Word Play. Ancient Greek Drama and the Role of Particles

In November 2012 the Emmy-Noether research group working on Ancient Greek particles will bring together an international group of scholars to discuss the language used in Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes. As the last in a series of three workshops, the meeting will pay special attention to particles, in light of the original setting of the theatrical works.

All that is left to us from the grand performances of Ancient Greek tragedy and comedy are some of their texts. Whereas the plays were built out of these words, the dramatic language use was at the same time determined by its staging in the Athenian theatre. By focusing on the interaction between performance and linguistic strategies—in particular those involving particles—we hope to get a clearer view of these fascinating dramas and their context.

Classical Greek tragedies and comedies were acted out during religious festivals, in front of an audience who would assign a prize to one playwright. Although dramatic genres developed considerably over the course of the fifth century BCE, all the plays we know contained parts recited by individual characters as well as songs and dances by a chorus. They displayed a wide variety of communicative situations, and thus of language use. Not surprisingly, therefore, drama texts constitute a useful source for studies on Greek particles: they show a great diversity and a high frequency of these words.

The importance of awareness about the performance context has been stressed in recent research on tragedy and comedy. Different performative aspects may clarify linguistic differences between tragedy and comedy, across tragedians, across plays, and within plays. We can observe, for instance, a much lower frequency of particles in tragic choral songs than in other parts of the texts, and consequently fewer particles in Aeschylus, whose tragedies show a greater prominence of lyric, than in Sophocles and Euripides. Furthermore, Euripides is said to be more ‘colloquial’ in his particle usage than the other tragedians; taking into account performative elements may explain whether and why this is the case. As

for comedy, plays often explicitly refer to other genres along with their linguistic peculiarities, which yields a different use of particles in contexts of parody. As comedy differs from tragedy in performative functions, and therefore in style, certain (uses of) particles are confined to communicative situations found only in Aristophanes.

Several topics may be highlighted regarding the relationship between performance and linguistic strategies, such as the turn-taking practices of dramatic discourse. Among many other things, Greek theatrical texts can be seen as representations of conversations between characters. What can we learn from research on turn-taking in modern languages, in order to improve our understanding of the structures of tragic and comic dialogues? More generally, how do poets give shape to the interaction between characters, in performative as well as linguistic terms? How do they verbalize emotions? A related topic is that of register switch, which seems to be particularly important in comedy, but also plays a role in the special style(s) of tragic choral songs. Furthermore, the factor of the ‘body’ on stage—connected to the presence, absence, and even death of characters—cannot be ignored with the original performative context in mind. How can we explain the particle use at moments of remarkable stagecraft? The latter question is linked to the relevance of theatrical space, for example after changes of scenes. Zooming in on different performative aspects may help us to better understand the role of particles in all of these contexts. Complementarily, particles may illuminate how we could interpret communicative intentions of a speaker, or connections to other parts of discourse.

The various fields of expertise of the workshop participants include philology, linguistics, literary criticism, translation, and stage directing. Speakers are invited to present a close reading of a stretch of text from Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, or Aristophanes; additionally, a joint discussion of a few passages will be proposed. We hope that the meeting will throw new light on the inseparable unity of language and performance, and we are looking forward to an inspiring exchange of words on plays.

Programm

Contact:
Dr. Anna Bonifazi

Seminar für Klassische Philologie
der Universität Heidelberg
Marstallhof 2-4
69117 Heidelberg
Tel.: +49 (
0) 6221 54 2563       
E-Mail: anna.bonifazi@skph.uni-heidelberg.de

Annemieke Drummen
Tel.: (+49) (0) 6221 54 2563
Fax: (+49) (0) 6221 54 2577
E-Mail: drummen@uni-heidelberg.de

 

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Letzte Änderung: 30.11.2012
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