Stephen Kidd (Brown), "Plato's Play and the Tragic Paradox"

Date
Fri May 17th 2019, 12:15 - 1:30pm
Event Sponsor
Department of Classics
Location
110-112
Stephen Kidd (Brown), "Plato's Play and the Tragic Paradox"

Why do we enjoy watching suffering on the tragic stage, but become upset when we see actual suffering in everyday life?  Plato has trouble with this problem in the Republic where he attempts to distinguish actual grief from the grief felt in the theater, but he approaches the problem from a new angle in later works, finding a solution in "play" (paidia).

Stephen Kidd is the Robert Gale Noyes Assistant Professor of Classics at Brown University, where he specializes in classical Greek literature.  He has written two books: Play and Aesthetics in Ancient Greece (Cambridge U.P., forthcoming 2019) and Nonsense and Meaning in Ancient Greek Comedy (Cambridge U.P., 2014).

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