Greek tragedy
- 5th century BCE
- performed at City Dionysia festival
- every year
- Athens
- competition
- three tragedians
- trilogy + satyr play
- associations
- entertainment
- philosophy
- death
- fate
- format
- dialogue
- choral passages
- instruments
- kithara
- aulos
- double-reeded
- like oboe, bassoon, sounds like alto-saxophone
Agamemnon
- first play by Aeschylus in Oresteia
- Agamemnon
- Libation Bearers
- Eumenides
- satyr play: Proteus
Trojan mythology
- Argos
- Zeus only 1 mortal daughter
- Helen
- most beautiful in the world
- Aphrodite promised Paris most beautiful woman in world
- Helen already married to Menelaus
- kidnaps
- entitled
- sack Troy to get her back
- 10 years of war
- stalemate
- watchman waiting for end of war to light beacon relay
- starts the night Troy is taken
Aristotle on tragedy
- innovation made by playwright Thespis
- take one member out of chorus to interact with chorus
- actor
- aka Thespians
- mythological hero or god
- Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides
- chorus becomes marginalized over time
the play
- likes to make up words
- tour de force of poetry in chorus because he’s flexing
- background
- before Greek fleet got back to Troy, no wind at Aulos
- eagles as sign
- Menelaus and Agamemnon
- will sack Troy but make Artemis angry
- sacrifice Agamemnon’s daughter
- Clytemnestra: Agamemnon’s wife
- women segregated in society
- no public life
- tragedy: imaginative perspective on women’s roles in society
- overstepping normal roles
- pushing back
- political control
- other motivations
- imagining an alternative world
- social and cultural anxieties
- pushes Agamemnon to hubris
- helped by Agamemnon’s cousin Aegisthus
- affair!!
- father: Atreus
- Atreus and Thyestes
- Thyestes kills Atreus’ sons and feeds them to him
- he was too young to be there
- allegory of lion raised in house
- “Disaster’s priest”
- who is the lion in each play?