Modern Scholarship: Tragedies. Flashcards
(7 cards)
“Organising a festival was on a par with organising the state’s war effort - so the Eponymous Archon oversaw the financing of the fleet but likewise was responsible for appointing the six choregoi who would fund the choruses for each tragedian and comedian.”
Cartledge. You could say - “organising a festival was on par with organising the state’s war effort.”
“The Chorus act as an ‘emotional bridge’ between the audience and the narrator, telling us how we should be feeling/acting and thus overcoming the limitations of only having three onstage.”
Taplin, on the chorus! “The chorus act as an ‘emotional bridge’…thus overcoming the limitations of only having three onstage.”
“Every single transgressive woman in tragedy is temporarily or permanently husbandless. This conventin can be interpreted as a synmptom of the Athenian citizen’s anxiety about the crisis which might afflict his househould during his absence…for example, in Bacchae, the sisters of Semele have been sent maddened to the mountains; Pentheus has been ‘out of town’; Echion, Agave’s husband, is either dead or not present.”
Edith Hall.
“Every single transgressive woman in tragedy is temporarily or permanently husbandless.” we can interpret this by an Athenian’s fear of what would happen at his house, while he was not there!
“Slaves, although formally powerless, can weild enormous power in the world of tragedy through their access to dangerous knowledge.”
Edith Hall! Think of the shepherd in OTK.
“As the only vocal group within the play, the chorus are the dramatic character which most resembles the theatre audience.”
Chris Carey!
- in a sense that they’re a group.
- But, the chorus in the Bacchae are very pro-Dionysus, even when a modern audience wouldn’t be (though an ancient audience would likely support his killing a blasphemer).
- The chorus, in OTK, while more of an ‘emotional bridge’, they still hype up Oedipus a lot, and are very pro-him, whereas the audience would know his fate!
“War was to a Greek man what marriage was to a Greek woman” (in terms of duty).
Cartledge.
“The chorus members are physically at the centre of the theatre space, as they perform in the orchestra and in their movements they can mime past and future events, thus contributing in a radical way to the stage action.”
Easterling.
