Research Guides: CSTS/COML 212: Refashioning the Classics: Dramatization and Illustration (HC): Anne Carson

Researching Anne Carson

Anne Carson is a distinguished poet, essayist, translator, critic and Classics scholar. She has received many awards including the MacArthur "genius" award and Pushcart prize for poetry. She has collaborated on performance pieces with various artists including Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed. Her recent publications include: Antigone ; Bakkhai ; Float and Short Talks.

To find works by or about Anne Carson, use these searches in Tripod:

"carson, anne" [Author] in Books+Media+Articles

"anne carson" [Title] in Books+Media+Articles

Anne Carson (Poetry Foundation)
Sketch of the poet's works and their critical reception.
D'Agata, John and Anne Carson. "A ___ with Anne Carson."
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Anne Carson is interviewed about her life, works, Classics and the act of writing. Published in the Iowa Review Volume 27, Number 2 (1997): 1-22.
"The Most Exciting Thing to do with Your Head": The Inscrutable Brilliance of Anne Carson
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New York Times profile of the author. Published March 17, 2013, page SM20.
If the link in the title does not work, use your college link to sign into the New York Times.
Performance of Antigonick (Youtube)
Play written by Anne Carson, directed by Lucas deGirolamo and staged at Playwrights Downtown, 2019.
Performance of Antigonick (Youtube)
Performance by Anne Carson and eight other participants, 2013.
Play, Media Text
Artists in Residence w/ Anne Carson & Robert Currie, Lead Artists, Haverford College, Spring 2019.

Selected Books Written by Anne Carson

Bakkhai by Anne Carson (Translator); Eurípides
ISBN: 9781783199150
Publication Date: 2016-03-29
A powerful new translation of the Greek classic by award-winning Classics scholar, poet, and writer Anne Carson. Pentheus has banned the wild, ritualistic worship of the god Dionysos. A stranger arrives to persuade him to change his mind. Euripides's electrifying tragedy is a struggle to the death between freedom and restraint, the rational and the irrational, man and god.
The Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson
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Publication Date: 2001-02-06
The Beauty Of The Husband is an essay on Keats's idea that beauty is truth, and is also the story of a marriage. It is told in 29 tangos. A tango (like a marriage) is something you have to dance to the end. This clear-eyed, brutal, moving, darkly funny book tells a single story in an immediate, accessible voice in narrative verse that take us vividly through erotic, painful, and heartbreaking scenes from a long-time marriage that falls apart.
Eros the Bittersweet by Anne Carson
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Publication Date: 2014
The insights presented in the volume are wide-ranging and in tune with the subtlest modern discussions of desire (such as triangulation. or loving what others love), yet offering new solutions to old problems, like the interpretation of Plato's Phaedrus. On the often discussed effect of literacy on Greek civilization, the book offers a fresh view: it was no accident that the poets who invented Eros were also the first readers and writers of the Western literate tradition. Originally published in 1986. If you prefer a print copy, see Tripod.
Red Doc> by Anne Carson
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Publication Date: 2013-03-05
Some years ago I wrote a book about a boy named Geryon who was red and had wings and fell in love with Herakles [Autobiography of Red : A Novel in Verse]. Recently I began to wonder what happened to them in later life. Red Doc> continues their adventures in a very different style and with changed names. To live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing.

Selected Books and Articles about Anne Carson's Work

Anne Carson: Ecstatic Lyre by Joshua Marie Wilkinson
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ISBN: 0472052535
Publication Date: 2015-01-28
This book of essays is dedicated to the breadth of Anne Carson's works spanning Eros the Bittersweet ;through Red Doc. Features contributions from translators, poets, essayists, scholars, novelists, critics, and collaborators. We learn from Carson's greatest admirers and closest readers about the books that moved and inspired them.
Antigone Undone by Will Aitken
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ISBN: 9780889775213
Publication Date: 2018-01-13
In 2015 Will Aitken journeyed to Luxembourg for the rehearsals and premiere of Anne Carson's translation of Sophokles' 5th-century BCE tragedy Antigone, starring Juliette Binoche and directed by theatrical sensation Ivo van Hove. With a backstage view of the action, Aitken illuminates the creative process of Carson, Binoche, and Van Hove and offers a rare glimpse into collaborative genius in action. He also investigates the response to the play by Hegel, Virginia Woolf, Judith Butler, and others, who too, were moved by its timeless protest against injustice.
Classical Traditions in Modern Fantasy by Brett M. Rogers (Editor); Benjamin Eldon Stevens (Editor)
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ISBN: 9780190610050
Publication Date: 2017-01-23
See in particular this essay: "(Post)modern Fantasies of Antiquity -- Fantasies of Mimnermos in Anne Carson's "The Brainsex Paintings" (Plainwater) " by Sasha-Mae Eccleston.
Defensive Measures: The Poetry of Niedecker, Bishop, Glück, and Carson by Lee Upton
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ISBN: 0838756077
Publication Date: 2005-06-01
Defensive Measures explores strategies by which poets claim their distinctiveness, and argues that poetry is the one literary form that most insistently demands a defense. Upton defines a generative conception of defense and examines in a new light the poetry of Lorine Niedecker, Elizabeth Bishop, Louise Gluck, and Anne Carson.

Carr, Emily. "Six Short Talks: Reading in, around, & on (& on) Anne Carson's 'Possessive Used as Drink (Me): A Lecture in the Form of Fifteen Minutes'"
Published in English Studies in Canada Volume 33, Number 4, (2007): 91-101.
Scranton, Roy. "Estranged Pain: Anne Carson’s Red Doc>"
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Article published in Contemporary Literature, Volume 55, Number 1, (2014): 202-214.