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LITR 4370 Tragedy lecture notes Spring 2017 Desire Under the Elms |
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Apostrophes for singular proper possessive nouns ending in s
No problem with other singular proper possessive nouns ending in other letters
Sharon's essay
Marconi's invention of the radio
Moses's laws
Sophocles's tragedy Oedipus the King
Euripides's play of Medea
Aeschylus's Oresteia
final exam, schedule, grade reports
paper copies next Thursday
final edit b/w now and then; if you see any issues, please communicate
improved formatting
reduced redundancy
final grade report--one note instead of 3
welcome to follow up any time
once you've been my student, I'm always willing to help
The Greeks, episode 2 (of 3)
Greek value of strife, agon (Samson Agonistes)
good and bad strife
bad strife = war
good strife = competition
Greeks as sailors, traders, colonizers throughout periods (also after decline of Athens)
"Greeks (or Golden Age of Athens) don't come from nowhere."
3650 - 1400 BCE: Minoan Civilization flourished on island of Crete in Aegean sea ("Minoan" named for King Minos, father to Phaedra and keeper of the labyrinth with the Minotaur)
1600–1100 BCE: Mycenean Greece / Mycenean Civilization of Bronze Age
> "systems collapse" of Bronze Age culture (famine, depopulation) > = largest collapse of civilization in human history
1100-900 BCE: Greek Dark Ages
but some continuity, never completely dark
900-500 BCE: Archaic Greece, first city-states formed as centers of finance, commerce, self-government
1500 city-states often in conflict but . . .
unified by
Olympic games
writing (Greek alphabet developed from Phoenician alphabet replaces
hieroglyphics; major technological advance b/c speech directly represented)
Homer
Religion
Centrality of Greek Religion (which today we tend to
dismiss)
Religion did not rise after the city-states but before; city-states rise near
cult-sites for deities
Uniqueness of Greek deities as anthropomorphic
(contributes to humanism?) (Contrast to Allah, Yahweh)
Episode 3 / Final episode
500-350 BCE: Ancient or Classical Greece
480-404 BCE: "Golden Age of Athens" / "Golden Age of Pericles" (economic and cultural growth, imperialism, arts)
7. Can Desire Under the Elms be characterized as Dionysiac?
compulsion
abandonment of forms, indulgence of passions, unity with nature
Nietzsche, p. 38 The ecstasy of the Dionysiac state , abolishing the habitual
barriers and boundaries
Dionysiac wisdom = abominable crime against nature, experience dissolution of nature
49 artist creates men and destroys gods > atones with eternal suffering [cf. ch 8, pp. 42 (true poet), 43 (chorus)]
Aristotle's Poetics VI, IX, XIIIa, XIVa
Questions:
What do you know or think about catharsis? Examples from previous courses?
Is it just a school-word or is the concept helpful in terms of appreciating literature, art, tragedy, etc.?
How apply to Desire Under the Elms?
Phaedra 1367
21 my curse on you
23 baby died
26 physical attraction
26 agin nature
27 Nature, making things grow . . . making you want to grow into something else, till you're joined with it, and it's yours, but it owns you too
35 things poking about in the dark, in the corners
38-9 something . . . grudge
39 I'll kiss you pure, Eben, same as if I was a Maw to you, and you can kiss me back as if you was my son, my boy [horror, pity]
40 kiss in restrained fashion > suddenly wild passion
40 it ain't enough, loving you like a maw
Maw back to grave--cf. Clytaemnestra
47 a sickly generation
49 Abbie: Somethin’s bound to happen
49 Cabot: Even the music can’t drive it out—somethin’. . . . Something’s always living with you.
53 pizen
55 terror, desperate triumph, shrinking away [fear and pity]
57 horror
57 murderer and thief or not, you still tempt me!
