Suspense in Ancient Greek Literature

Published by De Gruyter 2021

Suspense in Ancient Greek Literature

Edited by: Ioannis M. Konstantakos and Vasileios Liotsakis

Volume 113 in the series Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715521

Overview
Contents

About this book

The use of suspense in ancient literature attracts increasing attention in modern scholarship, but hitherto there has been no comprehensive work analysing the techniques of suspense through the various genres of the Classical literary canon. This volume aspires to fill such a gap, exploring the phenomenon of suspense in the earliest narrative writings of the western world, the literature of the ancient Greeks. The individual chapters focus on a wide range of poetic and prose genres (epic, drama, historiography, oratory, novel, and works of literary criticism) and examine the means by which ancient authors elicited emotions of tense expectation and fearful anticipation for the outcome of the story, the development of the plot, or the characters' fate. A variety of theoretical tools, from narratology and performance studies to psychological and cognitive approaches, are exploited to study the operation of suspense in the works under discussion. Suspenseful effects are analysed in a double perspective, both in terms of the artifices employed by authors and with regard to the responses and experiences of the audience. The volume will be useful to classical scholars, narratologists, and literary historians and theorists.

Author / Editor information

I. M. Konstantakos, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and V. Liotsakis, University of the Peloponnese, Kalamata, Greece.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	I
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	V
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	VII
Introduction Vasileios Liotsakis Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I: Literary Criticism
ἵν’ ὁ θεατὴς προσδοκῶν καθῇτο: What Did Ancient Critics Know of ‘Suspense’? Anna A. Novokhatko Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	31
Part II: Archaic Poetry
Homeric Suspense Ruth Scodel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	55
Suspense, Orality, and Hymnic Narrative: The Case of the Homeric Hymns Polyxeni Strolonga Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	73
Part III: Tragedy
Waiting for Xerxes: Information Economics and the Composition of a Suspense Plot out of Familiar Events in Aeschylus’ Persae Nikos Manousakis Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	107
Narrative Suspense in Sophocles: The Moral Perplexity of Duelling Narratives in Philoctetes Andreas Markantonatos Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	141
Affective Suspense in Euripides’ Ion Francis Dunn Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	169
Part IV: Comedy
Staged Suspense: Scenic Spectacle, Anxious Expectation, and Dramatic Enthralment in Aristophanic Theatre Ioannis M. Konstantakos Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191
Part V: Historiography
Suspense in Herodotus’ Narrative of the Battle of Thermopylae Vasiliki Zali Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	229
The Thucydidean Question, Structuralism, and ‘Neo-Unitarianism’: Near Misses and Suspense in the History Vasileios Liotsakis Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	243
Suspense in Conspiracy Narratives: Polybius and Appian Nikos Miltsios Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	285
Part VI: Oratory
Suspense in Lysias Michael J. Edwards Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	305
Narrative and Suspense in Public Forensic Orations Christos Kremmydas Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	319
Part VII: Novel
Suspense in the Ancient Greek Novel Silvia Montiglio Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	349
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	379
List of Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	411
Index Νominum et Rerum Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	415
Index Locorum Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	425

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
Audience: Classical scholars, narratologists, and literary historians and theorists
Pages
- Front matter: 8
- Main content: 441
Illustrations
- Tables: 1
Keywords: suspense; ancient Greek literature; narratology; reader-response criticism

eBook

Published: February 22, 2021
ISBN: 9783110715521

Hardcover

Published: February 22, 2021
ISBN: 9783110715392