Greek Drama return home

Sophocles: be mindful that he was writing about a legend. It might be easy to image that you are invited to write a play about the legend of Johnny Apple seed for a contest. As you read, wonder about the role of chance in the plays. What part does chance play in Oedipus' life (the messenger, the shepard, etc)? What forces are associated with the plague? Also reflect on what role does Oedipus' personality play in the drama? What are good points in the text that illuminate Oedipus' personality? Reflect, too, on the motif of blindness. Even in the translation, we find a good deal of language play with the pattern of blindness.

Drama is the creation, development, and resolution of tension in an audience. The artist (the dramatist) produces tension through the creation, development, and resolution of a conflict of forces.

Aristotle’s definition of tragedy:

• “The function of tragedy is to effect a pleasurable catharsis of the emotions of
  pity and terror.”
• Know what Aristotle meant by the three unities:

1. unity of time:
2. unity of place:
3. unity of action:

NB: theater: from the Greek word theatron, which means “seeing place”

1. Drama, defined:
Drama is the creation, development, and resolution of tension in an audience. The artist (the dramatist) produces tension through the creation, development, and resolution of a conflict of forces.

2. Theater, defined:

3. The artist (the dramatist) has three tools with which he may create, develop, and resolve conflict:

A. Situation:
B. Character:
C. Plot:

4. Different Kinds of conflict (not an exhaustive list):

A. Conflict of forces in two characters
B. Conflict of forces within a single character
C. Conflict between the force of a single character and the force of an institution

5. Illustration of Dramatic Structure:

6. Other significant terms of drama and dramatic structure:

A. exposition

B. foil

C. climax

D. denouement (resolution)

E. secondary plot / minor conflict

F. relief of tension Generally, how do we apply these terms?

How do we investigate theme in drama?

6. Drama also involves the distortion of norms of human experience. What does this mean?

7. Tragedy and Comedy: Two major genres, or “species,” of drama

A. Tragedy
• Tragedy concerns the fate of an individual hero, singled out from the community through circumstances beyond his control and through his own choices and actions.
• As the drama progresses, the hero’s course of action entwines with events and circumstances beyond his control.
• The hero’s final downfall is seen, paradoxically, as both chosen and inevitable.
• Character dries the plot in tragedy; the hero’s decisions and actions will change the situation.

B. Comedy
• Comedy focuses on the fortunes of a community, rather than on an individual.
• Heroes in comedy often come in pairs (lovers, for example).
• Comedy aims at showing a remaking, a broader reforming, of society.

8. Aristotle’s definition of tragedy:

• “The function of tragedy is to effect a pleasurable catharsis of the emotions of
  pity and terror.”
  

NB: We need to understand what Aristotle means by the significant terms of this
definition: catharsis, pity, and terror. We also need to understand how watching
tragedy can be pleasurable.

What is “heroic capacity”?

9. Some additional terms of tragedy, and of the Greek Theater:
A. theater: from the Greek word theatron, which means “seeing place”
B. unity of time:
C. unity of place:
D. unity of action:
E. peripeteia:
F. anagnorisis:
G. prologue:
H. parados:
I. episodes:
J. odes:
K. catastrophe:
L. exodus:
M. skene:
N. machina:
O. hubris:
P. hamartia:

Facts about the Greek Theater:

• Place: Athens, on the slope of the Acropolis
• Time: 5th century, B.C., during late March or early April. Held during the City Dionysia, a celebration honoring the god of wine and fertility. Dramas performed as part of a three-day competition. Playwrights write and perform a trilogy of tragedies
• Chorus: Young men aged 17 - 21. All wore the same mask
• Actors: Only three per tragedy. Wear different masks
• Audience: 17,000 people, by some estimates All members of 10 -12 “tribes,” which were the divisions of Athenian society
• Other relevant facts about Sophocles’ life, the Age of Pericles, the history and culture of Greece?