Greek and Roman Actors. Aspects of an Ancient Profession.

EASTERLING, P., and E. HALL, (eds.),

ISBN 10: 0521651409 / ISBN 13: 9780521651400

Published by Cambridge University Press, 2002

About this Item

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (.), 2002. 1st ed. XXXI,510p. ills. Cloth wrps. Nice copy. 'This fresh, valuable, and scrupulously edited volume explores an understudied topic: the acting profession throughout the whole of Graeco-Roman antiquity. Although the evidence is fragmentary, the essays in this volume touch on the full range of literary, historical, and material sources and include actors of mime and pantomime, singers and musicians, as well as the better-known theatre actors. The book is devided into three parts. Part 1 addresses different performative modes and styles; it includes singing actors and musicians, as well as the actors? use of costume, gesture, movement, and voice. Part 2 examines the acting profession from Classical Athens to late antiquity and Byzantium and its status at different periods; two essays take a look at the problems of interpreting visual depictions of actors at Aphrodisias and Ephesus. The final part deals with acting in the cultural and literary imagination, including the reception of ancient actors since the Renaissance. Each of the twenty chapters offers suggestions for further reading.' (HELENE P. FOLEY in Classical Philology 2004, p.169). With contributions from a.o.: Edith Hall, Peter Wilson, Richard Green, Gregory Sifakis, Jane Lightfoot, Ruth Webb, Pat Easterling, Elaine Fantham, Ismene Lada-Richards. From the library of the late Prof. W. Geoffrey Arnott.

Seller Inventory # 25115

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Greek and Roman Actors. Aspects of an Ancient Profession.
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication Date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521651409
• ISBN 13: 9780521651400
• Binding: Hardcover

About this title

Synopsis

This collection of twenty essays examines the art, profession and idea of the actor in Greek and Roman antiquity, and has been commissioned and arranged to cast as much interdisciplinary and transhistorical light as possible on these elusive but fascinating ancient professionals. It covers a chronological span from the sixth century BC to Byzantium (and even beyond to the way that ancient actors have influenced the arts from the Renaissance to the twentieth century) and stresses the huge geographical spread of ancient actors. Some essays focus on particular themes, such as the evidence for women actors or the impact of acting on the presentation of suicide in literature; others offer completely new evidence, such as graffiti relating to actors in Asia Minor; others ask new questions, such as what subjective experience can be reconstructed for the ancient actor. There are numerous illustrations and all Greek and Latin passages are translated.

About the Authors

Pat Easterling is Emeritus Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Newnham College and a Fellow of the British Academy. She was Professor of Greek at University College London from 1987 to 1994, and has also served as President of the Classical Association (1989/1990) and the Hellenic Society (1996–1999). In addition to serving as General Editor of the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics ever since its foundation over thirty years ago, she has published an edition within this series of Sophocles' Trachiniae (1982), co-edited, with B. M. W. Knox, Volume 1 of the Cambridge History of Classical Literature (1985) and edited The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy (1997). She is currently working on an edition of Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus for the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series.

Edith Hall is Professor of Greek Cultural History at the University of Durham and has previously taught at the Universities of Cambridge, Reading and Oxford. She is Co-Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama at the University of Oxford and author of Inventing the Barbarian (1989), editor of Aeschylus' Persians (1996) and co-editor of Medea in Performance (2000).