Attic Tragedy Research Articles

“Troian leap”: Attic tragedy and Greek phraseology

“Troian leap”: Attic tragedy and Greek phraseology

The Music of Tragedy: Implications of the Reconstructed Orestes Papyrus

Abstract: Evidence for the musical and dance elements of Attic tragedy is extremely scarce. However, a papyrus fragment dating from around 300 bc contains a section of a chorus from Euripides’ Orestes with musical notation (possibly the dramatist’s own); it may be analysed, both in its lacunose state and in a proposed reconstruction for performance, to throw light on these very elements. The papyrus markings and associated commentary offer clues to the melodisation of Greek poetry, performance effects in choral song, the nature of dochmiac rhythm, and the kind of dance movements that might have accompanied vigorous passages in tragic lyric.

Attic tragedy as both a guide and a driving force to detect and manage constructions of identity and diversity

ABSTRACT The perception of identity and diversity, as a factor of shaping relations, affects the ‘physiognomy’ of organizations and the public sphere. This project attempts to use Attic tragedy as a critical reflective method to decipher the constructions of identities and stereotypes through philosophical processing. Fictional analogies are presented using parallels from Aeschylus’ Persians, Sophocles’ Electra and Euripides’ Medea in relevance to contemporary constructions of diversity and difference in and around organizations. The role of tragedy and tragic, related to difference within a fictional context, along with its therapeutic dimension, are discussed in order to convey in present tense practical implications, serving as a guide for detecting and dealing with differences. Such an approach’s contribution lies in using and sharing an ancient functional tool to solve a timeless problem, i.e. diversity and difference, developing into a key driver to overcome them.

The Nondiscursive Aesthetics of Music, Lyric Poetry, and Tragedy

Abstract: Is it possible to speak about the unspeakable as it is represented in music, lyric poetry, and tragedy? The answer is yes, if we adopt a purely aesthetic perspective. The answer is no, if we adopt the perspective of the transcendental subject as the metaphysical source of music, lyric poetry, and tragedy. In this paper, I conceptualize the nondiscursivity of music, lyric poetry, and Attic tragedy in the philosophical aesthetics of Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. I also make a few incidental remarks to Plato's Socrates and Aristotle as well as the Theban plays by Sophocles.

TOWARDS A CULTURAL VICTIMOLOGY OF ATTIC TRAGEDY: EPITHETS OF MISERY IN EURIPIDES’ HECUBA

In recent scholarship, characters in Attic tragedies are often described as victims. Modern audiences may be familiar with the word ‘victim’, but victimological studies have shown that the notion of victimhood, the recognition of a person as a victim, is culturally and historically contingent. As a step towards a cultural victimology of Attic tragedy, this article posits that epithets of misery are markers of the undeserved and unjust suffering which often serves as a foundation for the development of victimhood. In order to illustrate how an analysis of epithets of misery can contribute to a victimological reading of an ancient text, the article discusses the use of these epithets in Euripides’ Hecuba, the extant Attic tragedy with the highest number of occurrences of such epithets.

What's Wrong with Democracy? The Peculiar Power of Kratos.

In this paper, I reconstruct the notion of kratos as a unique and distinguishable mode of political power. My claim will be that kratos encapsulates a specific problem for democracy, in both ancient and modern contexts. Using examples from 5th- and 4th- century Attic tragedy, Old Comedy, and forensic oratory, I show how kratos was used in Athenian cultural and political discourse to convey the irrefutability of a claim, the recognition of prevailing over another, and the sense of having the last word, all of which makes kratic power dependent upon its continued demonstrability. Although the agency of the dēmos is now largely mediated through representative mechanisms, the peculiarly kratic drive towards 'winning,' with all its inherent instability and vacuity, remains indispensable for democratic legitimacy. In focusing critical attention on kratos and the pathology of winning, I hope to shift discussion from what divides 'elites' from the 'masses,' to a problem shared in common.

