Isabel Ruffell is a Classicist. She is a Professor of Greek Drama and Culture at the University of Glasgow.
Ruffell received her DPhil. from the Faculty of Literae Humaniores, Oxford University, in 1999. Her doctoral thesis was entitled A Poetics of the Absurd: Reforming Attic Old Comedy. [1] Her supervisor was Oliver Taplin. [2]
Following her DPhil, Ruffell was first a lecturer at The Queen's College and Wadham College, University of Oxford and then held a Junior Research Fellowship at Christ Church College. [3] Ruffell's doctoral research was published in 2011 by Oxford University Press as Politics and Anti-realism in Athenian Old Comedy: The Art of the Impossible. [4] Reviews of this book described it as "a novel and systematic approach to humour in Old Comedy" aiming "to explain the complex relationship between humour and politics; [Ruffell] therefore combines theoretical analysis applied to selected close readings with the cognitive responses and the role of the audience" [5] , and as a "rich academic study of the intellectual and political context of the plays... Ruffell refreshingly connects Platonic theories of art and letters with familiar cultural references to cinema and television, from Airplane! to Monty Python and South Park". [6] Ruffell has also published a companion to the tragedy Prometheus Bound , praised by a reviewer as "cover[ing] all the bases with well-documented scholarship and eminent fairness to all sides of what has become in the last few decades a very perplexing and controversial drama... does an admirable job of embedding the play within its political and intellectual context", [7] as well as further articles on Greek and Roman comedy, [8] [9] tragedy, [10] and satire; [11] ancient automata; [12] [13] and queer readings of classical literature. [14] [15]
Ruffell's research project Hero of Alexandria and his Theatrical Automata, ran from 2014 until 2018, and was funded by the Leverhulme Trust (£282,881). [16] [17]
In 2007, Ruffell provided the English translation for the National Theatre of Scotland's production of the Bacchae, an ancient Greek tragedy by Euripides. Her translation was adapted by David Greig and directed by John Tiffany. The play opened the Edinburgh International Festival in 2007. [18] [19] [20] Ruffell also provided the literal translation for Grieg's production of Aeschylus' Suppliant Women (2016). [21]
Ruffell is a member of the Council of University Classics Departments' Equality, Diversity & Inclusivity Committee [22] and in 2022 joined the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, [23] commenting that "It is morally indefensible for them [the Parthenon Marbles] to be in London". [24]
Isabel Ruffell's staff page, University of Glasgow
"Why is 'Medea' Shocking? Myths of Safe Spaces and the Anti-Trans Backlash", online seminar given by Isabel Ruffell
Aeschylus was an ancient Greek tragedian, and is often described as the father of tragedy. Academic knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier Greek tragedy is largely based on inferences made from reading his surviving plays. According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in the theatre and allowed conflict among them. Formerly, characters interacted only with the chorus.
Euripides was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him, but the Suda says it was ninety-two at most. Of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived more or less complete. There are many fragments of most of his other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined—he became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenes, and Menander.
In Greek mythology, Prometheus is sometimes referred to as the God of Fire. Prometheus is best known for defying the Olympian gods by stealing fire from them and giving it to humanity in the form of technology, knowledge, and more generally, civilization.
Tragedy is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy is to invoke an accompanying catharsis, or a "pain [that] awakens pleasure", for the audience. While many cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, the term tragedy often refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilization. That tradition has been multiple and discontinuous, yet the term has often been used to invoke a powerful effect of cultural identity and historical continuity—"the Greeks and the Elizabethans, in one cultural form; Hellenes and Christians, in a common activity," as Raymond Williams puts it.
In Greek mythology, Kratos, also known as Cratus or Cratos, is the divine personification of strength. He is the son of Pallas and Styx. Kratos and his siblings Nike ('Victory'), Bia ('Force'), and Zelus ('Glory') are all the personification of a specific trait. Kratos is first mentioned alongside his siblings in Hesiod's Theogony. According to Hesiod, Kratos and his siblings dwell with Zeus because their mother Styx came to him first to request a position in his regime, so he honored her and her children with exalted positions. Kratos and his sister Bia are best known for their appearance in the opening scene of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound. Acting as agents of Zeus, they lead the captive Titan Prometheus on stage. Kratos compels the mild-mannered blacksmith god Hephaestus to chain Prometheus to a rock as punishment for his theft of fire.
The Oresteia is a trilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus in the 5th century BCE, concerning the murder of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra, the murder of Clytemnestra by Orestes, the trial of Orestes, the end of the curse on the House of Atreus and the pacification of the Furies.
