|
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
|
|
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.
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! |
Monday 18 October
From today's class:
- What practices and values
of ancient Greek warfare cause women especially to embody the victimizations
war creates, whether or not their gender is specifically involved?
- What has the Trojan War taken away from Hecuba? In which of her
losses is her gender specifically involved?
- In what ways does the sacrifice of Polyxena "re-play" concerns that
figured in the sacrifice of Iphigeneia before the Greek expedition could
be launched to attack Troy? How is it different? (The question works in
myth-time, but as the Index of Dates reminds
us, Euripides didn't write Iphigeneia at Aulis till years later
than Hecuba: the nearest earlier-performed version of the story in
an Athenian tragedy that the Hecuba refers back to is in Aeschylus's
Agamemnon, so think about the treatment of this episode in that play.)
- What values and what practices of war make Polyxena an eligible
sacrificial victim?
- In proposing alternatives to sacrificing Polyxena, how does Hecuba
attempt to change the terms of the sacrifice from the purposes the Greek
army (as represented by Odysseus) intended?
- What values and principles of social conduct -besides possible alternative
sacrifices- does Hecuba call upon while trying to divert Odysseus from his plan
to sacrifice Polyxena? How does Odysseus counter Hecuba?
- What considerations motivate Polyxena to accept being sacrificed? How
does she "claim" the event for her own autonomy?
For tonight's reading:
- What relations has Polymestor had in the past
with Hecuba
and Priam? 
with
Agamemnon and the Greeks? In what relationship with Hecuba and with Agamemnon does he
present himself when he enters the action of Hecuba?
- What does Hecuba ask Agamemnon to do? What principles, relationships, and
reasons does she invoke so as to urge him to comply with her requests? How does
he respond - which of her arguments works on him? to what extent?
Wednesday 20 October
From today's class:
- In what ways does Polyxena acknowledge the present superiority of Greek
force and power to compel their female Trojan captives? In what ways does Polyxena
propose to re-define the roles and relationships surrounding her death: what
characteristics does she take on herself, how does she do it, and why does her
proposed re-definition matter?
- How does the Agamemnon of Euripides' Hecuba compartmentalize between
his personal relationships and feelings and his public identification with the
Greek army as a whole? Compare and contrast how he negotiates the boundaries of
personal and public
with
Odysseus, 
with
Polymestor, and 
with
Hecuba. How consistently does any of these characters maintain his or her ethical
positions between personal and public considerations? Does the play appear to endorse
any of their principles, or any of the balances they strike between principles? What
considerations make you tend to agree or disagree with either individual principles
or with the ways personal and public principles combine?
- In what ways does Hecuba's trajectory in this play deconstruct conventional
social practices regarding the female victims of war?
For tonight's reading:
- Consult the Index of Dates so as to orient Trojan
Women, as a play, in relationship to the other plays we are reading.
- Where in the progression of the mythic story-line does Trojan Women locate
its action? Compare and contrast to the other plays we have read touching on the
Trojan War. What events is Euripides treating differently here than he or other
tragic poets may have done in other plays?
- What purpose is outlined in the prologue of Trojan Women? What causes
generate this purpose? Who is responsible for what?
- What circumstances control the women of Troy as the play begins? What happens
during the action of the play to make things worse?
- What knowledge of events does Cassandra display? What attitude does she express?
- What knowledge of events does Andromache display? What attitude does she express?
Friday 22 October
From today's class:
- Compare and contrast how Euripides' plays Hecuba and Trojan Women
treat virtually-the-same moment in the mythical story of the Trojan War. What
different themes does Euripides emphasize in the two plays? How does he emphasize
some aspects of the same situation more or less in one play than in the other?
- What else do we know about the other plays Euripides wrote and presented
together with Trojan Women? How could the cumulative effect of the group of
plays have accented themes of the individual play?
- What recent acts of the democratic Athenian state correspond to the situation
Trojan Women depicts? How does Euripides implicate contemporary history and
politics in his drama?
