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LITR 4370 Tragedy lecture notes Spring 2017 Conclude Oedipus the King; review Hamlet |
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midterms & next week
grading from student perspective, instructor perspective
personal / collective
notes: how to improve / extend each essay to Midterm2
grades: unique assignment creates unique grading dynamic
expectation that essays improve with instruction, revision
need room for grades to improve, incentivize effort
Midterm2 arrives in a hurry: next week's class, spring break, one more class, then class off (30 March) to write midterm
Good to confer with instructor in conference, by email or phone but not required
more time available week of midterm2
next week: visit from Actor(s) from London Stage
What to do? What to ask of visitor?
Phone call Monday night to set up and preview
probably some combination of discussion and performance
Possible discussion:
ask about tragedy generally?
Greek and / or Shakespearean tragedy? Modern tragedy? (ask about experience
practicing, performing any)
Antigone
acting, directing, turning text / script into production?
Can everyone work up one question or issue? (original or based on above?)
Issues in Oedipus the King
detective theme, problem-solving
How is Oedipus like a detective story?
gathering of information and evidence to support or refute charges, puzzle being put together
false clues, misleading evidence
Oedipus as detective, questions witnesses
Narrative: something happened in the past, now being recreated
137-8
a person
who might provide some knowledge men could use?
144 We might get
somewhere if we had one fact—
How unlike a detective story?
421 Tiresias: the accursed polluter of this land is you.
detective convicts himself
Oedipus Conflict
952 [oracle] my fate to definle my mother's bed . . . murder the father
a dreadful prophecy sent
from the god.
MESSENGER:
Is it well known? Or something private,
1180
which another person has no right to know?
OEDIPUS:
No, no. It’s public knowledge. Loxias
[Loxias = another name for Apollo]
once said it was my fate that I would marry
my own mother and shed my father’s blood
with my own hands.
have slept with their own mothers, but someone
[> Freud’s
Oedipus
Complex]
who ignores all this bears life more easily.
[popular reaction to
Oedipus
Complex]
Ah, my children, where are you? Come
here,
1750
come into my arms—you are my sisters
now—
1780 have pity
(Why repressed?)
1476
SECOND MESSENGER:
She killed herself. You did not see it,
[suppression of spectacle]
so you'll be spared the worst of what went on.
But from what I recall of what I saw
you’ll learn how that poor woman suffered.
1480
1547
[Oedipus enters through the palace doors]
Catharsis 1780 have pity
XIV[a]. Fear and pity . . . result from the inner structure of the piece
For the plot ought to be so constructed that, even without the aid of the eye, he who hears the tale told will thrill with horror and melt to pity at what takes place [catharsis],
[6e Plot as soul of tragedy]
preview Hamlet
13b brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty [Gk hamartia; the "tragic flaw"]. He must be one who is highly renowned and prosperous—a personage like Oedipus, Thyestes, or other illustrious men of such families. . . .
TIRESIAS:
You blame my temper,
but do not
see the one which lives within you. [the one = Oedipus’s
temper; tragic flaw?]
Instead, you are finding fault with me.
535
TIRESIAS:
That quality of yours now ruins you.
[tragic flaw]
Families
family as love and hate, right and wrong, gratitude and grudges
13c] [T]he best tragedies are founded on the story of a few houses [i.e., families
1732 my two daughters
1745 embraces
Oedipus l. 770 Jocasta to brothers-in-law
14c when the tragic incident occurs between those who are near or dear to one another—if, for example, a brother kills, or intends to kill, a brother, a son his father, a mother her son, a son his mother, or any other deed of the kind is done—these are the situations to be looked for by the poet.
Classical Greece, Athenian Empire
Shakespearean England, British Empire
1106
MESSENGER:
Lady, I have good news for your whole house—
and for your husband, too.
have slept with their own mothers, but someone
[> Freud’s
Oedipus
Complex]
who ignores all this bears life more easily.
[popular reaction to
Oedipus
Complex]
JOCASTA:
Why ask me what he means? Forget all that.
[Jocasta's recognition begins]
There’s no point in trying to sort out what he said.
SERVANT: I pitied the boy
1431
no mortal man is ever blessed.
[contrast
comedy and
romance]
Here was a man who fired his
arrows well—
his skill was
matchless—and he won
the highest
happiness in everything.
