Reappraising the Choruses of Greek Tragedy

FEB 11, 202654 MIN
Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas

Reappraising the Choruses of Greek Tragedy

FEB 11, 202654 MIN

Description

Rosa Andújar joins me in the Lesche to discuss her new book, Playing the Chorus in Greek Tragedy (Cambridge, 2025).Tragedies mentionedAeschylusAgamemnon (chorus fragmentation)Seven Against Thebes (use of semi-choruses)Suppliant Women ("choral swarm" with multiple groups)SophoclesOedipus Rex (actor-chorus interaction)EuripidesPhaethon ( "augmentation" and secondary choruses)Trojan Women (chorus entering in fragmented small groups)Hippolytus ( subsidiary chorus appears before the main chorus)Orestes (unusual choral divisions)Suppliant Women (exceptional choral activity)Other ancient textsAristotle, Poetics (mentioned for lack of interest in the chorus)Aristophanes, Birds (for having a 'differentiated' chorus)Plutarch, On Listening (de Audiendo) 45e-f (Euripides training a chorus; a chorus member bursts out laughing)Antiphon 6 (On the Chorus Boy: I don't mention it by name, but this is the speech regarding the death of a choreute by performance enhancing drugs)Modern worksAzoulay, Vincent and Paulin Ismard. 2020. Athènes 403: une histoire chorale. Paris / 2025. Athenes 403 BC: A Democracy in Crisis, trans. Lorna Coing. Cambridge.Carlson, Marvin. 2003. The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine. Ann Arbor.Diggle, James. 1970. Euripides: Phaethon. Cambridge.duBois, Page. 2022. Democratic Swarms: Ancient Comedy and the Politics of the People. Chicago. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (on choral powerlessness/inertness)Halliwell, Stephen. 1998. Aristotle's Poetics. Bristol/Chicago.Jackson, Lucy. 2019. The Chorus of Drama in the Fourth Century BCE. Cambridge.Sansone, David. 2016. "The Size of the Tragic Chorus," Phoenix 70: 233-54.Uhlig, Anna. 2019. Theatrical Reenactment in Pindar and Aeschylus. 2019.About our guestRosa Andújar is Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. She has published widely on Greek drama in its fifth-century Athenian context as well as on its modern global reception, particularly across the Americas. She is the author of Playing the Chorus in Greek Tragedy (Cambridge, 2025) and the editor of The Greek Trilogy of Luis Alfaro (Methuen Drama, 2020), which won the 2020 London Hellenic Prize. ________________________________Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!Podcast art: Daniel BlancoTheme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using SibeliusThis podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study. Instagram: @leschepodcastEmail: [email protected] a book using this form