Figures of Play: Greek Drama and Metafictional Poetics

Abstract

Figures of Play explores reflexive aspects of ancient theatrical culture across genres. Fifth century tragedy and comedy sublimated agonistic basis of Greek civilization in a way that invited community of polis to confront itself. In theatre, as in courts and assemblies, a significant subset of Athenian public was spectator and judge of contests where important social and ideological issues were played to it by its own members. The syntax of drama is shown to involve specific figures of through which theatrical medium turns back on itself to study various contexts of its production. Greek tragedy and comedy were argued to be tempermentally metafictional in that they are always involved in recycling older fictions into contemporary scenarios of immediate relevance to polis. The phemonenology of this process is discussed under three headings, each a figure of play: 1) surface play-momentary disruption of theatrical pretense through word, sign, gesture; 2) mise en abyme-a mini-drama embedded in a larger framework; 3) contrafact-an extended remake in which one play is based on another. Following three chapters in which this framework is set forth and illustrated with concrete examples there are five case studies named after protagonists of plays in question: Aias, Pentheus, Tereus, Bellerophontes, Herakles. Hence other meaning of figures of as stage figures. In second section of book on the Anatomy of Dramatic Fiction, special attention is paid to interaction between genres. In particular, Aristophanic comedy is shown to be engaged in an intense rivalry with tragedy that underscores different ways in which each genre deployed its powers of representation. Tragedy refashions myth: in Bakkhai, for example, it is argued that Euripides reinvented Dionysis to be specifically a theatrical god, a symbol of tragedy's powers of representation. Comedy refashions tragedy: in a series of utopian comedies, Aristophanes re-enacts a tragic scenario in a way that revals comedy as a superior means of solving political and social crisis.