{"product_id":"acting-like-men-karen-bassi-9780472106257","title":"Acting Like Men: Gender, Drama, and Nostalgia in Ancient Greece","description":"\"Greek drama demands a story of origins,\" writes Karen Bassi in \u003ci\u003eActing Like Men\u003c\/i\u003e. Abandoning the search for ritual and native origins of Greek drama, Bassi argues for a more secular and less formalist approach to the emergence of theater in ancient Greece. Bassi takes a broad view of Greek drama as a cultural phenomenon, and she discusses a wide variety of texts and artifacts that include epic poetry, historical narrative, philosophical treatises, visual media, and the dramatic texts themselves. \u003cbr\u003eIn her discussion of theaterlike practices and experiences, Bassi proposes new conceptual categories for understanding Greek drama as a cultural institution, viewing theatrical performance as part of what Foucault has called a discursive formation. Bassi also provides an important new analysis of gender in Greek culture at large and in Athenian civic ideology in particular, where spectatorship at the civic theater was a distinguishing feature of citizenship, and where citizenship was denied women.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eActing Like Men\u003c\/i\u003e includes detailed discussions of message-sending as a form of scripted speech in the \u003ci\u003eIliad\u003c\/i\u003e, of disguise and the theatrical body of Odysseus in the \u003ci\u003eOdyssey\u003c\/i\u003e, of tyranny as a theaterlike phenomenon in the narratives of Herodotus, and of Dionysus as the tyrannical and effeminate god of the theater in Euripides' \u003ci\u003eBacchae\u003c\/i\u003e and Aristophanes' \u003ci\u003eFrogs\u003c\/i\u003e. Bassi concludes that the validity of an idealized masculine identity in Greek and Athenian culture is highly contested in the theater, where--in principle--citizens become passive spectators. Thereafter the author considers Athenian theater and Athenian democracy as mutually reinforcing mimetic regimes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eActing Like Men\u003c\/i\u003e will interest those interested in the history of the theater, performance theory, gender and cultural studies, and feminist approaches to ancient texts. \u003cbr\u003eKaren Bassi is Associate Professor of Classics, University of California, Santa Cruz. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Karen Bassi\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0472106252\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780472106257\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Michigan Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 01\/04\/1999\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 296\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.50lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.30h x 6.30w x 1.31d","brand":"Karen Bassi","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":46738977489151,"sku":"9780472106257","price":99.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_9d4c680d-1134-4d25-9d23-32adbbeac061.jpg?v=1743276840","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/acting-like-men-karen-bassi-9780472106257","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}