Monday, October 10, 2011
A. wide participation
1. eponymous archon
2. poets: tragic and comic
3. chorêgoi: "financial backer of the production"; a form of leitourgia = "public service"
4. choruses: tragic, comic, and dithyrambic
5. actors
6. trainers, musicians, costumers, mask-makers, painters and builders
B. competition
1. system of judging: double use of sortition
2. poet/chorêgos partnership wins prizes
3. actors win prizes
C. civic events surrounding the performance
1. sacrifices and processions
2. parade of tribute-payments
3. display of state-sponsored orphans who had come of age, with armor
4. honorary proclamations
A. blend of heroic and modern, religious and humanistic (better, god-centered and man-centered interpretations of action)
B. interrogation of tradition in the light of contemporary developments in society: raising questions at a distance
C. kings and heroes: complex mixture of emulation/admiration/identification and distancing/scapegoating
D. chorus vs. characters: mass vs. elite, moderation vs. ambition and excess, "middling values," survival of the community
A. the tetralogy form
1. trilogy of Agamemnon, Choephoroi = Libation Bearers, Eumenides, plus burlesque satyr-play Proteus based on story from Odyssey Book 4
2. structures of correspondence, reciprocity, sometimes followed by resolution
3. often generational sweep of time, long and complex chain of causation, leaving relatively smaller role for individual character and actions
B. the myth of the house of Atreus
1. competition of Atreus and Thyestes for kingship
2. seduction of Aerope by Thyestes
3. Thyestes’ banquet
4. sacrifice of Iphigenia at Aulis
5. adultery of Clytemnesta and Aegisthus
6. murder of the returned Agamemnon (nostos)
7. return of the exiled son Orestes: revenge and matricide
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
C. justice, the gods, and human fortune: problematic and puzzling
1. Zeus Xenios, Zeus Soter, Zeus the cause of all, Zeus father of Dike (Justice): note hymn Agam. 160-183
2. Artemis and the omen of the eagles; Agam. 133-159
3. Erinys (pl. Erinyes): avenging demon (Fury)
4. action-reaction, blow for blow, doer suffers, learn by suffering, repaying debt: is there any safe action? e.g., Agam. 176ff., 1336ff., 1430, 1526, Lib. Bearers 312-14
5. struggle of chorus to make sense of situation: hymn to Zeus, Agam. 160-183, claim of safety in moderation and obscurity (Agam. 750-781), but also inherent danger of excess and wealth (Agam. 1001-1015, 1331-1342)
6. Cassandra on human fortune: Agam. 1327-1330
D. house and city, family and society
1. in Agam. weak and confused voice of old men, show city oppressed by war and then by usurpation; murmuring resentment, but also loyal dependency
2. in Lib. Bearers, concentration on family, liberation of city in background
3. in Eumenides, solution in Athens through civic foundation
E. gender conflict and public vs. private values
1. blame of Helen: "on account of one woman"
2. Iphigenia: Agam.’s dilemma, Agam. 205-227
3. Clytemnestra in Agam.: verbal power, control of chorus, defeat of Agamemnon (Agam. 905-957)
4. Clytemnestra in Lib. Bearers: reversal; dialogue with Orestes (Lib. Bearers 892-930); Pylades and Apollo
5. Erinyes vs. Olympian gods: terms of their service have been changed
F. imagery
1. nets and robes
2. hunting
3. blood
4. reproduction (child like the parent), infant animals, parable of lion cub (Agam. 718-736), serpent in Clytemnestra’s dream (Lib. Bearers 523-553)
5. fire, torch, light vs. darkness
G. Eumenides as resolution of dilemma
1. succession at Delphi (Eum. 1-8; contrast Agam. 167-172)
2. new dichotomy of Erinyes in opposition to Olympian gods, esp. Apollo
3. impasse requires move to Athens, translation of problem to another context
4. foundation of Areopagos court: revised aetiology features human jurors
5. the gender argument of Apollo
6. the tie vote
7. persuasion, incorporation, transformation of the Erinyes (note Eum. 516-537 and 696-698)
8. greater clarity; conversion of unseen to seen; taming of imagery
Friday, October 14, 2011
These videos can be viewed at Moffitt Library's Media Resource Center. Or you can watch them in streaming video if you have a CalNet ID; you need to have Windows Media Player installed, or in MacOS X a good alternative is to have QuickTime together with the free Flip4Mac. Go to http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/classicaltheater.html:
Aeschylus Agamemnon 90 min. DVD 1558
Aeschylus Choephori [=Libation Bearers] 70 min. DVD 1559
Aeschylus Eumenides 70 min. DVD 1560
National Theatre (London) production directed by Peter Hall, 1977
Translation by Tony Harrison: quite original and distinctive, as it chooses to use predominately short Anglo-Saxon words, with very frequent repetition of key terms and rhythms like incantations. Common terms: he-gods, she-gods, clan, blood
Performed indoors on a thrust stage, with darkness and lighting effects
Enacted by all-male cast in masks playing multiple roles over the course of the trilogy
Musical accompaniment is harsh, atonal, using few instruments, but if we could hear 5th century Greek theater music it might sound just as strange to us
Point of view of spectator
--in ancient theater, distant view for audience, view of speaker in context of larger configuration on stage and in orchestra
--on modern video, constant editing, changing camera angle and zooming; thus loss of three dimensionality of live theater; particularly inappropriate are videographer's close-up shots, too close on masks,
Treatment of chorus
--ancient chorus almost always in unison; scene in Agam. 1346-1372 where chorus of old men breaks up into individual voices (not singing here) is highly unusual and thus very striking to audience, symbolic of their confusion and weakness
--London chorus, esp. in Agam, often divides songs into successive voices of single members, emphasized at times by movement of camera
Libation-Bearers: view scenes from the entrance of Orestes and knock on the door of palace to the point where Orestes leads his mother inside to her death
Eumenides: view the arrival of Orestes at Athens and the trial scene