Further information: Poetics (Aristotle)Aristotle wrote in his work Poetics that tragedy is characterized by seriousness and involves a great person who experiences a reversal of fortune (Peripeteia). ...
The word "tragedy" appears to have been used to describe different phenomena at different times. It derives from Classical Greek τραγ?δ?α, contracted from trag(o)-aoidiā = "goat song", which ...
A literary technique or literary device can be used by authors in order to enhance the written framework of a piece of literature, and produce specific effects. Literary techniques encompass a wide ra ...
There have been various attempts to define "literature". Simon and Delyse Ryan begin their attempt to answer the question "What is Literature?" with the observation:The quest to discover a definition ...
In theatre, a farce is a comedy that aims at entertaining the audience through situations that are highly exaggerated, extravagant, and thus improbable. Farces are often highly incomprehensible plot-w ...
While Plato spends much of the Republic having Socrates narrate a conversation about the city he founds with Glaucon and Adeimantus "in speech", the discussion eventually turns to considering four reg ...
While visiting the Piraeus with Glaucon, Socrates is asked by Polemarchus to join him for a celebration. Cephalus, Polemarchus, and Thrasymachus are then each asked their definitions of justice by Soc ...
Thalia (/θ??la??/; Ancient Greek: Θ?λεια, Θαλ?α; "the joyous, the flourishing", from Ancient Greek: θ?λλειν, thállein; "to flourish, to be verdant") was the Muse who presided o ...
The archaic poet Sappho of Lesbos was given the compliment of being called "the tenth Muse" by Plato. The phrase has become a somewhat conventional compliment paid to female poets since. In Callimach ...
In Boeotia, the homeland of Hesiod, a tradition persisted that the Muses had once been three in number. Diodorus Siculus quotes Hesiod to the contrary, observing:Writers similarly disagree also concer ...
Phallic processions, or Penis Parade, called phallika in ancient Greece, were a common feature of Dionysiac celebrations; they were processions that advanced to a cult center, and were characterized b ...
Ribaldry is present to some degree in every culture and has likely been around for all of human history. Works like Lysistrata by Aristophanes, Menaechmi by Plautus, Cena Trimalchionis by Petronius, a ...
Traditional accounts of the author's life are found in many commentaries and include details such as these: He was born on Salamis Island around 484 BCE, with parents Cleito (mother) and Mnesarchus (f ...
In the United States of America, issues of obscenity raise issues of limitations on the freedom of speech and of the press which are otherwise protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of t ...
The origins of performance culture and the emergence of the satyr play can be traced to ancient rural celebrations in honour of the god Dionysus. Rush Rehm argues that these inaugurated the "agricultu ...
