CLST 273-WI / WSGS 297-WI: Classical Tragedy with a focus on Women's Studies and Gender Writing Intensive Fall Semester 2010 Dr. Jacqueline Long

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Study Questions

These questions suggest directions for you to pursue your ideas about feminism and Classical tragedy. Questions about upcoming readings generally flag concerns I expect will be important in class discussions. Summary is a useful form of studying: you should review your notes after each class and add a few brief re-statements what the most important lines of our evolving discussion covered. These questions provide some cues, but they won't capture everything, nor will they necessarily forecast exam questions very closely. They invite you to develop interesting lines of thought.

One thing exams will ask you to do is to discuss specific ideas about Athenian tragic plays in terms of feminist critical theory and literary and cultural information --concrete evidence-- in our course material. Therefore you will find it useful, as you think about even very wide-ranging questions, to identify specific pieces of text that help demonstrate your observations and prove your insights, and to be able to explain clearly just how this textual evidence validates the conclusions you draw.

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file in progress - perennially

The study questions in this file will be updated through the course of the semester. (The ones that have old dates kept pace with the last time this course was taught, on a slightly different schedule and set of assignments, since it was not writing-intensive as ours is this term.) Keep watching this space!

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Monday 30 August

From today's class:

• In general terms (just to get started), compare and contrast the society imagined in traditional Greek mythology --fifth-century Athenian tragedy's typical subject matter-- from the society of fifth-century Athens itself.
  • What sorts of communities were involved?
  • Who held political authority within these communities?
  • What positions did women typically occupy in these two contexts?
  • Continue thinking about these questions and extending your understanding as we advance in our study.
• What social entity did ancient Greeks designate by the word polis? What social entity did ancient Greeks designate by the word oikos? What ideas about social behavior and relationships did fifth-century Athenian Greeks typically associate with these two key words, and how did concepts of gender figure in these associations?
• How did Athenian performance of tragedies connect with the institution of democratic government at Athens?

For tonight's reading:

• One by one as we come to them, set each tragedy we read into the context of other fifth-century Athenian tragedies whose texts are preserved.
  • Where in the course of its poet's output does this play come? Consult our Index of Dates.
  • As you build your expertise in this material, and then as you review the tragedies (say, for an exam or something), think about how each play typifies dramatic techniques and thematic concerns of that particular poet, and about how it may connect with other Athenian tragedies, other ancient Greek literature, other aspects of Classical Athenian life, and anything relevant that came afterwards.
• What does Didaskalia's page Introduction to Greek Stagecraft add to your knowledge of when, where, and how plays such as the Bacchae were initially performed at Athens? Think about how the occasions, the performance space, and Athenian conventions of staging would affect the way a fifth-century audience could experience the Bacchae.
• Who are the principal characters in Euripides' Bacchae? How do family ties relate (most of) them to one another? What basic issue has put them in conflict with one another?
• Who make up the chorus of Bacchae? Where do they come from initially, and how have they gotten to Thebes? To what group of people at Thebes, and to what individuals in particular, is the chorus's position most similar - but what are some crucial differences (think particularly about the issue at conflict among the principals)?

Wednesday 1 September

• It is always worth thinking about our plays in terms of the dramatic performances for which the authors envisaged them. As you read, look for what suggestions the texts give about the original staging. How would the physical space, and the conventions of staging the Athenians typically used to deal with the constraints of that space, have given emphasis to particular ideas in the texts?
  • Compare and contrast to the resources of modern theatrical performance and the conventions actors typically use now: what emphases is our theater well able to bring out in a play?
  • What ideas is a modern audience typically interested in having emphasized in a play? What techniques are used to emphasize them? Fifth-century Athenians might OR might not have had similar interests, and the techniques of their staging might or might not have been suited to making similar emphases. How can the plays tell us about what their original audiences were looking for?
  • The Athenian performance-convention of using only male actors makes as striking an emblem as any of one theoretical concern central to feminist inquiry into the ancient world, where can male-authored texts and men's perspectives touch on women's experience? Hold the question somewhere in the back of your mind as you read through all our material. Do our playwrights sometimes seem to address a concern like this one? How? Do their plays suggest any possible answers, or approaches to answering, this feminist question?
• What common ancient Greek patterns of thinking about the world and about individual's identity within the world (including participation in categories by definition and more personally felt membership in communities) does Dionysus's position as he describes it in the prologue seem to upset?
• What expectations about women's sexuality and social relations framed the different interpretations of Semele's pregnancy? Identify the different perspectives different individuals or groups take, and what habits and assumptions could press them each to take the ones they do.