57 I don’t care what ye do—if you’ll only love me again!
59 something unnatural, somewhere [cf. Nietzsche: tragic hero must violate nature > wisdom]
60 I must have suspicioned—something
61 me alone . . . as guilty as you be. He was the child of our sin. . . . I don’t repent that sin! I ain’t asking God to forgive that! . . . Nor me—but it led up to the other . . . it’s my murder too. I’ll tell the Sheriff
Video
O'Neill's style
simple, powerful images and symbols--gold, stones, trees, animals, manure
19 resemblances between characters; cf. Homecoming
1926 L.A. cast of stage play arrested
1933 O'Neill drafts watered-down film version
film of Desire Under the Elms 1958
screenplay by Irwin Shaw, successful playwright, screenwriter, and fiction writer
compare / contrast film and stage play
stage play: scenes described verbally > film: narration turned into scenes
new scenes: introduction with young Eben and Maw
addition of suspense scenes, loss of horeseshoe nails
Simeon and Peter return, join party scene after birth
stage play: scenes described verbally > film: narration turned into scenes
9 [recollection dramatized in film]
9 like the prophets done
new scenes: introduction with young Eben and Maw
addition of suspense scenes, loss of horseshoe nails, lovers in hayloft
Simeon and Peter return, join party-dance scene after new son’s birth
Why does that work better for a movie, less well for stage play?
Review O'Neill's style
10 like his Paw . . . Dog'll eat dog
11 my sin's as purty [shocking juxtaposition]
12 sheet of foolscap [cf. Homecoming] A long folio writing- or printing-paper, varying in size; cut to the size of 8 1⁄2 × 13 1⁄2 inches (216 × 343 mm) (for "normal" writing paper, 13 × 8 in (330 × 200 mm)).
17 sign it before you go?
18 the paper . . . expression of trance
19-20 resemblances between characters [cf. Homecoming]
23 a lot in common
25 To hell with your God [cf. Euripides]
28 like Paw, like Maw
33 interior of the two bedrooms . . . lighted dimly and flickeringly by tallow candles
33 sometimes you are the farm and sometimes the farm be you . . . to beget a son
33 hot glances seem to meet through the wall [Expressionism]
Question(s) for conclusion of Bacchae: How does Bacchae resemble Hippolytus as a work by Euripides and not by Aeschylus and Sophocles? What attractions or misgivings regarding Euripides? How are Aristotle's and Nietzsche's criticisms of Euripides justified?
More spectacle onstage, frenzied violence offstage
Compared to Aeschylus and Sophocles, characters do not seem driven by fate or destiny as much as they are confused and irrational in their behavior.
gender-bending
Cf. Nietzsche's association of Euripidean tragedy with comedy, esp. situation comedies:
characters seem less titanic, more like realistic people (positively, dialogue more conversational, intelligible)
tragic conditions seem on the verge of being comical (except for violence, death)
Consequences:
Euripides's plays remain popular or sensational for later audiences, show qualities of modernization
Sophocles's and Aeschylus's tragedies maintain higher status for being in touch with something higher or deeper than everyday life and confusion, something deeply connected to our primitive nature, what Nietzsche calls the Dionysiac
1. Desire Under the Elms makes no direct allusions to the Hippolytus / Phaedra or Joseph / Yusuf / Master's Wife sources, but what continuities or differences between Desire Under the Elms, Hippolytus, and Phaedra? How has Desire become more modern? (Tragedy Modernized)
Comparisons
4 cf. Ephraim and Theseus: for all we know, he's dead now
Cabot, like Theseus, has wandered off--"not dead yet"
21 My curse on you!
Eben like Hippolytus feels strong connection to childhood home
contrasts
illicit Oedipal union consensual, consummated
Eben / Abbie closer to same age than Hippolytos / Phaedra
2. Identify religious elements like prophecy, the supernatural, or the Dionysiac. Is Cabot's God as human as the Greek gods?—that is, a divine reflection or embodiment of human impulses and desires?
9 like the prophets done
10 the Scarlet Woman [Biblical reference]
14 like the prophets done
15 Eben prophecy / second sight cf. Abbie 36
15 biblical reference, lilies of the field
16 glares at sky, "Mine, d'ye hear?"
