Western Literature Week Eleven

                                         Oedipus the King

Term explanation

Tragedy: is a form of drama based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in audiences. Tragic plots were most often based upon myths from the oral traditions of archaic epics. In tragic theatre, however, these narrative were presented by actors. Athenian tragedies were performed in late March/ early April at an annual state religious festival in honor of Dionysus.

Drama: is the specific mode of narrative, typically fictional, represented in performance. It often combined with music and dance. The drama in opera is generally sung throughout. Musicals generally include both spoken dialogue and songs. And some forms of drama have identical music or musical accompaniment underscoring the dialogue.

Comedy: It refers to any discourse or work generally intended to be humorous or to amuse by including laughter, especially in theatre, television, film, and stand-up comedy.  

Catharsis: is the purification and purgation of emotions- especially pity and fear. It describes the effect of tragedy principally on the audience. It is a metaphor originally used by Aristotle in the Poetics, comparing the effects of tragedy.

Chorus: a group of characters in Greek tragedy, who comment on the action of a play without participation in it. Their leader is the choragos. The chorus represent , on stage, the general population of the particular story. In contrast, with many of the themes of the ancient Greek plays which tented to be about individual heroes, gods and goddess. They were often the same sex as the main character. In Aeschylus, Agamemnon, the chorus comprises the elderly men of Argos, whereas in Euripides’ The Bachhae, they were a group of eastern bacchantes , and in Sophocles’ Electra, the chorus represents the woman of Argos. The parts however were acted by males. In Aeschylus’ The Eumenides, however, the chorus takes the part of a host of avenging Furies.             

History of western drama

Classical Greek Drama

Western drama originates in classical Greece.

Satyr play: it was an ancient Greek form of tragicomedy, similar in spirit to the bawdy satire of burlesque. In the Athenian Dionysia, each playwright customarily entered four plays into the competition : three tragedies and one satyr play to be performed either at the end of the festival or between the second and third tragedies of a trilogy, as a spirited entertainment, a comic relief to break the oppression of hours of gloomy and fatalistic tragedy.        

God+ mortal ‘s child

Dionysus: He is the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine. He is the son of Zeus and Semele

Semele: She is the mortal mother of Dionysus by Zeus in one of his many origin myths.

Illegitimate child- For example : Athena, Dionysus

Athena: She is the goddess of wisdom. She is the virgin patroness of Athens.

Thespis: creator of tragedy--Father of tragedy

He was the first person ever to appear on stage as an actor playing a character in a play. In other sources, he is said to have to introduced the first principal actor in addition to the chorus. He was a singer of dithyrambs. He is credit with introducing a new style in which one singer or actor performed the words of individual characters in the stories, distinguishing between the characters with the aid of different masks. This new style called tragedy. He was the most popular exponent of it. Eventually, to find the best tragedy were instituted at the City Dionysia in Athens, and Thespis won the first documented competition. Capitalising on his success, he was also invented theatrical touring.

Aristophanes: the comic writer

Aristophanes

He was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. He was also known as the Father of Comedy and the prince of Ancient.

Ancient Greek comedy

Old comedy [archaia]

The most important Old Comic dramatist is Aristophanes Born in 446 BC, whose works, with their pungent political satire and abundance of sexual and scatological innuendo, effectively define the genre today. His most important contemporary rivals being Hermippus and Eupolis.

Middle comedy [mese]

Aristophanes and others of the latest writers of the Old Comedy being sometimes regarded as the earliest Middle Comic poets. There have some different points from the Old Comedy. The role of the chorus was diminished to the point where it had no influence on the plot, public characters were not impersonated or personified onstage, and the objects of ridicule were general rather than personal, literary rather than political.

New Comedy [nea]

New Comedy followed the death of Alexander the Great in 323 and lasted throughout the reign of the Macedonian rulers, ending about 260 BC. It is comparable to situation comedy and comedy of manners. The three best known playwrights belonging to thus genre are Menander, Philemon, Diphilus.

Greek Tragedians

Aeschylus

The first of classical Athen’s great dramatists, who raised the emerging art of tragedy to great heights and theatrical power. 

Sophocles

He was the younger contemporary of Aeschylus and the older contemporary of Euripides. The best known of his drama was Oedipus the king.  

Euripides

He was most considered to be the most socially critical of all the ancient Greek tragedians, and his plays seem quite modern in comparison with those of his contemporaries.          

Vocabulary

nov: new

innovation: a new idea, device or method

renovation: to make changes or repair

vok: to call

invoke: to mention someone or something in an attempt to make people feel a certain way

provoke: to make something happen

ab: negative thoughts

abortive: falling to achieve the desire result

Phrase

be credit with

feel like Ving

Additional Supplement

inauguration: the act of starting a new operation or practice

cocky: pertly self assertive

ecstasy: an overpowering emotion or exaltation

Book discussion

p.603 Ancient Athenian Drama

provide compelling stories about human relationships, whose absorbing, often

violent or melodramatic plots invite us to think about profound issues, such as the nature of justice, the meaning of suffering, and clashes between family and state and between human and divine perspectives.

The two major Athenian religious occasions that included major Athenian religious occasions that included major dramatic performances: the Great Dionysia and the Lernaea.

Lernaea: was an ancient serpenine water monster with reptilian traits in Greek and Roman mythology.

p.604

Dramatists also learned from Homer how to create vivid dialogue and fast, exciting narrative, as well as sympathy for a range of different characters, Greek and foreigner alike.  

Movie

The great Gatsby

Chapter 1

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turn over in my mind ever since.