МАСКАТА НА БОРЕЙ: ДРЕВНА ТРАКИЯ И ТРАКИТЕ КАТО ПАРАДИГМА НА ДРУГОСТТА И ДРУГИЯ В СТАРОАТИЧЕСКИЯ ТЕАТЪР
THE MASK OF BOREAS: ANCIENT THRACE AND THE THRACIANS AS A PARADIGM OF OTHERNESS AND OF THE OTHERS IN OLD-ATTIC THEATRE

Summary/Abstract: Constructing identities inevitably generates otherness. In ancient Greek and in Old-Attic culture, otherness is usually deliberately inscribed in formal ethnic-geographic frameworks by opposing the Greek-speaking population (i.е., those with Hellenic culture-behaviour = paideia) to the barbarians who did not know Greek, i.e., the logos not familiar with democracy. That model is usually reduced to identifying the problems connected with the image of the Other (in ethnic or religious terms) in the effort of gaining further self-awareness through better knowledge of the neighbours. However, the otherness culture is also a process with which a community/culture excludes certain people(s) on account of their difference. The paper examines the issues of the type of model of the relation-interpretation of the ancient Thracian world and the Thracians applied by classical Old-Attic culture, and accordingly by the Old-Attic theatre in constructing the polis identity of the Athenian citizens, and whether that model fits the general opposition Hellenism – barbarianism. The analysis of the dramaturgical material is focused on the artistic, dramaturgical and literary efforts to construct Otherness through Ancient Thrace and the ancient Thracian elements in Old-Attic culture. A conclusion is proposed that Ancient Thrace, transformed and reduced to dramaturgical and cultural topos, was interpolated in the Old-Attic theatre so as to materialise the system of otherness and to be modelled as a paradigm of otherness, but also as an effort to overcome it by constructing models of increasing closeness.

• Details
• Contents