LITR 5831 World / Multicultural Literature: Tragedy & Africa, UHCL

LITR 5831 World / Multicultural Literature: Tragedy & Africa

Lecture Notes

Oedipus Rex: begin Theban Cycle

Oedipal Conflict as family, inter-generational affair: Euripides's Hippolytus

Questions for Euripides's The Trojan Women

Euripides "most tragic of poets"

1. Use of chorus in Obsidian Theater production?

Prof. Emeritus Gretchen Mieszkowski's reaction:

We went last night. I was disappointed, but glad to have seen it. I thought the first half was far too shrill, so shrill that I often couldn’t understand the words. The director should have gotten them to lower their voices so they weren’t bouncing off the walls in that very small space. The second half, however, worked much better. Helen was good and intelligible and the action came together well as Astyanax was carried off on the shield.

There’s a 1971 film of this play with Katharine Hepburn and Vanessa Redgrave. I’ve sent for it on Netflix but they say there’s a “long wait.”

instructor's reply:

I half-consciously observed what you said about the actors’ loudness and resulting incomprehensibility but probably accounted my difficulties more to my unfamiliarity with the play, which also accounted for much of my pleasure since, as I mentioned over the phone, experiencing a classical tragedy without prep made for a fresh or novel audience experience.

That 1971 film has a great cast—also including Genevieve Bujold and the peerless rantipole Brian Blessed as Talthybius—but, as I recall, isn’t rated highly. I once had a poor-quality videotape from a late-night broadcast but never watched far into it. It seemed like one of those movies based on a play that can’t decide whether it’s a filmed play or a film-as-such, but let me know if it’s worth watching.

Syrian women refugees' Trojan Women

1971 Trojan Women: Talthybius, Andromache, & Astyanax

Aristotle's Poetics: parts XIII, XIV; Discussion: instructor

13b [x-romance] Nor, again, should the downfall of the utter villain be exhibited. A plot of this kind would, doubtless, satisfy the moral sense, but it would inspire neither pity nor fear; for pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves.

contrast Romance

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. . . .

535 TIRESIAS: That quality of yours now ruins you. [tragic flaw]

13c] [T]he best tragedies are founded on the story of a few houses [i.e., families

Oedipus l. 770 Jocasta to brothers-in-law

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]

the impression we should receive from hearing the story of Oedipus.

we must not demand of tragedy any and every kind of pleasure, but only that which is proper to it.

[14b] Let us then determine what are the circumstances which strike us as terrible or pitiful. [catharsis; compare sublime]

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.