Rehearsals of Manhood - by John J Winkler (Hardcover)

About the Book

"When John J. Winkler died in 1990, he left a substantially complete manuscript containing the final version of the project he had undertaken in the last decade of his life: an original interpretation of the development and meaning of ancient Greek drama. That manuscript was based on The Martin Classical Lectures at Oberlin College, which Winkler delivered in September of 1988. The present text has been edited and updated by classicists David Halperin, Winkler's literary executor, and Kirk Ormand, Winkler's student and an expert on Greek drama. Rehearsals of Manhood, the final work of a widely recognized and celebrated classical scholar, proposes an entirely new account of Greek drama providing an explanation of the social place of Greek drama and its relation to the gendered organization of Athenian social life. Winkler interprets drama as a secular manhood ritual, a public aesthetic undertaking focused on the initiation of boys into manhood and, specifically, on the training, the display, and the representation of young male warriors. According to Winkler, the chorus of both tragedy and comedy was composed of young Athenian men of citizen status, about eighteen to twenty years of age, who were undergoing military training in order to prepare themselves for the task of warfare; they danced on a rectangular dance floor in a rectangular formation that recalled the arrangement of the infantry phalanx; they accompanied plays that often highlighted scenarios of risk faced by young men on the verge of adulthood; and they performed in a theater whose seating was arranged to display the corporate body of the male citizenry as a whole, both its democratic equality and its hierarchical ranking according to degrees of excellence. Winkler does not offer new interpretations of the texts of Greek plays but a new account of how the very practice of dramatic performance fit into the social life and gender politics of the Athenian state"--

Book Synopsis

A bold reconception of ancient Greek drama by one of the most brilliant and original classical scholars of his generation

When John Winkler died in 1990, he left an unpublished manuscript containing a highly original interpretation of the development and meaning of ancient Greek drama. Rehearsals of Manhood makes this groundbreaking work available for the first time, presenting an entirely novel picture of Greek tragedy and a vivid portrait of the cultural poetics of Athenian manhood.

Ancient Athens was a military conclave as well as an urban capital, and male citizens were expected to embody the ideal of the Athenian citizen-soldier. Winkler understands Attic drama as a secular manhood ritual, a collaborative aesthetic and civic enterprise focused on the initiation of boys into manhood and the training, testing, and representation of young male warriors. Past efforts to discover the origins and development of Greek tragedy have largely treated drama as a literary genre, isolating it from other Athenian social practices. Winkler returns Greek tragedy to its social context, showing how it was one among many forms of display and performance cultivated by elite males in ancient Greece.

The final work of a celebrated classical scholar, Rehearsals of Manhood highlights the civic function of the dramatic festivals at classical Athens as occasions for the examination and representation of boys on the verge of manhood, and offers a fresh explanation of how dramatic performance fit into the social life and gender politics of the Athenian state.

Review Quotes

"[P]rovocative. . . . [Rehearsals of Manhood] is a pleasure to read. As a younger scholar working in a more cautious era, one cannot help but envy its easy flair, and marvel at its ambition.""---Xavier Buxton, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

"[Rehearsals of Manhood] is a pleasure to read and will be of interest to all students of Classical Athens and of gender in the ancient world. Winkler's writing is extremely lucid and engaging."---Sam McChesney, The European Legacy

About the Author

John J. Winkler (1943-1990) was professor of classics at Stanford University. His books include The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece and Auctor & Actor: A Narratological Reading of Apuleius's "The Golden Ass."