Rationality and Presocratic cosmology in Sophocles’Antigone

AbstractScholars have occasionally noted that theAntigone’s abundant images of polar opposition bear resemblance to the fragments of Heraclitus and his doctrine of the ‘unity of opposites’. The present essay develops this comparison and explores its implications for our interpretation of the play, presenting a test case for the value of the Presocratics in the study of Attic tragedy. It argues that Heraclitus’ surviving work provides a valuable resource for elucidating the play’s ‘cosmology’, a term here used in its anthropological sense to refer to presuppositions, rather than explicitly articulated theories, concerning the structure of the universe and humanity’s place within it. This endeavour can affect our understanding of two points of intense interpretative disagreement: the rationality of the central protagonists and the role of polar oppositions in the play. A culturally sensitive evaluation of the characters’ rationality must take account of the rules of the cosmos they inhabit. The polar oppositions hint at a regular and systematic cosmology, but its finer details are ultimately kept obscure to the audience, and only Teiresias displays a substantial understanding of this underlying framework. Heraclitus thus enriches our understanding of the epistemological predicament in which the characters find themselves.

Common backcloth: Fleishman’s Antigone (not quite/quiet) and Soyinka’s ‘The fourth stage’

Dramatists and theatre makers are often drawn to Sophocles’ Antigone hence they reimagine and recruit the Attic tragedy to serve various political and aesthetic purposes. One of such reworkings of the ancient text is Mark Fleishman’s Antigone (not quite/quiet) which addresses grave issues of concern in post-apartheid South Africa. In this essay I will use a mythopoesis woven around Ògún, the Yoruba God of Warfare and Creativity, through Wole Soyinka’s essay, ‘The Fourth Stage’ and its broader relation to other cross-cultural aesthetics as an analytical strategy, to discuss Antigone (not quite/quiet) as a cross-cultural theatre production that engages despicable events such as sexual and gender-based violence and xenophobia in post-1994 South Africa. The essay will stress how ritual and theatre co-exist in the play and are useful to a productive engagement with unfavourable social circumstances in the country.

Nietzsche and Ancient Greek, Oral Culture: A glimpse of his philosophy through the anachronistic lens of some 20th century classicists

In the 1920s, a brilliant scholar and classist named Milliam Parry made a unique discovery. In studying oral, epic poets in the Balkans, Parry discovered that Homer’s classic texts were obviously orally composed and bear all of the hallmarks of such compositions. Parry, who passed away tragically at a young age, was followed by a host of scholars who argued that much of ancient Greek culture was oral and poetic in nature and that the shift towards a written culture brought with it fundamental changes in worldview. Oral culture involved a circular notion of temporality focused less on permanence, and was essentially a culture of becoming. Many of these classicists have argued that the early Greek writings essentially “recorded” oral, performative works and therefore, the likes of Homer, Hesiod, and Heraclitus were essentially products of an oral and poetic tradition. By contrast, written culture brought with it an appreciation of exactitude, valued permanence and paved the way for “Classical Metaphysics.” Friedrich Nietzsche, before he became a philosopher, was an accomplished, young philologist. Although Nietzsche wrote years before Parry, Nietzsche’s interest in the early ancients such as Heraclitus and attic tragedy reflects an appreciation of oral culture. Nietzsche writing after the post-Darwinian, reorganization of human knowledge did not just reject “Classical Metaphysics' ' and Christanity. Nietzsche was also a philologist who truly understood ancient cultures and his project was greatly influenced by this ancient, oral Greek culture, even if he did not describe it in that fashion.

Judgment in the Fourth-Century BCE Athenian Courts as Anti-Tragedy: Demosthenes's On the Crown

AbstractIn 330 BCE, before a jury of 501 Athenian citizens, the statesman Demosthenes delivered what would become his most famous court speech, On the Crown. Commentators have called the speech “tragic” owing to the litigant's unusual appropriation of tropes from Attic tragedy to make his case. I offer an alternative reading of Demosthenes's speech that rests upon an alternative approach to theorizing democratic judgment. I argue that the rhetorical force and political significance of Demosthenes's metaphors, linguistic expressions and ideas depend upon the institutional setting in which they were delivered. This is because within each institutional site, a specific political practice of judgment is taking place that structures the reception of and response to ideas and images. Demosthenes's speech is in fact “anti-tragic” and reflects the democratic practice for which it was created.

The power of the people: the meaning of kratos in dēmokratia

In this paper, I reconstruct the notion of kratos as a unique and distinguishable exercise of political power. Using examples from 5th- and 4th-century Attic tragedy, Old Comedy, and forensic oratory, I show how kratos was used in Athenian cultural and political discourse to convey the irrefutability of a claim, the recognition of someone’s prevailing over another, and the sense of having the last word—all of which makes kratic power dependent upon its own continued demonstrability. I argue that the peculiarly performative character of kratos has little or no role within contemporary democratic thinking because the agency of the dēmos is largely mediated through the mechanisms of electoral success and constitutional rights. Nevertheless—and regardless of whether they are ultimately successful in achieving their stated political aims—the spontaneous, organisationally diffuse protests operating extra-institutionally under the banners of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter reveal how the attempted ‘domestication’ of kratos, and the sublimation of its peculiar power into piecemeal reform, was never a realistic or satisfactory answer for democratic discontent.

