Journal Prompt
What, if anything, from the Aristotle reading, what from the Csapo reading, helps explain Antigone?
Text Access, What to Read
Aristotle Poetics, excerpts (online access, read all).
Csapo, Eric, and William J. Slater. The Context of Ancient Drama. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995. (Available via bookstore.) Read pages:
- 79-80 (middle)] with plates 14-15b (back of book)
- 89-95 (top)
- 97 (#7), with plate 20b
- 139-143
- 157-160
- 221-224 (middle)
- 286-290
- 331-334 (middle)
- 349-354 (middle)
Study Guide Proper
This is an introduction to Greek tragedy, with a particular focus on its origins, practice, and ancient theory. For this class meeting, the theoretical component is covered by selections from Aristotle's Poetics.
What do we mean by "Greek tragedy"? The term is often used in the sense of a situation gone horribly wrong, and with lots of "drama." Yet the Greek origins of the term "tragedy" suggest something altogether different and puzzling. For the Greek noun tragōidia, broken down into its components, means something like "billy goat (tragos) song (ōidē)."
Whatever that term will have originally meant, evidence suggests that very early on, "tragedies" (tragōidiai) had developed into choral performances — singing and dancing by groups — connected with Dionysian worship.
And from that developed the kinds of tragedies we'll be reading. For our purposes, the concept denoted by the term "Greek tragedy" is, for the most part, better referred to as "Athenian (or "Attic") tragedy," a type of drama perfected at Athens in the fifth century BCE, and involving acting and singing by individuals and groups, and with stories mostly (not always!) coming from Greek myth. Not all surviving ancient Greek tragedy comes from Athens, but the vast majority of it does.
Why study the origins of Greek/Athenian tragedy? Most of us start out assuming that tragedy, including Greek tragedy, is always sad. A historical perspective complicates that picture.
Discussion Topics — General
In taking notes on reading, keep the following questions in mind:
- How did the ancient Greek theater (especially in classical Athens, ca. 500-ca. 300 BCE),
and the dramas performed therein, seem to fit into the life of the city?
- What did it mean for the people of the city?
- Any political or religious resonances to the dramatic
festivals?
- How did ancient drama actually "work"? What was the performance process all about? What was actually done?
Pointers for Reading
Since the reading goes into considerable detail, it will probably help if I set your bearings as to important issues:
- The origins of Greek drama in public/social ritual, especially that pertaining to the god Dionysus
- Dionysus' connection to impersonation, masking, costume
- The democratic character of Dionysian ritual
- The close connections between drama, festival, and competition
- Drama as a collective experience
Note that most of the reading has to do with Athens, where most of our evidence comes from, though some also has to do with Greece more generally. The four genres you'll see addressed are:
- Tragedy.
- Satyr drama.
- Comedy.
- Dithyramb.
See what you can learn about them from the text. Also, what can you piece together about the conventions governing the composition, production, performance, reception, and competitive judging of drama? What similarities, what differences do you see between what you read about in Csapo and staged drama today?
Aristotle Poetics
Aristotle (384-322 BCE), philosopher and student of Plato, applied himself to numerous branches of knowledge: biology, physics, metaphysics, logic, ethics, etc. His Poetics is a little like a natural history of literature: it sets forth a systematic account of its subject (poetry in its various forms), and features classification (always an obsession with Aristotle), explanation of causes and purposes, critical evaluation, etc. It and certain works of Plato (Ion, Republic) present us with the earliest systematic literary theory in the western tradition.
At the same time, it is not to be mistaken for a work of high literary polish. What we have are probably lecture notes, perhaps with passages not by Aristotle himself, never really intended for reading by the general public. The style is clipped and pedantic, the organization somewhat messy — your typical Professor. But it's possible, too, that his approach offers insights. . . .
By the time that Aristotle was writing, the "golden age" of tragedy was already over. Tragedy itself was not dead (tragedies were still being written). But there was no longer an Aeschylus, a Sophocles, a Euripides, or, for that matter, an Agathon, around to produce masterpieces. The plays discussed by Aristotle were, in his day, already "classics" of a sort. Aristotle himself knows them principally as texts, things you read, not watch — an important point.
Note that we have only part of what originally could have been twice as long as the preserved fragment. Note, too, that what we have discusses poetry (comedy, epic, etc.) other than tragedy. Still, it all holds relevance for our topic.
Terminology
Part VI
"End" — this translates Greek telos, which in Aristotle means not simply "end," but "goal" in the sense of purpose, the end point one aims for. Thus imitation of action is the "end," the ultimate purpose, of tragedy according to Aristotle.
Part XIII
". . . yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice pr depravity, but by some error or frailty" (p. 76). "Error or frailty" translates what in Greek is hamartia, which does NOT mean "tragic flaw" but mistake or moral error or wrongful act. It's the word used in the Bible for "sin." The term comes up in ch13, which concerns the action, which is what makes up plot. In Aristotle's conception of hamartia and of plot, tragic error, the kind that best elicits pity and fear, will result from ignorance (would Oedipus have slept with his mother had he known who she was?). At the same time, character or disposiiton (ēthos) matters: "Thus a person of a given character should speak or act in a given way, by the rule either of necessity or of probability, just as this event should follow that by necessary or probable sequence" (p. 82).
Part XV
By deus ex machina, Latin (not Greek!) for "god from the machine," the translator renders what in Greek simply means "from the machine." What that's about is the crane that could be used to suspend or lower an actor playing a god. Aristotle doesn't approve of poets who resort to this special effect to advance or to resolve the plot, like a good witch dropping in to fix things with a wave of the magic wand. He wants there to be an ending that fits the logic of the plot.