• What are the Theban bacchants (as opposed to the Asian bacchants who comprise the chorus and are present in the orchestra) reported to be doing up on Mt. Cithaeron? Note especially activities that break boundaries of conventional ancient Greek category-thinking, such as the definition of groups by gender or species.
• How does Dionysus get into Pentheus's mind and change what Pentheus thinks he's going to do about the women on Mt. Cithaeron?
  • What concerns within Pentheus's character does Dionysus seem to be exploiting? Note especially where category-thinking about gender and sexuality affect Pentheus's ideas - both about the women and about his own identity and actions.
  • What does Dionysus do to exploit Pentheus's preconceived ideas and turn him to his own purpose?

Friday 3 September

Continue rounding out our picture of the social practices and presumptions about gender that fifth-century Athenians typically observed, so that the challenges our plays make to these expectations will become more apparent.

• What features of patriarchy in the oikos can be seen as beneficial and protective? What presumptions about other men and their behavior does this ideal defend against? To what extent can women subscribe to this ideology, and why might they want to? (Think of Ino, Agave, and Autonoe.)
• What features of patriarchy in the oikos can be seen as restrictive and oppressive? What presumptions about women and their capacity for ethical choice does this model emphasize? How does the Bacchae show Dionysiac worship especially challenging this set of assumptions - and yet by what comparable means does Dionysus impose his worship in Thebes?
• In addition to dichotomies within human-society-as-they-knew-it between oikos and polis, what distinctions did ancient Greeks commonly draw between human society and the non-human realm - in the Bacchae, between Thebes, domestic or civic, and Mt. Cithaeron? How does Dionysus break down these distinctions?
• In what ways is the oikos not self-contained, but visible to the polis beyond it? How may "public" awareness of the state of "private" sphere influence the possibilities and perspectives available to members of the oikos in their relations with one another?
• How does Pentheus translate patriarchal authority within the oikos into his capacity as ruler of the polis Thebes? What fears and what sense of responsibilities motivate him? How does he act in response?

• How does the idea of costuming work in the scene where Pentheus is leaving the city of Thebes to go to Mt. Cithaeron? In what ways is costuming or appearance mentioned? What effects does it seem to have? Where else does the play mention clothing or costuming?
• What events does the audience see in the Bacchae, and what does it hear about? Think about what effects the play gets by handling some events directly and others indirectly.
• How does the ending of Bacchae relate to the action that unfolds in the main part of the play? How does it relate to the objectives Dionysus outlines in the prologue?

Wednesday 8 September

• Chart the ways in which Pentheus's thinking shows itself to be shaped by patriarchal assumptions about women and men and religion. Follow the consequences of his assumptions. In what ways does Euripides invite his contemporary Athenian audience to re-think their assumptions in light of the interactions in his play? That is, can the Bacchae make coherent sense as cultural criticism?
• What symbolic -and functional- purposes are served by Pentheus's cross-dressing when he goes to spy on the bacchants on Mt. Cithaeron? How does this gesture connect with themes of religion, gender, identity, and theatricality in the play as a whole?
• What other themes and developments in the play would justify further investigation? We focus on what we can in the time we've got, but that's not to say that other things aren't also interesting and important.
• Identify specific statements and actions in the text that suggest interpretations that seem appropriate to you. Think through and be able to explain concretely how the passages you identify connect ideas so that you can draw inferences and support your interpretations.

