• Cambridge Scholars Publishing

    "[Genetically Modified Organisms: A Scientific-Political Dialogue on a Meaningless Meme is] presents the debate associated with introducing GMOs as a traditional debate between science and progress against dogma. After reading it, I hope that science will win for the sake of all of us."

    - Professor David Zilberman, University of California at Berkeley

Performative Plautus: Sophistics, Metatheater and Translation

This book provides a theoretical and philosophical framework for the analysis of Plautus within a performative and philosophical perspective on language and theatrical performance. The book offers an insightful understanding of Plautus’ texts as more than simple literary remains of “archaic” Latin literature, but as witnesses of a process of using language to perform an entire world through the recognition of the power of language itself as a creative and constitutive agent of theatrical codification and variation of its own rules and conventions. The analyses of several of Plautus’ plays are carried out through the lenses of Cassin’s proposal of an effet monde as a result of a performative sophistic view on language, as well as Florence Dupont’s unique stance on Roman Comedy as an example of non-Aristotelian theater, based on metatheater and convention-variation as special characteristics of a ludic theater which plays around with its own rules after putting them in the foreground. Barbara Cassin and Florence Dupont also contribute with a foreword and a preface.


Rodrigo Tadeu Gonçalves is a Professor of Classics at the Federal University of Paraná–Brazil (UFPR), having received his PhD from the same institution and completed his postdoctoral research at the Centre Léon Robin, Paris (ENS-Sorbonne-CNRS). His recent work deals with poetic and rhythmic translations of the classics, the reception of Roman Comedy (especially in Brazil), and the philosophy of language and translation. He is currently working on a full hexametric translation of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura.

"As promised by the subtitle “Sophistics, Metatheatre, and Translation,” Performative Plautus blends philosophy, comedy, and translation studies. This vigorous interdisciplinary approach is the book’s greatest asset. Gonçalves is most innovative in his application of speech act theory to demonstrate the performative aspects of Plautine dramaturgy in the Amphitruo. [...] [T]he book succeeds beautifully in illustrating Plautus’ creativity and verbal artistry."

Deepti Menon Bryn Mawr Classical Review 24.04.2017

Buy This Book

ISBN: 1-4438-8257-7

ISBN13: 978-1-4438-8257-6

Release Date: 5th October 2015

Pages: 130

Price: £41.99

-
+