21 my curse on you
25 you and your God, always cursing folks
25 God of the old, the lonesome
25 To hell with your God
25 God as fate x free will
26 agin nature
27 Nature, making things grow . . . making you want to grow into something else, till you're joined with it, and it's yours, but it owns you too
30 you are my Rose of Sharon! [modernization]
32 the Lord'll give us a son
32 God hearkened unto Rachel . . . . Pray (scorn and triumph)
34 Cabot migrates west, voice of God, build church on a rock
35 Eben's maw, folks contesting me at law over my deeds to the farm--my farm! . . . coveted . . . voice of God crying in my wilderness, lonesomeness--to go out and seek and find [John the Baptist]
35 Abbie:second-sight cf. Eben 15
35 things poking about in the dark, in the corners [Folk magic]
40 her vengeance on him, Vengeance of God on the whole of us
47 if you’d only got good eyesight [cf. Oedipus]
47 the devil’s strength in ye
3. How does the Oedipal Conflict find expression through the Hippolytus-Phaedra archetype? Or are there other possibilities for interpreting this persistent narrative pattern?
5 Honor Tthy father! . . . I pray he's died . . . supper's ready
6 Oedipal conflict
10 Sim knew her, then me, and Paw
13 she's mine now! point is she was his, and now she belongs to me
37 courting me in the best parlor?
37 Maw died and was laid out there
39 I'll kiss you pure, Eben, same as if I was a Maw to you, and you can kiss me back as if you was my son, my boy
40 kiss in restrained fashion > suddenly wild passion
40 it ain't enough, lowing you like a maw
42 just came up in my mind of itself . . . Don't let it
43 I'm the prize rooster + grotesque
4. Identify appearance of other genres:
-
dark humor or comedy and the grotesque. (esp. Ephraim's dance, & the brothers Simeon & Peter; may the brothers also act as a chorus?)
-
romance, especially in the conclusion (within limits)
Comedy
5 [cf. comedy]
11 bedroom of the brothers
17 they [animals] knows us like brothers--and likes us!
17 the old mule and the bride
24 ye devil! . . . Eben's nice
comedy as dance + tragedy = grotesque, dark humor
37-8 comedy, grotesque
46 a son at 76 [cf. old man as comic figure in Greek comedy]
19 dance?
44 [secret joke]
45 pun on scripture
45 goats, hens, hogs
46 a good night’s work too
47 all hoofs
47 incredibly grotesque capers, monkey on a string
Romance
28 [compare romantic comedy]
29 sky like warm field [romance?]
54 the only joy I ever knowed—like heaven to me
54 I'll prove I love you better than anything
55 terror, desperate triumph, shrinking away [cf. fear and pity, Catharsis]
56 I loved you more
61 me alone . . . as guilty as you be. He was the child of our sin. . . . I don’t repent that sin! I ain’t asking God to forgive that! . . . Nor me—but it led up to the other . . . it’s my murder too. I’ll tell the Sheriff
[cf. Hip in Racine; sacrifice for love]
62 I want to share it with you, Abbie—prison or death or hell or anything
62 Abbie: I ain’t beat—so long as I got you!
62 Cabot: To hell with the farm. I’m leaving it! I’ve turned the cows and other stock loose. . . drove them into the woods where they can be free . . . I’m freeing myself . . . set fire to the hourse . . . . leave your Maw to haunt the ashes, and I’ll will the fields back to God . . . going to California . . . the Cabots will find Solomon’s mines