• Where has Agamemnon been, before the action of Agamemnon? Why? How do the people of Argos, his citizens, feel about what he is doing and why and what his return will mean for them?
• What has Clytaemnestra been doing while Agamemnon is away? How do the people of Argos feel about her? How far do they trust her assessment of what is going on? What do they trust?
• How does Aeschylus incorporate into his play pre-history to its story? Compare and contrast to the "divine prologue" Euripides uses in his Bacchae - what different resonances come with the different means of conveying background information within a play?

Friday 10 September

• Context matters:
  • What were the key stages and rough dates in the development of dramatic performance out of "dithyramb," chorally-performed narrative hymn? How did the city-state of Athens, specifically, involve itself in the development of tragedy-as-we-know it? What innovations in the form of tragedy or its performance are credited to the playwrights whose plays survive?
  • Where does this play we are beginning to work on now fit in to the developing tradition of the other plays we know from fifth-century Athens? See the Index of Dates. Continue to check dates as we come to each play - not to worry so much about the specific date, but to put each of our plays in relationship correctly with the others.
  • After plays premiered at Athens, how did they continue to be known?
• As the Agamemnon opens, with what concerns does each character seem to be occupied (including that collective character, the Chorus)? What do they identify as the source of their concerns? How clearly do they identify their concerns? What dynamics of social relations on-stage are created in this way?
• Compare and contrast the techniques Aeschylus uses to put background information into play in Agamemnon, with the techniques Euripides uses in Bacchae. How does the different style of exposition in each play shape the audience's sense of the developing drama? What knowledge and what presuppositions of the audience are called upon, and by what means? How do the plays challenge presuppositions?
• Trace how social class and patriarchal thinking shape the Watchman's, the Chorus's, and the Messenger's perceptions of Agamemnon. In what ways do they identify with his interests? What do they expect from him?
• On the traditional understanding, what makes Helen an appropriate object for competition in the Trojan War?

• Make up a history of the action and pre-action of Agamemnon, from Clytaemnestra's point of view: use what she says in the play itself as a basis for inferring what her view would look like. What events does she consider important? Why? How closely do her assessments correspond with assessments that male characters (especially Agamemnon and the Chorus) would make?
• Make up a history of the pre-action of Agamemnon, from Cassandra's point of view, as she recounts it within the play. What events does she know about? Why? What relevance do they have for the current action of the play?
• Compare and contrast how other characters treat Cassandra: Agamemnon (at least by implication); Clytaemnestra; the Chorus. What interests do they have that influence the attitude they show to her?
• Who is Aegisthus? What is his problem? What does he have to do with the characters and action of Agamemnon?

Monday 13 September

• Trace how social class and patriarchal thinking shape the Watchman's, the Chorus's, and the Messenger's perceptions of Agamemnon. In what ways do they identify with his interests? What do they expect from him?
• On the traditional understanding, what makes Helen an appropriate object for competition in the Trojan War?
• Why is Iphigeneia sacrificed? What allegiances and what logic move Artemis to demand the sacrifice? What allegiances and what logic move Agamemnon to comply?
• Of course, Aeschylus was not working off a feminist check-list when he thought about Clytaemnestra's motivations, nor does his play endorse the actions she takes. Nevertheless, she does express some pungent alternatives to traditional thinking, in a context where various speakers flag gender as a relevant consideration.
  • On what points of Agamemnon's behavior does Clytaemnestra's response focus? In what ways can we, as distant critics using modern analytical perspectives, see that these points connect to Clytaemnestra? What connections does Clytaemnestra emphasize? What is different about the perspective Aeschylus's play assigns to her?
  • What alternatives does Clytaemnestra propose: to what considerations does she give priority in making her choices?
  • On what points does she, despite these differences, nonetheless adhere to traditional patterns of thinking and responding?
• How does Cassandra's past connect with the past she recognizes in Agamemnon's home in Argos? What attitudes to the past and the future does she take? What patterns of thinking are apparent in her reasoning?

Keep pace with assigned readings, even if class discussion gets behind temporarily. Keep thinking about Clytaemnestra and Cassandra.

