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LITR 4370 Tragedy lecture notes Spring 2017 |
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Inevitable challenges teaching
Teacher has been there, done that--confident everything's going somewhere, all the parts fit
Poor students mostly see a lot of this and that, wonder how it fits
Teachers get frustrated that students don't catch on faster
But listening to students helps teacher see things their way, what they're getting or missing
Inevitable challenges teaching Tragedy
but not popular, less instant gratification than romance, comedy, satire
tragedy still greatest whether we like it or not
Not an individual decision but a social decision
never finish anyway, truth as constantly in creation
Text-discussion
open with questions, comments?
Any discussion questions you'd like to address or ask about?
recall different experience of reading and seeing a play; esp. whether readers over-interpret--or do symbols and repeated patterns work on audience whether they know it or not?
1. Agamemnon starts and builds slowly, but what kinds of audience pleasures may grow with it? How does the play challenge you not only to take some kind of pleasure but also to learn? (literature entertains and informs)
Aeschylus: not subtle but grand, slow but powerful, simple straightforward but compelling shifts in story + some spectacle
+ one test of greatness--can it take you up high, and then take you higher?
ll. 100-260: important events, omens that prefigure past and future (symbol)
silence, dread builds, distracted by Ag climbing stairs
sacrifice lines 106, 111, 178, 711
narrative as ritual? ceremony?
sacrifice as part of narrative?
suffering > wisdom ll. 211-215 + 295 wisdom comes through suffering
899
it's the unholy act that breeds
more acts of the same kind. [tragedy as consequences]
905
soon or late,
when it's fated to be born,
new violence springs forth,
2. You may not know the story of the Trojan War, Helen of Troy, Agamemnon, and Cassandra, but the audience at Athens knew it. What difference in experience if you know the story or not beforehand? (When we go to a movie, how much do we already know the story beforehand?)
story > narrative genre
if hero's daughter is kidnapped, assume chases, crises, rescue (adventure romance)
if cute girl crosses with cute guy & first meeting results in confusion, they'll keep meeting till they see each other's true selves and reconcile (romantic comedy)
If hero vs. terrorist, audience knows 9/11
3. Everyone can agree that Agamemnon sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia is horrible, but in the spirit of tragedy, how is it that he's not just a villain or a bad guy as in romance?
227 troops grow weary, hungry
247 Which of my options is not evil?
253 So be it. All may be well."
256 his intentions
became profane, unholy, unsanctified
261 So Agamemnon steeled his heart
273
raise her,
high above the altar, like a goat,
285 she'd often sung before her father's table x 276 gagged her lovely mouth
561 to boast too much of one's success is dangerous
976 we'll work together
993 a general assembly
1005 [Agamemnon moves to
climb out of the chariot but is held up by Clytaemnestra's speech.]
1088 honor me as a man, not as a god.
1066 don't place upon the common ground the foot
which stamped out
1076 risk
3a. Contrast the different appeal of Cassandra's appearance—How does Cassandra appear more as a romance character, in this case the "innocent victim?"
l. 1121 introduces Cassandra
silence, dread builds, distracted by Ag climbing stairs
Cassandra like Iphigenia
innocent girl, sings
innocent victim as character unmarked by difficult, compromising choices of adulthood
4. How may the initial appearance by the guard be potentially comical? (See comedy; wit & humor; comic theory)
l. 5 just like a dog.
l. 48 a great ox stands on my tongue
5. Uses or repression of spectacle?
1580-90 screams, etc
1621 palace doors open
Suppression of spectacle in Tragedy is a convention or norm, but not a rule
Example of spectacle in Agamemnon so far?
6. Aristotle's Poetics: parts I, IV: What is imitation or mimesis and what does it have to do with tragedy?
learn through imitation
critical thinking through judging of imitation
chorus as narration, later Clytaemnestra
Clytaemnestra ll. 337 ff: more narration
Agamemnon not what you might want, but see birth of theater in earliest stages
Use Poetics for Aeschylus bringing on 2nd actor
[4c] Aeschylus [author of Agamemnon, Oresteia] first introduced a second actor; he diminished the importance of the Chorus, and assigned the leading part to the dialogue. [This progression conforms to Nietzsche's observation that, historically, the chorus interacting with a single protagonist precedes the introduction of actors who interact with each other.]
Opening scene, watchman & chorus take turns providing background (like narrator)
300+ Clytaemnestra enters scene, talks to Chorus
598 Herald; p. 20 dialogue with Chorus
One actor interacting or speaking with Chorus was standard Greek drama until Aeschylus—you can see Aeschylus still using that style
1076 Clytaemnestra dialogues with Agamemnon (then Cassandra)
your speech was, like my absence, far too long.
risk
7. Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy: Distinguish the Apolline and Dionysiac in Nietzsche's language and your own.
put up guides, notes
Video presentation
Australian production of Agamamnon (1.04 Cassandra) line 1435
Assignments
1031 Orestes mentioned + line 1516
does Artemis (l. 158) reappear besides in Hippolytus?
