![]() It was influenced by Aristotle’s Poetics, which «virtually dictate the devaluation and neglect of choral lyric» (S. In the sixteenth century, the rebirth of the ancient dramatic chorus was meant both as a re-appropriation of the classical legacy and as an exploration of the potential of an independent choral semiosis. This complex historical phase, which includes the genesis, development, and end of the Attic theatrical chorality, both comic and tragic, will be the focus of some of the articles of the issue: they will concentrate especially on the intertextual relation between the chorus and the epic tradition, as well as on the comic chorus. C., when the chorus was about to be transformed into an interlude, the most daring experimentations comprised the development of performative modes verging on the operatic, including the chorus’s elaborate interaction with one or more actors in both sung and recited parts. To its formal features corresponded a markedly self-referential identitary awareness, even when the chorus took on the role of actor among actors (synagonistés, as Aristotle defines it with reference to the Sophoclean chorus). This dialogic process brought about the gradual qualification of roles: that of the actor, who developed narrative and/or pathetic monologues, but also, after the ‘invention’ of the second and third actors, exclusively recited dialogues that of the chorus, who, albeit closely involved in the action, remained a distinct entity, not only for its specifically choreutic components (music and gestures in the articulation of the theatrical space) and stylistic ones (syntax, lexis, intertextual relationships with the lyric genres etc.), but also for the slightly Doric nuance of their language, which, being absent from the recited and recitative parts, had an estranging impact upon the audience. ![]() Traces of these mixed forms can still be found in the so-called epirrhema of fifth-century tragedy. According to Aristotle, Western theatre was born with the recitative of the singer who, by starting to sing the dithyramb, prompted the chorus’s mixed response of recited and sung passages. Before involving two characters, the dialogue took place within the choral collective. Despite these transformations, however, the chorus has always represented a constant feature of tragedy since its classical origins, when during festive rituals the panhellenic myth was turned into drama and the chorus became its focus (the dithyramb being the expression of the Attic tribes from the Cleisthenic reform onwards). C., and later, from the sixteenth century onwards, fostering controversial revivals. Breve descrizione dei contenuti: Over time the originally tragic chorus has undergone significant changes which have emphasised its melodramatic potential, reshaping its role from the fourth century b.
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