Difficult poetry in performance: an empirical audience experiment with the parodos of the Agamemnon

Unfortunately, our speaker for the next AWS seminar, Pauline LeVen, has had to pull out due to health issues. However, we are very fortunate to have found an excellent replacement. Please join us on 16th December for a talk by Felix Budelmann and Saskia Peels-Matthey on the topic of xxxx, followed by mulled wine and Christmas cookies. Please note the slightly earlier starting time of 16.00. All welcome!

Speaker: Felix Budelmann and Saskia Peels (Groningen)

We present joint work that we are currently doing together with Christoph Pieper and Sven Smeman. Our paper discusses the results of an audience experiment that we carried out in Groningen, Leiden and Nijmegen in 2024. The topic is responses to difficult poetry in performance. Audiences listened to performed readings of, variously, a literal or a simplified translation of the parodos of Aeschylus' Agamemnon and recorded their responses. We will discuss quantitative and qualitative findings relating to, among other things, understanding, enjoyment, gender and individual variation.