• We're still working on the same trilogy, but for the sake of the good habit, re-establish where this play we are beginning to work on now fits in to the developing tradition of the other plays we know from fifth-century Athens by checking the Index of Dates.
• How do the first scenes of Libation Bearers effect the transition from the ending of Agamemnon? What new information is presented to the audience? How much is the audience expected to rely on the previous play to follow what is going on in this one?
• Who is Orestes? What place does he hold in his family, and why? For what purpose has he come to Argos now?
• Who is Electra? What place does she hold in her family, and why? What is she doing at the beginning of Libation Bearers, and why?

Wednesday 15 September

• What have Orestes and Electra experienced as a result of Agamemnon's death?
  • What do their positions at the start of Libation Bearers demonstrate about the functions a patriarch performed within his household?
  • How do ancient Greek expectations about gender make Orestes' and Electra's experiences able to be identified as equivalent to one another?
  • How do ancient Greek expectations about gender help determine who will do what in order to exact revenge for Agamemnon's death? What other factors besides gender also influence what will be done?

• Chart how the Chorus and each of the principal characters of Libation Bearers contributes to its central action. On what sources of power do they draw? Who else, besides the Chorus and principal characters, has a stake in the central action? Why?
• Compare and contrast Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus as they appear in Libation Bearers to what they do and say in Agamemnon. Have their objectives changed, or have different facets of their characters emerged?

Friday 17 September

• What sources of authority does Libation Bearers show being accessed to support Orestes' revenge, on his own behalf, Electra's, and indeed all Argos's? How are ancient Greek expectations about gender reflected in the ultimate source and nature of the authorization? in the way the authorization gets delivered?
• Compare and contrast the invocation of Agamemnon that Electra, the Chorus, and Orestes perform together to traditional funerary laments: how do women, emotions, and power to act connect?
• Analyze the justification the Libation Bearers gives for Orestes' climactic action. How does the play lead the audience to interpret its decisive event? Do any counter-arguments to these justifications appear in the play?
  • What REASONS make Orestes believe he is right? Who gives him these reasons?
  • What POWERS support Orestes? How does he come to feel these powers operating?
  • What EMOTIONS carry Orestes through his act?
• Does the ending of Libation Bearers come as a surprise? Why or why not?

• Once again, re-establish where this play we are beginning to work on now fits in to the developing tradition of the other plays we know from fifth-century Athens by checking the Index of Dates.
• What is located at Delphi in real life, and how is it represented within the play? What actions of the Eumenides take place at Delphi? What do these actions have to do with Orestes' previous actions, in the Libation Bearers?
• Who make up the Chorus of the Eumenides? What concern do they have with Orestes' actions? What impulse and what reasons cause them to pursue him beyond Delphi?

Monday 20 September

• What does the Pythia's prologue do to contextualize the problem that the Eumenides as a whole will address? Identify the ideas about the powers in the cosmos that she acknowledges, and consider how they might be applied to Orestes' case.
• Be able to explain the distinction ancient Greek culture traditionally recognized between responsibility for a death and guilt for a wrongful death.
  • Which characters identify Orestes as bearing responsibility? which identify him as bearing guilt? Why do they differ?
  • What means for discharging either responsibility or guilt enter into the action of the Eumenides? how do these means operate so as to achieve their results?
  • How do the characters and the action of the Eumenides serve to involve gender-characteristics and personal relationships with the question of responsibility or guilt? Why do different characters make different connections?
• What mythological background does Athene connect to Orestes' story? How does the story connect her to Orestes?

• Who is Athena, as she introduces herself? What concerns principally motivate her apart from the problem of Orestes that Apollo and the Furies present her with?
• How do Apollo and the Chorus each define the relationship of parenthood? What elements do their definitions have in common: what values are taken as indisputably part of the bond between parents and children? In what ways do their definitions rely on different values? What are these values, and how does what they each say reveal them?
• What does the jury trial solve in the dispute between the Chorus and Apollo-and-Orestes? What issues remain unresolved?
• What more does Athena do to resolve those issues?

