history of ancient Greek poetics: the Homeric epics, Aristophanes' Frogs, Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Poetics, Gorgias's Helen, Isocrates' Treatises, Philodemus' On Poems, and Longinus' On the Sublime. The volume's fundamental concern is with how the Greeks conceptualized the experience of poetry and debated the values of that experience. The book's organizing theme is a recurrent Greek dialectic between ideas of poetry as, on the one hand, a powerfully enthralling experience in its own right (a kind of 'ecstasy') and, on the other, a medium for the expression of truths which can exercise lasting influence on its audiences' views of the world. Citing a wide range of modern scholarship, and making frequent connections with later periods of literary theory and aesthetics, Halliwell questions the many orthodoxies and received opinions about the texts analysed. The resulting perspective casts new light on ways in which the Greeks attempted to make sense of the psychology of poetic experience - including the roles of emotion, ethics, imagination, and knowledge - in the life of their culture.

Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity

The first book to offer an integrated reading of ancient Greek attitudes to laughter. Taking material from various genres and contexts, the book analyses both the theory and the practice of laughter as a revealing expression of Greek values and mentalities. Greek society developed distinctive institutions for the celebration of laughter as a capacity which could bridge the gap between humans and gods; but it also feared laughter for its power to expose individuals and groups to shame and even violence. Caught between ideas of pleasure and pain, friendship and enmity, laughter became a theme of recurrent interest in various contexts. Employing a sophisticated model of cultural history, Stephen Halliwell traces elaborations of the theme in a series of important texts: ranging far beyond modern accounts of 'humour', he shows how perceptions of laughter helped to shape Greek conceptions of the body, the mind and the meaning of life.

Greek Laughter: A Study Of Cultural Psychology From Homer To Early Christianity

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Mental Health

Cambridge University Press

The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems

Mimesis is one of the oldest, most fundamental concepts in Western aesthetics. This book offers a new, searching treatment of its long history at the center of theories of representational art: above all, in the highly influential writings of Plato and Aristotle, but also in later Greco-Roman philosophy and criticism, and subsequently in many areas of aesthetic controversy from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. Combining classical scholarship, philosophical analysis, and the history of ideas--and ranging across discussion of poetry, painting, and music--Stephen Halliwell shows with a wealth of detail how mimesis, at all stages of its evolution, has been a more complex, variable concept than its conventional translation of "imitation" can now convey.
 Far from providing a static model of artistic representation, mimesis has generated many different models of art, encompassing a spectrum of positions from realism to idealism. Under the influence of Platonist and Aristotelian paradigms, mimesis has been a crux of debate between proponents of what Halliwell calls "world-reflecting" and "world-simulating" theories of representation in both the visual and musico-poetic arts. This debate is about not only the fraught relationship between art and reality but also the psychology and ethics of how we experience and are affected by mimetic art.
 Moving expertly between ancient and modern traditions, Halliwell contends that the history of mimesis hinges on problems that continue to be of urgent concern for contemporary aesthetics.

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Princeton University Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Halliwell, Stephen. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Halliwell, Stephen

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Halliwell, Stephen. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Birds and Other Plays (Oxford World's Classics)

Pseudo-Longinus: On the Sublime

Aristophanes: Clouds, Women at the Thesmophoria, Frogs: A Verse Translation, with Introduction and Notes

Aristophanes: Acharnians, Knights, Wasps, Peace: A Verse Translation, with Introductions and Notes

Between Ecstasy and Truth: Interpretations of Greek Poetics from Homer to Longinus

Birds and Other Plays (Oxford World's Classics)

Between Ecstasy and Truth: Interpretations of Greek Poetics from Homer to Longinus

Greek Laughter: A Study Of Cultural Psychology From Homer To Early Christianity

Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity

The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems