Title:
Classical literature on screen : affinities of imagination / Martin M. Winkler.
Author:
Winkler, Martin M., author.
Publication Information:
Cambridge, United Kingdom : Cambridge University Press, 2017.
©2017
Call Number:
PA3009 .W56 2017
Abstract:
Martin M. Winkler argues for a new approach to various creative affinities between ancient verbal and modern visual narratives. He examines screen adaptations of classical epic, tragedy, comedy, myth, and history, exploring, for example, how ancient rhetorical principles regarding the emotions apply to moving images and how Aristotle's perspective on thrilling plot-turns can recur on screen. He also interprets several popular films, such as 300 and Nero, and analyzes works by international directors, among them Pier Paolo Pasolini (Oedipus Rex, Medea), Jean Cocteau (The Testament of Orpheus), Mai Zetterling (The Girls), Lars von Trier (Medea), Arturo Ripstein (Such Is Life), John Ford (westerns), Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho), and Spike Lee (Chi-Raq). The book demonstrates the undiminished vitality of classical myth and literature in our visual media, as with screen portrayals of Helen of Troy. It is important for all classicists and scholars and students of film, literature, and history.
ISBN:
9781107191280
Physical Description:
xii, 410 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm.
Contents:
Introduction -- Part I. Creative Affinities : Ancient Texts and Modern Images. The Classical Sense of Cinema and the Cinema's Sense of Antiquity -- Pasolini's and Cocteau's Oedipus : No Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns in the Cinema Age -- Part II. Elective Affinities : Tragedy and Comedy. Medea's Infanticide : How to Present the Unimaginable -- Striking Beauties : Aristophanes' Lysistrata -- Part III. Non-elective Affinities : Plot and Theme. "More Striking" : Aristotelian Poetics in Achilles Tatius, Heliodorus, and Alfred Hitchcock -- John Ford, America's Virgil -- Part IV. Counter-Affinities : Ideological and Narrative Distortions of History. Fascinating Ur-Fascism : The Case of 300 -- Good Nero; or, The Best Intentions -- Part V. Aesthetic Affinities : Portraits of Ladies. Regal Beauties in Franco Rossi's Films of the Odyssey and Aeneid -- Helen of Troy : Is This the Face That Launched a Thousand Films?
Personal Author:
