• Translated; with Notes; by Peter Meineck; Cecelia Eaton Luschnig; Paul Woodruff• Introduction by Justina Gregory."Today good reading and effective performance of ancient drama require a constellation of talents to succeed; and in the four brought together for The Electra Plays we are getting some of the best. Justina Gregory provides a fine critical Introduction to the whole project; and the performance-tested translations of Peter Meineck; Cecelia Eaton Luschnig; and Paul Woodruff are wonderfully readable and speakablemdash;even when the events to be spoken of are not. "This is not the usual random gathering of plays; but a volume with a concentrated focus on the three playwrights treatment of the same events in the House of Atreus. There are parallels and profound differences; all of them endlessly discussable. This ensemble of plays and the team that made it should appeal to anyone interested in Greek literature; theater history; or mythology." mdash;James Tatum; Aaron Lawrence Professor of Classics;
#2199233 in eBooks 2010-06-15 2010-06-15File Name: B003URR8LO
Review
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. A Deeply Absorbing Study of Our Cultural BonesBy Nicholas PunerIn conception. imagination. and execution Untimely Ruins is a stunning book. Nick Yablon has thought about and synthesized a formidable range of disciplines. from journalism to painting to literature to architecture. to name just a few. to show that 19th-century America (actually the period from 1819 to 1919). having no ancient ruins of its own. found cognate ruins in the abandoned landscape. in only partially built or destroyed cities. and in the "media" of the day. Indeed. Yablon compellingly narrates the fascination of the young nation with iconic images of all kinds. belying the notion that its people were unilaterally fixed wholly on the modern. transitory moment in which they lived.Untimely Ruins is absorbing and illuminating. It enlarges our understanding of American cultural history (and historiography). a history that is not generally familiar. Yablon offers readers a fascinating window into the American ethos in a time that. while not so long ago. is ever receding. Untimely Ruins is not only an exceptional book. it is also a bravura performance.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Erudite. ambitious. and accessibleBy KeldaUntimely Ruins is organized chronologically and tells a remarkably unified story of an instinct to plan ruin at the heart of the new of as a way of establishing a timeless. but not quite millennial. worth. It is less a study of urban spaces than it is an analysis of American urban anxiety caused by the new. the fast. and the invented. American fascination/horror/obsession with the new is the obverse of its nostalgia for an invented past. Both are part of American modernism. If Yablon had demonstrated nothing else with this remarkable volume. he would have done well. Thankfully. there is much more.From pre-ruin "cities on paper" that evoke images of Dubai and Doha. to Tocquevilles prematurely ruined log cabin that suggest foreclosed houses and urban decay. to "creative destruction" that raises the specter of Steampunk. there is much in this book to encourage the active mind to excavate all modernist ideas for the footprints of ruin-scapes. Yablons astonishing debut monograph delivers on very nearly all levels.