Wednesday 22 September

• Trace how the Furies, Apollo and Orestes, and Athena each use gender as a criterion in deciding whether Orestes was wrong, right, or excusable for killing Clytaemnestra. What do they each think gender means? Why does it matter?
• Why does Athena evade making gender a focus of concern in the trial-procedures she establishes for the court of the Areopagus? How does she evade it - what basis for decision-making, apart from the supposedly "natural" but variously constructed expectations gender creates, does Athena institute instead? What interests and criteria do Athena's alternative measures bring to the decision-making process?
• Why does gender continue to matter, so that even after the trial makes its decision about Orestes, Athena and the Furies continue to negotiate? How do they bring their interests together successfully?
  • Of what Athenian civic institutions does the Eumenides give a "charter myth"? How could this bridge between the timeless past of myth and contemporary realities feel to Aeschylus's audience?
  • How closely are Athens' civic institutions related to the myth of Orestes and its main concerns? How did Aeschylus connect them: how did his application of concerns of gender in the myth help illuminate inner workings of community in civic life?
• Compare and contrast the role in the drama taken by the Chorus of Eumenides to the roles of the Choruses of Agamemnon and of Libation Bearers. What population do these corporate groups speak for, in each play? What perspectives on the interactions of the principal characters do they offer?

• Compare and contrast Euripides' Electra to Aeschylus's Libation Bearers as two versions of the same myth. Refer to the Index of Dates to help get them separated in time, in your mind.
  • What elements of the story are constant between the two plays?
  • What does Euripides change?
  • How does each playwright use the resources of dramatic performance to communicate his version of the story?
• Who is the Farmer? What is his relationship with Euripides' Electra? Why do they treat each other as they do - what does it show about Electra's fortunes following the death of her father?
• What impulse and what purpose bring Euripides' Orestes back to Argos?
• How do Euripides' Orestes and Electra recognize one another?
• How do Euripides' Orestes and Electra go about planning what they will do next?

Friday 24 September

• In what ways does Euripides seem in his Electra to refer specifically to Aeschylus's treatment of the myth of Orestes' revenge? How does he clarify, "correct", or otherwise alter elements in Aeschylus's version? What different emphases result?
• Compare and contrast the attitudes to social class manifested in Aeschylus's Oresteia and Euripides' Electra. What did people in the world Aeschylus portrays seem to expect social stratification to mean to their lives? How does the world Euripides portrays differ? Compare and contrast both worlds to ideologies of aristocracy and royalty, on the one hand, and participatory democracy on the other. What additional factors, besides membership in a specific family, are identified as influencing class-membership and behaviors?
• How does Euripides portray the character of Electra? How accurately does she perceive or represent her situation, to herself and to others? How does the way she presents herself influence the way an audience can interpret her desires and actions?

• We don't see it the play's on-stage action, but according to the messenger-speech, how does Aegisthus behave towards Orestes? How does Orestes respond? Compare and contrast to the way Aeschylus portrays Aegisthus in the Oresteia.
• How does Euripides' Clytaemnestra explain the murder of Agamemnon? How does she treat her children? Compare and contrast to the way Aeschylus portrays Clytaemnestra in the Oresteia.
• How do Euripides' Electra and Orestes react to the deaths of Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra, after the fact? Compare and contrast to their attitudes beforehand: what considerations appear most important to them in assessing the deaths?
• How do the Dioscori apportion judgment of action and resolve the conflicts at the end of Euripides'Electra? (The name "Dioscori" means "Zeus's sons." They get involved with this myth because they are Electra's and Orestes' maternal uncles: Clytaemnestra's mother Leda slept at more or less the same time both with Zeus and with her human husband Tyndareus, and got EXTREMELY pregnant: Helen, Clytaemnestra, Castor and Polydeuces all result en masse. See family tree, but hit the BACK button on the browser rather than using the link, because the link sends you to an old Mythology syllabus)

Monday 27 September

From today's class:

