The Politics of Re-(en)visioning: Contemporary British Rewritings of Greek and Roman Tragedies

This thesis examines three different kinds of socio-political rewritings of Greek and Roman tragedies – Sarah Kane’s “Phaedra’s Love”, Tony Harrison’s “Prometheus”, and Martin Crimp’s “Cruel and Tender” – written, staged or screened in Britain (and, more precisely, England) between 1996 and 2004. Offering close readings of these re-visionary appropriations, this dissertation analyses some of the innumerable and unexpected forms that ancient tragedy can assume today. In particular, it explores how three talented British authors have subverted the conventions of the noblest literary and dramatic genre in order to (re)write contemporaneity in ways that oscillate between the personal and the public, the local and the global, the national and the transnational.

A. Greek Testament, 1768

Leather-hardcover volume containing an interleaved and annotated copy of a Greek Testament. The printed text is in Greek, but most of Pearson's notes are in English and discuss or translate the text. The inside front cover is inscribed "E. Pearson 1768." There is no title page or imprint information.

I. Sermons, 1709-1724

This series contains seventeen handwritten sermons composed by Nicholas Sever and delivered in the Boston area between 1709 and 1722. Following the completion of his Master's degree at Harvard in 1704, Sever preached in towns around New England including Haverhill in 1709, Dover, New Hampshire (where he was ordained in 1711 and remained until 1715), and in Cambridge as part of his duties as a Harvard Tutor between 1716 and 1728. During these years, Sever also filled in for ministers in nearby parishes. Sever's sermons reflect these engagements, and he occasionally noted the dates and locations where the sermons were delivered in the margin of the first page of the sermon.