World Lit I Review Guide:

GREEK TRAGEDY/COMEDY
©Copyright 2005, Joyce M. Miller

 

AESCHYLUS: 525-456 BCE. 90 plays; 56 first prizes.

  • Author of the Oresteia, the only extant trilogy
  • Introduced a second actor
  • As a war veteran, he was concerned with history
  • Plays reveal political implications of guilty actions
  • Plays reveal the theme of knowledge gained through suffering
  • Divine justice is the very basis of morality: gods punish hubris, impious thoughts, etc.
  • Plays concerned with a panorama of political and human chaos
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    SOPHOCLES: 497-406 BCE. 128 plays; 22 first prizes.

  • Added a third actor and scenery
  • Concerned with the relationship between gods and human fate
  • Concerned with tragic irony, the contrast between human fate and human ignorance
  • Concerned with loneliness of hero's action and the importance of free will/moral choice
  • Explored the notion of a superiority of divine over human-made laws
  • Struggle even if struggle is hopeless; each character embodies a certain moral ideal
  • Portrays humans as they OUGHT to be
  • Believed evil/moral failings stemmed from ignorance (see Oed. 820-21).
  • Plays concerned with the interiority of chaos
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    EURIPIDES: 480(?)-406 BCE. 88-92 plays; five first prizes.

  • Importance of chorus diminished
  • Questions social conventions, relations between sexes
  • Questions subordinate role of women and foreigners
  • Portrays characters as they ARE
  • Idea of luck grows; idea of divine will disappears
  • Most modern of tragedians: his studies of passions, human weakness, and realism.
  • Plays marked by pessimism; characters try to escape
  • Believed evil stemmed from thymos––the irrational self is more powerful than the rational
  • Plays concerned with the psychology of chaos
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    ARISTOPHANES: 445-388 BCE. OLD COMEDY. Eleven plays survive.

  • Addition of fourth actor. Sympathy for wounded soldiers
  • Competition grew alongside tragedy
  • Rigidly proscribed action: a debate, an interruption of the action; a choral appeal to the audience that represents poet's views
  • If tragedy presents men BETTER than they are, comedy presents them WORSE
  • Political allegory, satire, sexual/political puns. Plots not based on traditional myth
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    PLEASE NOTE: In general, writers of tragedy considered themselves as serious teachers, as writers "for" the age, whereas writers of comedy, especially Aristophanes, wrote NOT FOR AN AGE BUT FOR A SPECIFIED AUDIENCE. He alludes to contemporary issues, events, persons, and places. Figures of comedy are symbols of common problems; figures of tragedy illustrate principles of morality.

    THE THREE MAJOR MOVEMENTS OF TRAGEDY

    1. The fall (the terrible deed).
    2. The suffering (not knowing).
    3. The reconciliation (gaining knowledge).

    Like Homer, the classical poets are questioning the framework by which human life must be lived––whether by fate (necessity), morality, and/or heroism.


    TRAGIC VISION

    Tragedy is an art form that differs from the term tragic. The hero (or heroine) makes his or her own fate, gains a sense of glory in choices, and gains knowledge through suffering. According to Aristotle, tragedy is an imitation of an action (praxis) that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude. It contains six parts: plot; character; diction; thought; spectacle; and song. The hero suffers until he (or she) recognizes a truth (anagnorisis), suffers reversal of fortune (peripeteia), and arouses pity and fear in the audience. (Consider also the present issues that concern humans, whether those of their relations to the gods, to the polis, and/or to one another.)

    To put it another way, Aristotle defined tragedy as the enactment of a heroic action designed to provoke pity and fear in the audience. In the best tragedies, as he saw it, the main character falls from good fortune to bad, not because he or she is an evil person but because of some error, mistake, or flaw––defined as hamartia.

    Note also Dante's comparative definition:     Tragedy begins in prosperity and ends in adversity; comedy begins in adversity and ends in prosperity.

    COMIC VISION

    There are two major desires in comedy: 1) to survive; 2) to move upward. Comedy shows us how to hold hope; it is concerned with the health of a community. It offers an escape, namely, survival as well as salvation.
    Compare to the six common elements of the comic vision: 1) sexuality (note symbols of fertility); 2) wine; 3) achievements by humans, not gods; 4) pleasures in the supreme good; 5) desire by characters to take part in joy; 6) romance/love. LYSISTRATA: Concerns peace, harmony, union. Note also the feminine stereotypes,symbols of light/dark/fertility, water/fire imagery, images of eternal woman, battle of sexes analogous to war, body as appropriate topic for discussion.

    TERMS/AUTHORS/PHILOSOPHERS
    TO REVIEW

  • anagnorisis––recognition (from ignorance to knowledge)
  • areté––inborn qualities that enable excellent performance
  • catharsis––purgation of emotion, especially that of pity and fear
  • Delphi––oracular shrine, believed by ancient Greeks to be the center of the universe
  • deus ex machina––god "out of machine" to reverse situation
  • dike––justice
  • epithet––adjective(s)/noun(s) that extend the image of a person, place, thing
  • ethos––moral purpose or character
  • exodus––the final exit of the chorus
  • Furies––avengers of kindred blood, blasphemy, treachery to host/guests
  • hamartia––tragic error, fault, fallibility
  • hetaireia––courtesan; porne––"common" prostitute
  • House of Atreus––Oresteia, embodiment of savagery; retribution of crimes; divine justice
  • House of Thebes––King Oedipus, Antigone; founded by Cadmus; Laius is cursed.
  • hubris––overweening pride, arrogance, excessive virtue, abuse of power
  • Knowledge through suffering; know thyself (philosophy of Apollo, Plato)
  • moira––fate (a fixed order, necessity of deeds)
  • oikos––family (includes its property as well as its human members)
  • pathos––suffering
  • peripeteia––reversal of fortune
  • polis––Greek city-state
  • praxis––action of characters, events
  • prologue––introduction of play's action
  • sophrosyne––discretion, temperance, self-control
  • strophe/antistrophe––on-stage movements in the chanting of choral odes
  • Thespis––thought to be the first actor to step out of a chorus, 534BCE
  • thymos––mental state or mood; in the Medea, it points to Medea's irrational self as the root of evil
  • tyrannos––rule not inherited; civilized man can make own destiny through intellect
  • Aristotle––384-322 BCE. Author of Poetics, a treatise on the art of tragedy
  • Herodotus––485-425 BCE. "Father" of modern history; writer of earliest extant Greek prose
  • Ovid––43 BCE-A.D. 17. Recorder of Greek and Roman myths
  • Peloponnesian War––Athens and Sparta, 431-404; Sparta the victor; Athenian power continues its decline
  • Plato––429-347 BCE. Recorded much of Socrates' philosophy
  • Sappho of Lesbos––ca 630 BCE. Female poet
  • Socrates––469-399 BCE. Believed evil/moral failings stemmed from failure in judgment
  • Solon––Poet who wrote code of laws: justice removed from oikos to polis
  • Thucydides––Herodotus' successor
  • Virgil––70-19 BCE. Author of the Aeneid (you may wish to connect to http://virgil.org/links/ for additional information about him)
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