• Chart how Euripides re-plays moments of Aeschylus's drama of Electra and Orestes, but with a twist (so that Orestes speaks deceptively about himself in the third person to Electra whereas in the Libation Bearers he concealed his identity from Clytaemnestra, for example, or the Old Man, rather than Electra, recognizes the tokens of Orestes' identity).
  • What different impressions of his characters and their interactions does Euripides create by his revisions, compared to Aeschylus's version?
  • What reflections about Aeschylus's dramaturgy and his own contemporary society does Euripides invite his audience to derive from his variations?
• What does Euripides do for his drama by making his characters sometimes undercut their own statements?
• What holds Euripides' Orestes to his course of action? What does his level of commitment say about him? What does it say about what he intends to do? Compare and contrast to Electra.
• Compare and contrast how well Euripides' Electra and Clytaemnestra each justifies her own actions. Where does self-serving leave off and something else begin? How can you tell? Be able to point to specific evidence in what they each say.
• What does Euripides achieve by telling the story this way? What ideas about human motivation, human interactions, and the relationship of human beings to the supernatural forces of the cosmos (including Justice, in whatever form it is conceived) does his Electra suggest?

• Orient this play in relationship to the others we have read (especially to Euripides' Electra and to Aeschylus's Oresteia by referring to the Index of Dates.
• How does Sophocles' Electra portray her own situation at the start of the play? How well do her actions and interactions with other characters support what she says about the position she is in?
• Compare and contrast the characters of Electra and Chrysothemis. What strategies for coping with events do they each uphold? What values and assessments inform each of their strategies?
• How does Sophocles' Clytaemnestra justify her actions? How strong is she? How consistent?

Wednesday 29 September

• Compare and contrast Sophocles' Electra to both Aeschylus's Libation Bearers and Euripides' Electra. Consider plot-events, characterization and relationships, as well as the thematic significance each playwright seems to be attaching to the specifics of his treatment (the all-important question "why does it matter?").
  • At what points does Sophocles appear to be responding to elements of Euripides' version of the myth? How does he call his connections to his audience's attention? What does he do differently from Euripides? What effects do Sophocles' changes create for his audiences' impressions of the myth?
  • At what points does Sophocles appear to be reaching back beyond Euripides' version to Aeschylus's? How does he call these connections to his audience's attention? What does he do differently from Aeschylus? What effects do Sophocles' changes create for audiences' impressions of the myth?
  • While making these comparisons, keep track of the chronological relationship of the three plays by referring to the Index of Dates.
• What does Sophocles do for his story of Electra by giving her a living sister to interact with: as a dramatic device, what does Chrysothemis achieve for the play? What norms of ancient women's lives are reflected in both Electra's and Chrysothemis's positions? What considerations govern what they each decide to do about their being in the positions they are in?
• In what senses is Sophocles' Electra a victim of Agamemnon's murder: what has happened to her material life, her social contacts, her capacity for action? How much will Aegisthus's plans for her change her situation? How does Sophocles' use of Orestes as a vector for action relate to his portrayal of Electra?

• What events prompt Sophocles' Electra to change her decisions what she should do? With what reasoning does she respond to events and govern her decisions?
• How does Sophocles' Electra learn Orestes has returned? What use does Sophocles make of the traditional tokens indicating his return? What other complications does he introduce - to what effect? What do his Electra's reactions say about her?
• Who dies? How is the killing conducted?
• What future does the end of the play set up?

Friday 1 October

• How does Sophocles portray Clytaemnestra, both from what other characters say about her and from what she says herself? Compare and contrast his Clytaemnestra with Aeschylus's and with Euripides': how well justified does each poet make Clytaemnestra and her actions with regard to Agamemnon, Electra, and Orestes? What considerations govern your judgment of what could make Clytaemnestra seem better justified or worse justified? What elements of Clytaemnestra's circumstances does each poet emphasize? What attitudes does each poet ascribe to Clytaemnestra, that govern her response to her circumstances?
• How does Sophocles present the death of Iphigeneia? Compare and contrast to Aeschylus's and Euripides' treatments of this background-event and its consequences. What difference does Sophocles' version make to his plot? What differences does it make to the ethical assessment of his characters? Why?
• With what reasoning does Sophocles' Electra take the momentous decision to try to avenge Agamemnon herself? How does Chrysothemis respond? How can an audience perceive Electra's decision and Chrysothemis's response - both in light of Athenian social norms of gender and conduct and in light of the fact the audience knows better than Electra or Chrysothemis does what the circumstances governing Electra's decision really amount to?
• What conclusions does Sophocles give to the myth?