64 love + kiss + sunrise
5. How and where is spectacle revealed or repressed?
47 incredibly grotesque capers, monkey on a string
55 [spectacle not shown: classical restraint, dignity, decorum]
6. Identify elements of Expressionism in O'Neill's style. (The Hairy Ape)
opening settings
Reading Notes from Desire Under the Elms, Part One
2 [setting] extended metaphor
foreshadowing parlor, shades
4 two examples of figurative speech extended
4 cf. Ephraim and Theseus: for all we know, he's dead now
5 Honor thy father! . . . .I pray he's died . . . . supper's ready
5 [cf. comedy]
6 Oedipal conflict
7-8 something . . . something
8 she still comes back
9 [recollection dramatized in film]
9 like the prophets done
10 the Scarlet Woman
10 Sim knew her, then me, and Paw
10 like his Paw . . . Dog'll eat dog
11 my sin's as purty
11 bedroom of the brothers
12 [realism] preacher at New Dover
12 sheet of foolscap [cf. Homecoming] 12 sheet of foolscap [cf. Homecoming] A long folio writing- or printing-paper, varying in size; cut to the size of 8 1⁄2 × 13 1⁄2 inches (216 × 343 mm) (for "normal" writing paper, 13 × 8 in (330 × 200 mm)).
12 my money by rights now
13 she's mine now! point is she was his, and now she belongs to me
14 like the prophets done
15 Eben prophecy / second sight
15 biblical reference, lilies of the field
15 embracing glance of desire
16 glares at sky, "Mine, d'ye hear?"
16 richin' yer soul / soil
17 they [animals] knows us like brothers--and likes us!
17 the old mule and the bride
17 sign it before you go?
18 the paper . . . expression of trance
19 dance?
19-20 resemblances between characters
21 lust for gold > mad
21 my curse on you (cf. Theseus)
22 Maw'll be in the parlor (Sim)
21-22 mine, ours
23 a lot in common
23 baby died [does this go anywhere?]
24 free for once
24 bought you--like a harlot > farm
24 I'll tell him . . . I'll say you're lying
24 ye devil! . . . Eben's nice
25 you and your God, always cursing folks
25 God of the old, the lonesome
25 To hell with your God
25 God as fate x free will
Part Two
26 Abbey laughs tantalizingly, amused but at the same time piqued and irritated
26 physical attraction
26 agin nature
27 Nature, making things grow . . . making you want to grow into something else, till you're joined with it, and it's yours, but it owns you too
28 the farm you sold yourself for like any other old whore--my farm
28 [compare romantic comedy]
28 like Paw, like Maw
29 sky like warm field [romance?]
30 you are my Rose of Sharon! [obj. 3]
30 his lust for me! [cf. Phaedra]
30-31 Cabot's hubris > son = still mine!
31 a son is me, my blood, mine. Mine ought to get mine. And then it's still mine . . . .
32 the Lord'll give us a son
32 God hearkened unto Rachel . . . . Pray (scorn and triumph)
33 interior of the two bedrooms . . . lighted dimly and flickeringly by tallow candles
33 sometimes you are the farm and sometimes the farm be you . . . to beget a son
33 hot glances seem to meet through the wall
34 Cabot migrates west, voice of God, build church on a rock
35 Eben's maw, folks contesting me at law over my deeds to the farm--my farm! . . . coveted . . . voice of God crying in my wilderness, lonesomeness--to go out and seek and find
35 second-sight
35 things poking about in the dark, in the corners
36 panting like two animals [democratization, modernization]
37 you're a dog, Eben
37 courting me in the best parlor?
37 Maw died and was laid out there
37-8 comedy, grotesque
38 room like a tomb
38 something . . . something . . . growing soft and kind to me
39 I'll kiss you pure, Eben, same as if I was a Maw to you, and you can kiss me back as if you was my son, my boy
40 kiss in restrained fashion > suddenly wild passion
40 it ain't enough, lowing you like a maw
40 her vengeance on him, Vengeance of God on the whole of us
41 [Eben] seems changed
41 my room our room
42 Maw's gone back to her grave [cf. Clytaemnestra]
42 just came up in my mind of itself . . . Don't let it
43 I'm the prize rooster!
Part Three, scene 1
44 a night in late spring the following year
44 double bed, cradle; kitchen dance, all festivity, extreme hilarious excitement
44 [secret joke]
45 pun on scripture
45 goats, hens, hogs
46 a good night’s work too
46 a son at 76 [cf. old man as comic figure in Greek comedy]
46 fiddle “Lady of the Lake” [realism]