A Greek chorus, or simply chorus, in the context of ancient Greek tragedy, comedy, satyr plays, and modern works inspired by them, is a homogeneous, non-individualised group of performers, who comment with a collective voice on the dramatic action. The chorus consisted of between 12 and 50 players, who variously danced, sang or spoke their lines in unison, and sometimes wore masks.
Prometheus Bound is an ancient Greek tragedy traditionally attributed to Aeschylus and thought to have been composed sometime between 479 BC and the terminus ante quem of 424 BC. The tragedy is based on the myth of Prometheus, a Titan who defies Zeus, and protects and gives fire to mankind, for which he is subjected to the wrath of Zeus and punished.
The Persians is an ancient Greek tragedy written during the Classical period of Ancient Greece by the Greek tragedian Aeschylus. It is the second and only surviving part of a now otherwise lost trilogy that won the first prize at the dramatic competitions in Athens' City Dionysia festival in 472 BC, with Pericles serving as choregos.
The Dionysia was a large festival in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus, the central events of which were the theatrical performances of dramatic tragedies and, from 487 BC, comedies. It was the second-most important festival after the Panathenaia. The Dionysia actually consisted of two related festivals, the Rural Dionysia and the City Dionysia, which took place in different parts of the year. They were also an essential part of the Dionysian Mysteries.
Ancient Greek theatre was a theatrical culture that flourished in ancient Greece from 700 BC. The city-state of Athens, which became a significant cultural, political, and religious place during this period, was its centre, where the theatre was institutionalised as part of a festival called the Dionysia, which honoured the god Dionysus. Tragedy, comedy, and the satyr play were the three dramatic genres to emerge there. Athens exported the festival to its numerous colonies. Modern Western theatre comes, in large measure, from the theatre of ancient Greece, from which it borrows technical terminology, classification into genres, and many of its themes, stock characters, and plot elements.
Greek tragedy is a form of theatre from Ancient Greece and Greek inhabited Anatolia. It reached its most significant form in Athens in the 5th century BC, the works of which are sometimes called Attic tragedy.
The satyr play is a form of Attic theatre performance related to both comedy and tragedy. It preserves theatrical elements of dialogue, actors speaking verse, a chorus that dances and sings, masks and costumes. Its relationship to tragedy is strong; satyr plays were written by tragedians, and satyr plays were performed in the Dionysian festival following the performance of a group of three tragedies. The satyr play’s mythological-heroic stories and the style of language are similar to that of the tragedies. Its connection with comedy is also significant – it has similar plots, titles, themes, characters, and happy endings. The remarkable feature of the satyr play is the chorus of satyrs, with their costumes that focus on the phallus, and with their language, which uses wordplay, sexual innuendos, references to breasts, farting, erections, and other references that do not occur in tragedy. As Mark Griffith points out, the satyr play was "not merely a deeply traditional Dionysiac ritual, but also generally accepted as the most appropriate and satisfying conclusion to the city’s most complex and prestigious cultural event of the year."
Eupolis was an Athenian poet of the Old Comedy, who flourished during the time of the Peloponnesian War.
Old Comedy (archaia) is the first period of the ancient Greek comedy, according to the canonical division by the Alexandrian grammarians. The most important Old Comic playwright is Aristophanes – whose works, with their daring political commentary and abundance of sexual innuendo, effectively define the genre today.
Oliver Taplin, FBA is a retired British academic and classicist. He was a fellow of Magdalen College and Professor of Classical Languages and Literature at the University of Oxford. He holds a DPhil from Oxford University.
In the theatre of ancient Greece, the choregos was a wealthy Athenian citizen who assumed the public duty, or choregiai, of financing the preparation for the chorus and other aspects of dramatic production that were not paid for by the government of the polis or city-state. Modern Anglicized forms of the word include choragus and choregus, with the accepted plurals being the Latin forms choregi and choragi. In Modern Greek, the word χορηγός is synonymous with the word "grantor".
Phrike is the spirit of horror in Greek mythology. Her name literally means "tremor, shivering", and has the same stem as the verb φρίττω (phrittō) "to tremble". The term "Phrike" is widely used in tragedy.
Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music, and dance. It is the oldest form of drama, though live theatre has now been joined by modern recorded forms. Elements of art, such as painted scenery and stagecraft such as lighting are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience. Places, normally buildings, where performances regularly take place are also called "theatres", as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον, itself from θεάομαι.
In ancient Greece, the concept of autochthones means the indigenous inhabitants of a country, including mythological figures, as opposed to settlers, and those of their descendants who kept themselves free from an admixture of colonizing entities.