More holiday reading
June 7, 2008
I note that posts mentioning Edith Hall get a (relatively) high number of hits – is this self-Googling, or are there just lots of fans like me out there? Anyway, top of my holiday reading list is Hall’s recent collection of essays, The Theatrical Cast of Athens: Interactions between Ancient Greek Drama and Society. I can’t afford it – it’s £71 – but I’m going to buy it anyway. It includes a few favourites – including the essay on lawcourt oratory and theatre which made a light go on in my head when I was reading Lysias in the first year – but is mainly new to me and looks fascinating. I find many professional classicists make their scholarship so dry that they kill any excitement dead; but Hall makes the subject come alive. And any book with a sub-heading ‘Dry Ice and Ideology’ is OK by me.