47 if you’d only got good eyesight
47 all hoofs
47 incredibly grotesque capers, monkey on a string
47 a sickly generation
47 the devil’s strength in ye
48 Eben and baby
48 contrast scene above, below
49 Eben and baby—dead spit ‘n image of you
49 Abbie: Somethin’s bound to happen
49 Cabot: Even the music can’t drive it out—somethin’. . . . Something’s always living with you.
Part 3, scene 2
49 a cruel, triumphant grin
50 family conflict [over ownership]
50 I’ll see. So’ll you. It’s you that’s blind—blind as a mole underground (cf. Oedipus the King)
50 Eben laughs, sardonic Ha
51 [compare Phaedra] Cabot reports Abbie’s accusations, scheme
51 murderous struggle, stone wall
51 not worth hanging for
53 pray Maw to come back to help me—put her curse on you and him
53 California, get rich, come back and fight
53 pizen
53 your son too . . . wish he never was born
54 the only joy I ever knowed—like heaven to me
54 I’ll prove I love you . . . Better than anything else in the world!
Part 3, scene 3
55 [spectacle not shown: classical restraint, dignity, decorum]
55 terror, desperate triumph, shrinking away [fear and pity]
55 I’ll leave Maw to take vengeance on you.
56 I killed him [confusion over “him”]
56 But I loved you more.
57 I see your game now, same old sneaking trick
57 horror
57 murderer and thief or not, you still tempt me!
57 I don’t care what ye do—if you’ll only love me again!
Part 3, scene 4
58 dead voice: he ain’t never going to wake up
59 not your son, Eben’s son
59 that was it, what I felt
59 holding yourself from me, saying you’d already conceived
59 something unnatural, somewhere
60 I must have suspicioned—something
60 stares up at the sky—his control relaxes
61 I’d forgive you all the sins in hell for saying that [romance?]
61 hurt like something was busting in my chest and head
61 me alone . . . as guilty as you be. He was the child of our sin. . . . I don’t repent that sin! I ain’t asking God to forgive that! . . . Nor me—but it led up to the other . . . it’s my murder too. I’ll tell the Sheriff
62 I want to share it with you, Abbie—prison or death or hell or anything
62 Abbie: I ain’t beat—so long as I got you!
62 Cabot: To hell with the farm. I’m leaving it! I’ve turned the cows and other stock loose. . . drove them into the woods where they can be free . . . I’m freeing myself . . . set fire to the hourse . . . . leave your Maw to haunt the ashes, and I’ll will the fields back to God . . . going to California . . . the Cabots will find Solomon’s mines
63 [Cabot’s gold] I calculate God gave it to them, not you. . . . hear his voice warning me to stay on the farm . . . round up the stock
64 love + kiss + sunrise
+ Plot is the soul of tragedy
57 I see your game now, same old sneaking trick
61 me alone . . . as guilty as you be. He was the child of our sin. . . . I don’t repent that sin! I ain’t asking God to forgive that! . . . Nor me—but it led up to the other . . . it’s my murder too. I’ll tell the Sheriff
62 I want to share it with you, Abbie—prison or death or hell or anything
Tragedy. The story begins with a problem that is significant to society, its leaders, or its representatives. The problem may originate in the “tragic flaw” of the hero or heroine, or it may represent a temptation or error that human beings recognize, such as greed, vanity, or self-righteousness. Either way, the error or fault or problem is intimate and integral to our human identities; it is not "objectified" to a villain or outside force, as in romance. The action consists of an attempt to discover the truth about the problem, to follow or trace or absorb its consequences, to restore justice (even at cost to oneself), or to regain moral control of the situation. The tragedy ends with the resolution of the problem and the restoration of justice, often accompanied by the death, banishment, or quieting of the tragic hero.
a few plots but many variations
strangeness of Tragedy
something . . . elusive but keep learning
7-8 something . . . something
49 Abbie: Somethin’s bound to happen
49 Cabot: Even the music can’t drive it out—somethin’. . . . Something’s always living with you.
59 something unnatural, somewhere
60 I must have suspicioned—something
Birth of Tragedy & Bacchae: instructor
Bacchae
Begin Presentation Seven (1431-1776): instructor
review Michael's presentation last week (notes?)