177-8 Artemis's demand for another sacrifice / one which violates all human law
ll 211, 295 wisdom through suffering [relate to Poetics]
relate to Aeschylus in Poetics part 4
ll. 730 ff: lies re fidelity
Chorus 903 ff. problem of old violent aggression > new troubles
942 Iphegenia's sacrifice redeemed?
999 root out infectious evil > Clytaemnestra enters
1031 Orestes mentioned
1061 what joy to escape necessity!
CASSANDRA:
No .
. . no . . . a house
that hates
the gods . . . house full of death,
kinsmen butchered . . . heads chopped off . . .
a human slaughterhouse awash in blood . . .
1290
CASSANDRA: . . .
I see evidence I trust—young children
1293
screaming as they're butchered—then their father
eating his own infants' roasted flesh . . .
CASSANDRA: Look over there! Look
now!
Keep the great bull from his
mate.
She's caught him in her
robes—
1330
now she gores him with her black horn.
A trap! He's collapsing in the bath! . . .
[Instructor's note: Tragedy tends to repress spectacle. Here Cassandra describes Agamemnon's murder, but that murder is not shown on stage.]]
1345
Why have
you brought me here,
so wretched,
if not to die,
the second victim?
Why else?
1363
CASSANDRA: Alas for that wedding . .
. Paris and his bride . . .
how it
destroyed his loved ones . . .
Alas for the Scamander, river of my home!
[my home =
By your banks I was raised so long ago,
Where does this end?
That's what I can't see.
CASSANDRA: Then my prophecy will
veil itself no more,
like some new
bride half-concealed from view.
1390
. . .
I'll teach you no more in cryptic riddles.
Look there—see those creatures,
young ones, sitting by the house, dark shapes,
like something from a dream? They're like children
murdered by their loved ones . . . their hands are full,
clenching chunks of their own flesh as food,
1440
1463 Whether you credit what I say or not—
that doesn't really matter. Why should it?
What will come will come. And soon enough,
as you stand here full of pity, you'll say
Cassandra's prophecies were all too true.
CHORUS LEADER: What man is going to commit such crimes?
CASSANDRA: What man? You've
completely missed the point.
1480
You've failed to understand my prophecies.
1514 But we'll not die without the gods'
revenge.
Another man will come and
will avenge us,
a son who'll kill
his mother, then pay back
[son = Orestes; these lines predict the remaining
action of the Oresteia]
his father's death, a wanderer in exile,
CASSANDRA: It's this house—
it stinks of murder, blood slaughter . . .
1550
[A scream comes from
inside the palace]
AGAMEMNON
[from inside]
: Help me!
I'm hit . . . a deadly blow . . .
CHORUS LEADER: Silence! 1590
1621 [The palace doors open, revealing the bodies of Agamemnon
and Cassandra. Clytaemnestra stands over them. She is covered in blood]
CLYTAEMNESTRA:
So now
1670
you'd sentence me to banishment,
send me from the city a thing accursed?
Back then you made no accusation
against this man lying here. He sacrificed
his own child, that dear girl I bore in pain,
[child, girl = Iphigenia]
to charm the winds from
To him she was a beast for slaughter.
CLYTAEMNESTRA:
Are you saying this
work is mine? That's not so.
Don't
think of me as Agamemnon's wife.
1770
The form of this corpse's wife was taken on
by the ancient savage spirit of revenge.
For that brutal meal prepared by Atreus,
[meal = the feast of
Thyestes]
Bacchae prsn 2
preview Hippolytos; Bacchae only other play by Euripides
start with prologue to remind--remind of video part of presentation
Euripides as popular and modern
mixes comedy with tragedy
wildness
irreverence
two groups of women
Asian women who've followed Dionysus to Thebes and hang around Thebes as chorus (contrast chorus as city elders)
Theban women who've run off to countryside
ambiguity or cross-currents of attitudes towards women (Clytaemnestra)
are the Maenads religious worshippers or drunken sex-maniacs?
106 purifying rites—
144 As you wave your
thyrsus,
revere the violence it
contains.
[revere = respect]
151 frenzied madness
183
ALL:
The land flows with milk,
the
land flows with wine,
the land
flows with honey from the bees.
transformation theme
105 spirit merges
146 Whoever leads our
dancing—
that one is Bromius! [merger of identities
between mortal and divine, associated by Nietzsche with Dionysian + tragic actor
as suffering God]
148 merger of identities
160 wild ecstatic dancing, mixed
252
273 [Pentheus disrespects gods and people]
215 enter Tiresias [comedy]
Cadmus and Tiresias warn to be respectful, then Pentheus enters disrespecting Dionysus
then acts disrespectful to old men
old men as stock figures in Greek comedy
271
disgusting things going on,
here in the
city—women leaving home
to go to
silly Bacchic rituals,
Australian production of Agamamnon (1.04 Cassandra) line 1435
scene: Clytaemnestra & bodies x chorus (masks) (solves problem of speaking through masks)
Edith Hall UHCL library p. 212
