Crossroads in the Black Aegean

Oedipus, Antigone, and Dramas of the African Diaspora

Datos Bibliográficos

ID20004458
AutoresBarbara Goff (0000-0003-0598-2843, University of Reading), Michael Simpson (0000-0003-2322-5360, University of London)
Año2007
Páginas420
Fecha de publicación2007-12-01
Open AccessNo
TipoBOOK
RevistaCrossroads in the Black Aegean (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditorialOxford University PressOxford (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199217182.001.0001
OpenAlexW2487026186
Open LibraryOL10145808M
ISBN9780199217182
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas20
Referencias citadas51

This book seeks to explain the prominence of Sophocles' Theban plays among those Greek tragedies adapted by dramatists across the African diaspora. It argues that the Theban plays reflect on three themes which have become crucial in the postcolonial context: identity, the grounding of civilization on barbarism, and transmission of culture over time and space. To adapt the Theban dramas is thus a massively theoretical as well as an audaciously practical act, because they have been installed as the script that both legislates and explains how they, and indeed all other cultural artefacts, are conveyed. African, Afro-Caribbean and African-American adaptations engage with the cultural politics of the so-called Western canon, and use their self-consciously literary status variously to assert, ironize, and challenge their own place, and the place of the Greek ‘originals’, in relation to that tradition. Beyond these oedipal reflexes, the adaptations offer alternative African models of cultural transmission. The book is informed by and contributes to postcolonial theory and theories of classical reception. In particular, it develops a new analytic concept, the ‘Black Aegean’, with which to theorize the ways in which colonialist and postcolonialist discourses have staged various encounters between ancient Greece and contemporary Africa. This construct mediates through the plays the later debates about the Black Atlantic and Black Athena

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Barbarism · Civilization · Context (archaeology) · Diaspora · Identity (music) · Literature · Postcolonialism (international relations) · Relation (database) · Sociology · Anthropology · Contemporary and Historical Greek Studies · Gender Studies · History · Philippine History and Culture · Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism · African diaspora in literature · African drama (English) · African literature · African literature, history and criticism · Ancient (Classical) Greek · Ancient & Classical · Ancient and Classical · Antigone (Sophocles) · Bewerkingen · Black studies · Classical influences · Criticism · Engels · History and criticism · Influence · Literary Criticism · Literary Criticism & Collections · Literature - Classics · Oedipus Coloneus (Sophocles) · Oedipus tyrannus (Sophocles) · Plays & playwrights: classical, early & medieval · Plays & playwrights: from c 1900 · Poetry & poets: classical, early & medieval · Postkolonialisme · Sophocles