An Analysis of the Pessimism of Strength of Hip Hop based on Nietzsche's Attic Tragedy

An Analysis of the Pessimism of Strength of Hip Hop based on Nietzsche's Attic Tragedy

Aias’ Critical Day

Calchas’ prophecy in Sophocles’ Aias that Athena’s anger will pursue Aias for only “this one day” evokes the Hippocratic concept of the critical day, on which the patient might either die or survive. This is part of the wider engagement with Hippocratic ideas in Attic tragedy and has significant implications for the depiction of Aias’ “second”, metaphorical illness in the play. It places divine and physical explanations of illness in tension with each other. It also constructs the second illness as one of alienation that can be cured by reintegration into society, in contrast to Aias’ own interpretation of it as one of shame that can only be cured by death.

Greek Tragic Women on Shakespearean Stages. Tanya Pollard. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. vii+331.

<i>Greek Tragic Women on Shakespearean Stages</i>. Tanya Pollard. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. vii+331.

Europe's Staging – Staging Europe

Europe's Staging – Staging Europe Nicole Haitzinger (bio) and Stella Lange (bio) In the context of contemporary performing arts it should, firstly, be stated that theatre is declared as the venue of negotiation for political and social questions and that, secondly, as a consequence, Europe is staged in specified ways; thematic positing such as negotiations of borders, construction of identities or history that weave between fact and fiction are worth mentioning here. It is no coincidence that models of theatre resonate with contemporary playwriting and staging practices where theatre and politics have been articulated explicitly or alternative models of society have been designed. They carry, among others, documentary, historical, commemorative, and utopian features. Transitions from reality to fiction appear blurred, concealed or seemingly defini ve. In some cases, contemporary playwriting and staging procedures refer explicitly to historical European theatrical forms such as the Attic tragedy and frequently to the tragic or mournful. This "(dis)course on Europe" tested in specific European Countries and particularly at international theatre festivals over the past few years faces, with exceptions, however, a hitherto virtually undifferentiated state of research. The relevance of the topic can also be tracked in a series of recent conferences, newly founded journals, and associations, as well as prominent writers and artists who proclaim their manifestos on theatre and Europe in an avant-garde manner. This edition focuses on those theatrical works that thematically discuss "Europe" and its social, political, economic, and cultural questions through a comparative, transnational, or decolonial perspective oriented towards performance analysis. Particular attention is paid to narrative, structural, and aesthetic strategies as well as alterations that the text is subjected to right up to the production and performance on stage. Both aspects should, thus, be taken into account: the relative source text and the theatrical event. More specifically, it begs the question whether theatrical structures, staging practices, and aesthetic parameters initiate a historical reflection on Europe in the context of theatre. With regard to the inquiry of a European or cosmopolitical society, the additional question arises which homogenous or heterogeneous forms of representation can be found for the individual, the group, or community within the theatre and how traditional theatre forms, most notably tragedy, are revisited and undergo a revaluation and update. Thisis, notleast, becausethechoiceof genre, resources, imagery used, and, finally, theatre aesthetics and implication is subject to specific teleological narratives or societal processes of inclusion and exclusion. Europe's Staging: Three Trends in Contemporary Theatre In contemporary theatre, the staging of Europe is to be situated in the complex constellations of politics and aesthetics. If theatre is defined as a practice distinguishable from politics – and we think that in the perspective of theatre, literary studies, and the recognition of numerous historical resonances in the dispositive of a Europeanoriented contemporary theatre, it is imperative in the widest sense – then various trends can be differentiated. We would like to [End Page 125] introduce three trends briefly that can neither be classified in distinct categories of political or agitational theatre, nor can they be identified with the assertion that in theatre every position, posture, or action/movement is political per se. (1) Documentary and Investigative Theatre, Documentality, and Forms of Documented Unreliability It is not surprising that the contemporary staging of Europe starts with a revision of documents and their function within different theatrical narratives. The archive of Europe has been grown in size since 1990 and been challenged with transnational narratives and documents from non-European countries – of course not only since the increasing migration to Europe at the end of the 20th century. Furthermore, the constitution of the archive has changed with the cultural turn that strives to give attention to objects beyond the written paper when thinking only of oral and performative history or the inscription in a global and digital world. Eventually, with the reprise of the new 'real' or 'reality' in all arts, documents have become the prioritized reference point. Some producers refer to the genre of 'documentary theatre' claiming specifically the reference to lived 'reality' and 'truth'. Others return to documentary theatre and its last remaining witnesses in order to rewrite national history in a transnational European History. However, as Hito Steyerl...

