Unit 9

English 201:    Masterpieces of Western Literature

Gender: Be hesitant in making contemporary American judgments about Aeschylus' assumptions in regard to gender roles.  When he says, e.g.:
13     That woman [Clytaemnestra]--she maneuvers like a man.
Aeschylus is making a point about behavior out of the ordinary. Hubris is the primary example.  Behavior that is out of the ordinary (in this case, what is ordinary in regard to gender roles), is not wrong, but it attracts our attention alerting us to the possibility of danger.

Human Sacrifice: Remember AK's horrific vow to PAT's shade?
(Iliad)18.393    Before your funeral pyre I'll cut the throats
                        of 12 resplendent children of the Trojans
We don't know exactly what such a sacrifice is suppose to accomplish.  AK suggests that it will somehow assuage his rage or perhaps simply express it:
18.395               that is my murdering fury at your death.
Obviously it is revenge against Troy.

What is our reaction to AK's human sacrifice?  We find it repugnant, savage, primitive; & that is the point.  When AG sacrifices innocence/Iphigeneia, there is nothing redeeming in the act:
228    no innocence moves her judges mad for war.
         Her father called his henchmen on

Artemis/Diana (wearing the moon in her hair)

Isn't it interesting (& perhaps necessary) that AG's victim is a girl, not a boy like Abraham's sacrifice?  Changing the sex increases the connotation of innocence & fragility.  It seems to change our focus from the motives of the priest or the one who offers the sacrifice to the victim.  In any case, Aeschylus' play is obviously a statement against the universal practice of human sacrifice.  Why?  Where the Greeks in the habit of offering human sacrifices such as those being done by the thousands at Chichen Itza?  No.  Almost since we began this course we found Homer & now Aeschylus interested in how to put a city together, how to nurture civics & civilization.  The kind of human sacrifice Aeschylus has in mind are the citizens who so often have been considered "cannon fodder" by leaders.

If it isn't the wind that literally blows in the wrong direction, there will be some political or religious wind that needs correction by the sacrifice of young lives.  Aristophanes ridicules almost the same idea (militarism) in Lysistrata.
 

Tragic Drama Formula: Did you read pp. 10-12 that said:

• Greek drama originated in the 6th c. bce, in the worship of Dionysus.
• The festivals were civic & religious rituals [that] explored the fundamental ideas & values that made Athens a unified community.
• The audience [was] the whole citizenry.

• The hero is someone we look up to or envy; someone who has more intelligence, charm, beauty, or simply more good luck than we do.  We would like to be that person.
• The hero is involved in a complex or irresolvable moral dilemma.  She performs a decisive act that turns out to be disastrously wrong.  That it was indefensible & outrageous was not entirely or not starkly clear at the time when the character was emotionally distraught & perhaps committed the act out of desperation.
• The subsequent tragedy that the character suffers is clearly the result of his/her act of hubris.
• The character (usually identified in the title) cannot be exonerated.  The whole point of tragic drama is to illustrate crime or morally outrageous acts & their inexorable destructive consequences.

Click on the next section: Explication above.