LAWRENCE — The vulgar woodland spirits generally known as satyrs stay widespread in fashionable works similar to “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” “Percy Jackson & the Olympians” and Disney’s “Hercules.” However the depiction and goal of those historic Greek creations have developed significantly over the centuries.
“Folks have used the determine of satyrs to attempt to cement the origins of drama in Greek faith and to affiliate drama with an concept of primitive ritual carried out by rugged people near nature,” stated Paul Touyz, assistant professor of classics on the College of Kansas.
“They offer thought-provoking perception into the best way historic origins are reinvented over time and the way they’re reinvented to talk to modern pursuits and issues,” he stated.
Touyz’s new chapter titled “Placing the ‘Goat’ Into ‘Goat-song’: The Conceptualization of Satyrs on Stage and in Scholarship” seems within the edited quantity “Reconstructing Satyr Drama” (De Gruyter, 2021).
As Touyz (pronounced Tao-ez) famous, satyrs occupy a privileged place in historic and fashionable accounts of the muse of tragedy. In classical Athens, they encompassed the refrain in a style is aware of as “satyr play,” which parodied tragedy and was distinguished by its bawdy humor.
The professor stated he believed his article would assist readers admire the origin of tragedy, which is extra broadly the dramatic foundation of Western theater, TV and movie.
He stated, “Should you take a look at the problem of the origins of drama extra as a narrative being informed repeatedly by totally different generations that attempted to know the unusual apply of pretending to be someone else in entrance of a big group of individuals, you possibly can see the way it’s evolving over time and the way it matches into totally different spiritual in addition to political contexts.”
Satyrs themselves have additionally developed. In historic Greece, they had been represented as a human with horse ears and tail. In Rome, they developed into having goat’s ears, legs, horns and tail.
“Should you seek for satyrs on Wikipedia, you’ll be informed they’re half-goat, half-man creatures. In actuality, their shapes and nature adjustments relying on the creative picture you take a look at or the assorted works of literature you may learn,” he stated. “They’re extra like a basic nature spirit that mixes parts of the animalistic in addition to human.”
But it’s how satyrs relate to tragedy that pursuits Touyz.
“The topic of tragedy isn’t simply concerning the historical past of drama, the books we learn or films we watch. The phrases tragedy and comedy have much more buy. Satyrs, for instance, have been used to elucidate the character and origins of comedy and particularly satire,” he stated.
The titular “goat-song” is a technique of understanding what Greek tragedy represents.
“Goat-song was as soon as regarded as sung by a bunch of individuals dressed up as goats, aka satyrs,” he stated. “That’s most likely not the case. Students of the Greek language have satisfied most individuals that ‘goat-song’ actually means the music you sing with the intention to win a goat or with the intention to discover a goat to sacrifice to the gods.”
Traditionally, individuals have considered the satyr play as a really particular artwork kind tied to the Golden Age origins of drama that finally ceased to be related when tragedy grew to become the dominant style. However there are concrete references from the Byzantine Empire to people who nonetheless put on satyr masks within the streets.
“You possibly can think about individuals in Asia Minor remembering ‘the previous methods’ and clinging to such customs,” he stated. “They nonetheless have these sayings and people tales in fashionable Greece — and even Turkey — that seize the continual situation and reminiscence of the satyr.”
A local of Sydney, Australia, Touyz has been at KU since 2017. His space of experience is Greek literature, language and historical past. (“If there’s a Greek writer I can sit again with my ft in entrance of the hearth studying, that might be Plato,” he stated.)
Touyz plans to spend the following few years ending a guide that can monitor the institutional historical past of satyr play as a style and its place within the broader cultural sphere.
“I’d prefer to get individuals enthusiastic about the best way during which all of the scholarship and massive cultural vitality devoted to the origins of tragedy could be learn as totally different interpretations that talk to the views and issues of various instances,” he stated.
“What we are able to do with these supplies is inform an attention-grabbing story about the best way our relationship to this style — and this basic difficulty of what it’s for one thing to be tragic — has modified and developed over time.”
High picture: Satyrs are depicted in a red-figure calyx krater (generally known as the “Pandora krater”), attributed to the Niobid Painter (c. 460-450 B.C.).