Acting Greek Tragedy by Graham Ley

Reviewed by: Acting Greek Tragedy by Graham Ley Tiffany Pounds-Williams Acting Greek Tragedy. By Graham Ley. University of Exeter Press, 2014. Cloth $27.00. 255 pages. In Acting Greek Tragedy, Graham Ley clarifies that he is not attempting to fashion a new method of actor training. Instead, he intends to create an “approach” through which an actor’s dramaturgical analysis of an Attic tragedy can be applied to a performance, thereby training the mind rather than the body or voice (vii). John Barton’s similarly dramaturgically based approach in Playing Shakespeare is directly acknowledged as Ley’s inspiration for this (225). An expert in dramaturgy and performance in ancient Greek theatre, Ley previously published Ancient Greek and Contemporary Performance: Collected Essays (University of Exeter Press, 2015) and The Theatricality of Greek Tragedy: Playing Space and Chorus (University of Chicago Press, 2007). Ley breaks new ground in Acting Greek Tragedy, creating an accessible, thought-provoking workshop series that forces the actor to invert the conventional hierarchy of the stage by recognizing that the chorus is perhaps even more crucial to comprehending Attic tragedies than is the protagonist. Ley recenters the discussion by suggesting that “A full tragic character is to some extent inconceivable without a chorus” (50). This shift in thinking is in line with current scholarly interest in marginalized Greek characters, as in Florence Yoon’s The Use of Anonymous Characters in Greek Tragedy: The Shaping of Heroes (Brill, 2012). Ley’s book is divided into four main chapters, each dedicated to exploring one of his acting workshops. These focus on monologues, dialogues, three-actor scenes, and scenes involving properties, with each workshop scaffolding onto previous ones. This structure allows readers to understand how to avoid the pitfalls of seemingly artificial language in Attic tragedies when faced with increasingly challenging circumstances. In his introduction, Ley establishes the breaking down of scenes into “transactions” and “phases,” which go on to form the core of his workshops (2, 34). [End Page 118] Transactions are defined as the business conducted between at least two parties, and phases are a way to break down lengthy monologues into easily digestible portions of purpose and emotion. In short, phases are changes in the action, whereas transactions are character interactions within those phases. This is similar to Konstantin Stanislavsky’s kusok or bit, later referred to as beats. Ley’s first chapter, “First Workshop—Monologues,” utilizes excerpts from Sophocles’ Antigone and Euripides’ Medea and Hippolytus, which Ley deconstructs into transactions and phases. A notable example is his proposal that Creon’s speech in Antigone, lines 162–210, during which he addresses Thebes as its ruler for the first time, is a transaction in which Creon aims to convince his people to support his rule and his burial proclamation, rather than simply a decree. This recontextualization indicates a need to address the chorus persuasively, as opposed to the dictatorial fashion with which this speech is often approached. Ley’s suggestion reinforces the significance of the chorus in Attic tragedy and encourages a broader range of transactional experimentation during workshops. Chapter 2, “Dialogues,” draws on selections from Sophocles and Euripides to consider scenes involving two actors. Each excerpt is discussed in extended detail, allowing the reader to follow Ley’s train of thought effortlessly. Ley also continues to amplify the chorus in this workshop, cheekily declaring that “it should never be assumed that placing a chorus in a huddle (still less in a ‘formation’) will somehow release the true ‘Greekness’ of a scene or a section of text” (58). The key to demystifying the chorus instead lies in analyzing how it is affected by, for instance, one character’s public disparagement of another. Ley’s focus is on the chorus and not the lead characters, a substantial realignment of character hierarchy, which usually dictates that the protagonist and antagonist are more important roles. This creates a grounded world where the public, their support or opposition, trust or suspicion, can change the outcome of a play through their effect on the psychology and behavior of tragic heroes and their antagonists. Scenes involving three actors are more complicated to dissect into transactions and phases, but Ley succeeds in proving in...

