Chapter 3 - Choral Polyphonies and Tragedy

Summary

At the turn of the twenty-first century the chorus captured the attention of readers of Greek tragedy, especially anglophone scholars. In the field of cultural anthropology, the indirect influence of Victor Turner’s work on ‘theatrical performance’ was particularly significant. Inspired by Wilhelm Dilthey’s notion of experience as Erlebnis, and on the basis of ethnological field research on the initiation rites of male and female adolescents in the Ndembu tribe of present-day Zambia, Turner formulated a view of culture as a collection of individual experiences made available to society by means of expression (both verbal and physical). Theatrical performance is thus a ‘structured unit of experience’, a processual accomplishment or ritualized staging of the social drama.