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COPYRIGHT 2001 www.wmich.edu/compdr
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. xii + 417. $69.95.
Recent criticism encourages us to explore interstices, the interactions between cultures, for example, or the interpenetration of genres. This collection of essays, drawn from a conference at Cambridge in 1996, pays attention to the overlap of drama, oratory, inscriptions, and music. The approaches are varied, asking why Athenian drama became so popular outside Athens, or what orators expected to do by quoting Homer, and taken together they help us to see Athenian society as a continuum.
The editors want the volume to do more. Simon Goldhill in the introduction "Programme notes" sets out his expectations: "When the Athenian citizen speaks in the Assembly, exercises in the gymnasium, sings at the symposium, or courts a boy, each activity has its own regime of display and regulation; each activity forms an integral part of the exercise of citizenship. This volume suggests that `performance' will provide a useful heuristic category to explore the connections and overlaps between these different areas of activity, and, moreover, that these connections and overlaps are significant for understanding the culture of Athenian democracy" (1).
The expectation that performance will be a central and productive concern is reinforced by the titles of subsequent sections ("The performance of drama," "The drama of performance" etc.) and by Goldhill's extended overview of performance studies (10-20). Yet most essays deal with "performance" only in the formal sense that they discuss some aspect of Greek tragedy or comedy, while others deal with it in the...
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