ФІВИ В МІФОЛОГІЧНОМУ НАРАТИВІ БЕОТІЙСЬКОГО ЕТНОСУ

he article is devoted to the study of the Boiotians’ myths. These legendary stories were a basis of the imagined past. So myths had formed the mentality of the Ancient Greek society. The main for Boiotian people was a myth about the own migration. We can find this tale in the “History” by Thucydides. But it was only a later retelling of the myths of the epic text. The first version of the tale we need to look for in the epic texts such as Homer’s “Iliad” and Hesiod’s poems. So myth about migration of Boiotians was the basis of the imagined past of the people of this region. Main role of the tale was played by Boiotians, who became eponym of the people. The author tried to recover myths about the polis of Thebes. Differences between regional and polis tales may answer the question: what was a real role played by polis of Thebes in the imagined past of Boiotian people. Ancient Greeks created a great number of myths about Thebes. A lot of these tales were a basis for Attic classical tragedy. But none of the earliest mythological narratives of Thebes intersect with myth of the Boiotians origin. The biggest polis of the region didn’t play any role at the imagining past of the Boiotian people. But imagined past could be changed. One of the examples we can find at Corinna’s poems. This source told us that first king of Thebes was a son of Boiotos. It was the newer tradition than an epic migration story. This tale appeared at the period of Thebes’ hegemony. And it has sense only as propaganda of polis of Thebes in the region. Mythological origin genealogy was softly rewriting of the imagined past. A new reality was created by using a poem in ritual. So, Thebes had a political motive to change imagine past and used for that soft mythical genealogy. The repeating through the ritual should have justified this new tradition. This research is based on the ancient written sources and academic studies. The article is an attempt to understand how myths were created and influenced the life of Ancient Greeks.

The Mockery of Madness: Laughter at and with Insanity in Attic Tragedy and Old Comedy

AbstractThe present paper poses the question of the different ways in which madness is laughed at—or with—in Attic Tragedy and in Old Comedy. What is the significance of each kind of “mad laughter”? I shall identify fundamental differences, related to the different kinds of character, mental aberration and dramatic conflict presented in each genre, and more broadly to the dramatic structure and function of each. A first distinction can be made between laughter at madness, which we see especially in tragedy, and laughter with, or embracing of, madness, which we experience in comedy. The second distinction is between two profoundly different understandings of and approaches to mental aberration: as intensely individual, “medical,” affliction (in tragedy) on the one hand or as essentially a social problem (or sometimes blessing), with social consequences and, in some cases, social solutions (in comedy) on the other. In the process, we shall also consider the significance—and some of the complexities—of the “curse versus blessing” analysis; questions as to who directs the “mad laughter” and who are its audience(s) (the original audience of the play; onstage characters, mortal and divine; the modern reader); and some relevant features of the visual and physical depiction of madness—in particular the use of mask—in both genres.

Reading Two Greek Refugee Plays in the Season of the Syrian Refugee Crisis

I argue that Aeschylus’ The Suppliants and Euripides’ The Trojan Women imagine cosmopolitan and democratic responses to strangers seeking aid, and utilize affect to teach us how to respond ethically and empathetically to the current refugee crisis. Starting from Greece’s current position as a processing/holding site for Middle Eastern and North African refugees into Europe, this article examines how the democratic and cosmopolitan aspirations of Attic tragedy model a potential contemporary response. Specifically, I posit an ethical responsibility for those of us in Europe and the United States to find solidarity between the struggles of refugees and our own struggles under neoliberal capitalism.

Theban Autochthony and Athenian Ideology in thePhoenissaeof Euripides

ABSTRACTRecent scenes of Syrian refugees arriving in Europe and the nationalist reflections they have engendered recall the discourses of foreign and native in antiquity, a theme addressed frequently in Attic tragedy. Euripides' Phoenician Maidens is a meditation on the theme of autochthony, a key ideological and mythological nexus of ideas about identity and community. The ideal of a homogeneous community symbolized by Athenians' autochthonous heritage fits uncomfortably with another Athenian ideal: hospitality and openness to strangers. The Phoenician Maidens of Euripides reflects on the theme of sameness and otherness, foreign and native, using the resources of theater to articulate a utopian resolution of these conflicting desires.