Review your reading, your notes, your reading-journals, your writing exercises, the Study Questions in this file, the Study Guide for Exam 1, and in short all material assigned to date, for Exam 1 on Monday.

• What are major concerns we have been focusing on? What are important ideas in the tragedies we have read? What passages especially well illustrate important concepts, patterns of understanding and interpretation, or kinds of expression? These key passages will be good things to refer to as evidence for proving points on your exam.
• What types of analysis have we brought to bear on our texts? You can apply techniques of analysis we have used on one passage, to another, and get still more out of it. On the exam, you should explain clearly how the evidence you are citing helps to support your insights.
• Study Questions in this e-file flag important issues within the material we are studying. Typically they are fairly open-ended: they encourage you to think through the implications of our material, and explore the connections you find. Exam questions will suggest a tighter focus, in the interests of being possible to answer within the confines of an in-class exercise. But if you have been thinking about the issues raised by class discussions and the study questions, and noting passages of our texts that provide important evidence, you will be well prepared to write concrete, specific, persuasive essays on the exam.
• Assessment on the exam relates to your familiarity with the material to the extent that you need to know what you're talking about in order to say meaningful things about it. And you do have to make clear what you're referring to, in order to get your argument across. But the main emphasis of the assessment will be on the skills of critical thinking in the realm of literary analysis and of effective argumentation and verbal communication. Be sure to distinguish clearly between what the text actually, literally, says, and what the text means - then explain how reasoning takes you from one to the other.
• Bring a couple of clear-writing pens or pencils, so you will have backup.
• Good luck!

Monday 4 October

• CONGRATULATIONS! You have completed the first examination.
• Keep thinking about the exam questions: in an even-more-perfect world, what more could you say about these topics? You will have other opportunities to tie in these themes again.

• Orient this play chronologically with reference to the other plays we have ready by referring to the Index of Dates.
• At what point in what traditional mythological story does Iphigeneia at Aulis situate itself? What other treatments of this same story have we seen? What similarities and what differences does Iphigeneia at Aulis present in its treatment of the story?
• What marriage-stories does Iphigeneia at Aulis present? In what form does the play present them? Who is involved in the decision-making concerning these marriages? What other parties are involved, without having the power of decision-making?
• How does Agamemnon conduct himself as a leader, according to Iphigeneia at Aulis? What sort of criticism does his leadership receive? How does he answer it?

Wednesday 6 October

• What thematic concerns of Iphigeneia at Aulis would have been given special prominence by Athens' recent history at the time Euripides was working on the play? It's always worth thinking about how an audience's current concerns in the rest of their lives affect the way a work of art or literature is received. Since fifth-century BC Athens performed plays in the setting of a civic event, concerns of the state and the community can be expected to hover near.
• How do the characters in Iphigeneia at Aulis understand the position and responsibilities of a leader? What personal motives influence their understandings? What other considerations appear?
• What norms of Classical Greek marriage are reflected in Iphigeneia at Aulis?
  • Who normally does what, in order to put a marriage together? Who bears what responsibilities? Apart from rights and responsibilities, what emotional connections are typically respected?
  • How could members of a family normally expect their relationships to be affected by a marriage?
  • Compare and contrast the usual ancient Greek norms of marriage to specific marriages and marriage-relationships contemplated by Iphigeneia at Aulis.

• How does Iphigeneia at Aulis present Clytaemnestra at this particular moment of her marriage with Agamemnon? What has she been doing? What does she understand she ought to do in order to fulfil social expectations as a good wife and mother? What does she understand he ought to do in order to fulfil social expectations as a good husband and father, as well as king and military leader?
• How does Iphigeneia at Aulis present Achilles? What does he understand his social position to be? What expectations does he hold concerning his position, both of what he ought to do and of how other people ought to treat him?
• Trace the indications Iphigeneia at Aulis gives of how Iphigeneia conceives of her own social position as Agamemnon's daughter: what does she think she should do? how does she feel about it?