Second Messenger (cf. Messenger at end of Antigone)
1452
[Enter Agave, cradling the head of Pentheus]
1461
AGAVE:
The honor of the first blow goes to me.
In the dancing I'm called
blessed Agave.
1473
AGAVE:
Bacchus is a clever huntsman—
he wisely set his Maenads on this beast.
1476
CHORUS:
It's a strange trophy.
AGAVE:
And strangely captured, too.
CHORUS:
You're proud of what you've done?
AGAVE:
Yes, I'm delighted. Great things I've done—
1480
great things on this hunt,
clear for all to see.
1493 We caught
this beast by hand, tore it apart—
with our own hands. But where's my father?
He should come here. And where's Pentheus?
Where is my son? He should take a ladder,
set it against the house, fix this lion's head
way up there, high on the palace front.
1499
[Enter Cadmus and attendants, carrying parts of Pentheus's body]
1517
both still possessed, quite mad, poor creatures.
Someone said Agave was coming here,
still doing her Bacchic dance.
1521 Agave:
Father, now you can be truly proud.
Among all living men you've
produced
by far the finest
daughters. I'm talking
of all
of us, but especially of myself.
I've left behind my shuttle and my loom,
and risen to great things
1529
[offering him Pentheus' head]
1534 Cadmus:
This grief's beyond measure, beyond endurance.
With these hands of yours you've murdered him.
You strike down this sacrificial victim,
this offering to the gods, then invite me,
and all of
Alas—first
for your sorrow, then my own.
1540
Lord god Bromius, born into
this family,
has destroyed us, acting out
his justice,
but too much so.
1544
AGAVE: . . . As for my son, I hope he's a fine hunter,
who copies his mother's hunting style,
. . .
The only thing he seems capable of doing
is fighting with the gods.
1554
CADMUS:
Alas! Alas! What dreadful pain you'll feel
when you recognize what you've just done.
1567 my mind is starting to clear
somehow.
It's changing . . . it's not what it was before.
1576
CADMUS:
In that house you bore your husband a child.
What was his name?
AGAVE:
His name was Pentheus.
I
conceived him with his father.
CADMUS:
Well then,
this head your hands are holding—whose is it?
1584
AGAVE:
What I see fills me with horrific pain . . .
such agony . . .
1588
AGAVE:
Who
killed him?
How did he come into
my hands?
CADMUS:
Harsh truth—
1590
how you come to light at
the wrong moment.
1597
AGAVE:
Why did this poor man go to
CADMUS:
He went there to ridicule the god
and you for celebrating Dionysus.
AGAVE:
But how did we happen to be up there?
CADMUS:
You were insane—the entire city
1600
was in a Bacchic madness.
AGAVE:
Now I see.
Dionysus has
destroyed us all.
1610 Cadmus: Like you, he was irreverent to the god.
1610
That's why the god linked you and him together
in the same disaster—thus destroying
the house and me, for I've no children left,
1636
Now you're in this horrifying state,
I'm in misery, your mother's pitiful,
and all your relatives are in despair.
If there's a man who disrespects the gods,
let him think about how this man perished—
1640
then he should develop
faith in them.
1646 I'm now transformed—
an abomination, something to fill
all people's hearts with horror, with disgust—
the mother who slaughtered her only son
1678 Chorus Leader: Your suffering is intense, but the god is just.
1681
CHORUS:
What is wisdom? What is finer
than the rights men get from gods—
to hold their powerful hands
over the heads of their enemies?
Ah yes, what's good is always loved.
So all praise Dionysus,
praise the dancing god,
god of our revelry,
god whose justice is divine,
whose justice now reveals itself.
1690
[Enter Dionysus]
DIONYSUS:
Yes, I am Dionysus, son of Zeus.
You see me now before you as a god.
1701 Your wife, Harmonia,
Ares's daughter,
whom you,
though mortal, took in marriage,
will be transformed, changing to a snake.
1718 You learn too late.
1775 What they did not expect, the gods made happen.
That's what this story has revealed.
