Staging and Constructing the Divine in Menander

Miles, Sarah

Abstract

The chapter explores Menander’s dramatisation of divine characters and asks: what was the significance for Menander’s original audiences of seeing divinities on-stage? Through analysing Menander’s engagement with the dramatic tradition of portraying gods, the chapter suggests that Menander exploits his audience’s familiarity with dramatic setting and religious contexts to bring the audience into a closer relationship with the divine. Earlier scholarship viewed Menander’s audience as ‘bourgeois’ sceptics of gods, but recent research on Hellenistic religion, divine personifications and Menander’s audiences forces a re-evaluation of this position if we are to understand the significance of divine stage-presence for Menander’s original audiences.

Citation

Miles, S. (2013). Staging and Constructing the Divine in Menander. In A. Sommerstein (Ed.), Menander in contexts (75-89). Routledge

• Online Publication Date: Dec 13, 2013
• Publication Date: Dec 13, 2013
• Deposit Date: Apr 23, 2013
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 28, 2016
• Publisher: Routledge
• Pages: 75-89
• Series Title: Routledge monographs in classical studies
• Book Title: Menander in contexts.
• Chapter Number: 6
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1652517
• Publisher URL: http://www.routledge.com/9780415843713