Transcript From Classical to Contemporary

Drama and Melodrama
HUM 2051: Civilization I
Fall 2013
Dr. Perdigao
September 16-18, 2013
Staging Drama
• Epic
• Drama
• Poetry
• Greek Drama—5th-6th century BCE (especially 490-404 BCE in Athens)
• Dionysiac Revels (contests: agon (struggle)) (choric song)
• Thespis/Aeschylus (526 -456 BCE)
• [thespian]
• Sophocles (495-408 BCE)
• Euripides (480-406 BCE)
• Masks (persona/e)
• Chorus
• Orkhestra
• Skene
http://academic.reed.edu/humanities/110tech/theater.html
Plotting
• Hamartia
tragic flaw
• Hubris
desire to be godlike
• Anagnorisis
recognition by tragic hero about himself, his/her actions, identity
(leads to reversal)
• Peripeteia
change of events, reversal of circumstances
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Tragic vision
Irony
Sight/blindness
Fate/free will
• Stasima (choruses) and episodes (action)
• Ampitheatre
Evolution of Forms
• Shift in drama from narration to dramatic impersonation—when leader of
chorus went from telling about the god to enacting moment in god’s life
• Additions of more actors allowed more confrontation—occurred after
Thespis—enhanced psychological conflict, shift to agon and realism
• Large, stylized masks—mask gender; voice and appearance—help to
visualize characters, differentiate; appear ritualistic (as opposed to real),
called persona(e)
History of Drama
• Greek contest/struggle=agon
• 3 parts of the Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides (458
BCE)
• Worship of Dionysus—festivals
• Dithyramb—song sung in honor of Dionysus
• Two accounts: Semele dies (Dionysus in Zeus’ leg); son of Persephone,
ritual of dismemberment, being put back together
• Pentheus slaughtered by women, cause: denying Dionysus is a god
History of Drama
• Dionysia—four or five days, spring festival celebrating defeat of Persian
invaders (480-479 BCE), surpremacy of Athens
• Tragic poet—three tragedies and a satyr play (burlesque on mythic theme)
• Comic poet—one comedy
• Tragic poet—trilogy or three separate stories
• Oresteia: 458 BCE
• Aeschylus dies two years later
On Tragedy
• “Tragic vision” of life—sense that people must struggle to overcome limits
which they cannot overcome
• Recognition that this struggle is the glory of being human and disaster of
being human
• Disaster to ignore human limits—offend gods if struggle
• In The Iliad, hero defends self against death though death is way to
immortality; urge to perfection is desirable but against notion of gods
• Tragic irony
• Tragedy—movement from disorder: order but at cost
Framing the Trilogy
• Aeschylus— “creator of tragedy” (502)
• Fought against Persians at Marathon, believed to have fought at Salamis,
produced around ninety plays, of which six or seven survive (502)
• At the end of The Libation Bearers, Furies appear to Orestes—to avenge
matricide
• With development of court, move from old era to the beginning of the new
(503), with communal justice rather than the “inconclusive anarchy of
individual revenge” (503)
• Justice as theme
• Nets—system of justice connects, binds, and traps
Shifting Perspectives
• “From suffering comes understanding and progress” (504)
• “They are all caught in the net, the system of justice by vengeance that
only binds tighter the more its captives struggle to free themselves” (505).
• Gender asymmetry: “the Furies’ incorporation into Athens represents the
appropriation and taming of female power, and it validates the exclusion of
women from the civic processes of the democracy—a fact of Athenian
daily life. On the other hand, in celebrating the Furies’ roles of
maintaining obedience to law through inspiring fear and of promoting
natural fertility, the text acknowledges the power of the female, which it
associates with the Earth’s natural processes, ‘primitive’ and prior to the
male-centered rationality of the city but vital still. The female is given a
role in the city, even though she is excluded from its official public life,
and that role is celebrated. There is no doubt, however, about the
dominance of the patriarchal principle under the authority of the
Olympian gods.” (504)