Friday 8 October

• Compare and contrast the reactions of Clytaemnestra and of Achilles to the ruse Agamemnon practiced to get Iphigeneia to Aulis. What norms do they find to have been violated? How do they each feel the violations change the basis of their own actions? What do they each propose to do in response?
• Examine the arguments put forth in the climactic confrontation of Clytaemnestra and Agamemnon:
  • How does the future Clytaemnestra evokes - the part of the myth long familiar to an Athenian audience of tragedies from Aeschylus's Oresteia, as well as other ancient Greek artistic treatments - contextualize the current action of Iphigeneia at Aulis: how does the audience's awareness of this future color the way Clytaemnestra's present experience appears?
  • How does the past Clytaemnestra evokes - apparently an innovation by Euripides in the traditional myth - color the way Clytaemnestra's present experience appears? What does this past imply about Agamemnon? What does it imply about Clytaemnestra?
  • Compare and contrast Agamemnon's arguments for the necessity of the war with the portrait of him and his reasoning and the reasons for the war that Euripides presents in the earlier part of the play: how legitimate is the case he makes? What considerations make it politically effective, whether or not it's legitimate?
  • What normative expectations and rhetorical tactics does Iphigeneia exploit when pleading for her life? What substantive argument does she say is the kernel of her plea?
• In what ways does Iphigeneia's final decision change ground from her earlier arguments? In what ways does it conform? How does gender function in her decisions? How does it get transcended? How does the context around Iphigeneia's decision affect the ways it can be interpreted: from her perspective and absolutely?

• Orient this play chronologically with reference to the other plays we have ready by referring to the Index of Dates.
• According to Euripides' Helen, what really happened to Helen after Paris came to Sparta? What intentions has Helen cherished since then? Who knows her side of the story? What forces control her present position?
• What forces bring Menelaus together with Helen, according to this play? What experiences has he had? What knowledge does he think he has? What makes it possible for his understanding to change?

Wednesday 13 October

• What constraints control Helen's present position, according to Euripides' Helen? In what ways is her real experience comparable to what the traditionally-envisaged Helen experienced at Troy?
• What social institutions have helped protect Helen, thus far? From what evils have they failed to protect her? What considerations have operated to give her the protection she has experienced, and why has protection failed at the points where it has failed?
• In what respects has Menelaus's voyaging and shipwreck and their consequences given him experiences comparable to Helen's?

• How does Helen's escape-plot operate? What resources does she utilize? How does she get access to them, so as to use them to her advantage?
• What considerations motivate Theonoe to do what she does?
• What considerations motivate Theoclymenos to do what he does?

Friday 15 October

• How does Euripides use this version of Helen's myth to throw the distinction between truth and knowledge into high relief? What points of his plot confront a difference between what-is-true and what-people-know? What is at stake in the differences: what real problems has false knowledge created? How does the action of the Helen work to resolve differences between truth and knowledge?
• What characters resort to competitive self-assertion by means of force, as a response to challenges? When is force identified, within the Helen, as an effective response - and in what different ways is the identification suggested? What considerations does the play suggest could prevent force from being effective or appropriate? What alternatives to force does the Helen suggest? To what extent does the play support associating force or its alternatives with one gender or the other?
• What purposes does the Helen associate with the concepts of justice or piety? How are the associations made: within the play, who makes them? on what principles do the associations rely?

• Who is Hecuba? Where is she? What has she already suffered, by the moment the play begins, and what happens during the action of the play to make things worse?
• What values and objectives does Odysseus express: what considerations make him want to do the things he does?
• What does Polyxena decide she wants? Why? What other considerations involve her emotions?

Revised 18 October 2010 by jlong1@luc.edu
http://www.luc.edu/classicalstudies/