The hypocritical self: Actors, acting, and identity in Greek and Roman culture
Abstract
This project assesses Greek and Roman cultural responses to the phenomenon of theater, especially the effect which mimesis was believed to have on one's sense of identity. Actors were often viewed as capable of deliberately fabricating or falsifying their identities. Numerous sources reveal an uneasy fascination with actors and acting, from the writings of intellectuals to the abundant theatrical anecdotes that provide a kind of “popular literary theory.” This project examines these sources, along with dramatic texts addressing the issue of mimesis, in order to trace cultural attitudes to mimesis at Greece and Rome during different periods ranging from the late fifth century BCE to the early Roman Empire. Chapter 1 treats the fifth-century tragedian Agathon as a figure for the actor, reading his depictions in Plato's Symposium and Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazousae as evidence of the anxieties that the self-fashioning, gender-transgressing actor could arouse in Classical Athens. Chapter 2 looks at the construction of the rivalry between the orators Aeschines and Demosthenes as a contest between a dissembling former actor and a sincere patriot. Chapter 3 forms a bridge between Greek and Roman theatrical traditions by reading two stock characters in comedy, the “impostor” and the parasite, as figures for the actor in the Greek and Roman worlds. Chapter 4 examines the famous Republican actor Roscius, a native Roman and a free man, in light of Roman attitudes toward actors and slaves. Cicero's Pro Roscio inverts stereotypes about actors as dissolute deceivers in order to defend its subject; Plautus' Captivi depicts a crafty slave “passing” as a free man. These texts, together with anecdotes about Roscius, suggest a deep Roman anxiety about acting as enabling a threatening social mobility, or even as exposing the fundamental arbitrariness of Roman society. The conclusion pursues the actor's threat to identity into the Empire, suggesting that as the public found “traditional” mimetic performance dull, the impulse to seek more radical forms of mimesis caused a theatricalization of “real life.” ^
Subject Area
Literature, Classical
Recommended Citation
Anne Elizabeth Duncan,
"The hypocritical self: Actors, acting, and identity in Greek and Roman culture"
(January 1, 2000).
Dissertations available from ProQuest.
Paper AAI9965471.
http://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI9965471
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