- What events recent in the myth of the Trojan War do Poseidon and Athena discuss?
What characterization of the Greek victory do they give? What do they propose to do,
and why? Who will be affected by their actions? What does their planning -for action
that will take place after the plot of Trojan Women- have to do with
the play itself?
- What ideas about the Greek victory do Hecuba and the Chorus highlight? How do
their experience, perceptions, and feelings compare and contrast with the introduction
to these events given by Poseidon and Athena?
For tonight's reading:
- What do different characters expect when they look to Astyanax, Hector's and
Andromache's son? What assumptions do they make - on the basis of what cultural
practices and values? What do they propose to do about Astyanax's future?
- What is at stake in the debate that Helen and Hecuba stage before Menelaus?
What concepts of moral agency and of right and wrong does each woman rely on as
she makes her case? How does it affect the way you perceive the scene playing, to
know (as a mythologically-literate Athenian audience would know) that Menelaus and
Helen do ultimately reconcile?
- What is left for Hecuba, at the end of the play? What has she lost? What does
she retain?
Monday 25 October
From today's class:
- Into what categories does Euripides distinguish women for the purpose of
surveying how a lost war affects their experience?
- What logic lies behind Euripides' categories - what criteria define
how "women's roles" are identified?
- How do Euripides' Trojan women identify their selves and their sympathies with
Troy despite the fact that they, because of their sex, remain in existence longer
than Troy?
- To what other female characters in other plays we have studied can the Cassandra
of Trojan Women be compared - in what ways? How does she conceive of her future
role? How does she use elements of various traditional female identities -including
bride, priestess, Fury- to challenge the definition of sex-slave that conquest is
imposing on her? What definitions do other characters apply to her -including
madwoman, princess- and how do those definitions endeavor to manage the frightening
combination of qualities Cassandra embodies?
- How does Andromache describe the wifely ideal she has tried to embody? What did
she refrain from, and what did she gain? Compare and contrast what she expects of her
future as a slave.
- By what means does Menelaus manage to define the war as a conflict purely between
male authorities? What systems of collective and individual decision-making give him
control over Helen's future?
- Compare and contrast the way Helen presents her own involvement in the war and
responsibility for it with what other characters say about her. How much is a matter
of fact, and how much of interpretation? What judgments does rational consideration
of fact suggest are fair? What judgments does the play suggest are made, fair or not?
- How closely does Hecuba respond to Helen's claims and charges? What lines of
interpretation does she follow in her responses? How legitimate could a Classical
Greek audience understand Hecuba's arguments to be?
- How does the modern theory of the Male Gaze describe the phenomena Hecuba
criticizes in the story of the Judgment of Paris?
- How does the Gaze describe the phenomena that, despite Hecuba's arguments, a
mythologically literate audience would know end up saving Helen's life? Be able to explain
the concepts involved and show clearly how the action operates.
- How does the conclusion of Trojan Women resolve the disasters the plot
presents? What (if any) social principles function? How far do they have effect?
For tonight's reading:
- When did Euripides write Andromache, in the course of his poetic career?
Consult the Index of Dates.
- Who is Andromache (both as we may know her identity from other sources and as
she identifies herself in the prologue)? Where is she now? What has she already
suffered, by the moment the play begins? What new prospects impend? What resources
are available to her to help meet them?
- Who is Hermione (both as we may know her identity from other sources and as
she identifies herself)? Of what does she complain? On what resources does she call
to resolve her complaints?
Wednesday 27 October
From today's class:
- Trace the dynamics of power in the household Andromache and Hermione both occupy.
Who ultimately controls decisions about membership in the household? What means does
each woman use, or identify as being used by someone else, in order to influence the
decisions? What sources of authority do they each call on so as to bolster their own
positions?
- Why does it matter that Andromache has borne a son to Neoptolemus? To whom does
it matter? Trace the different patterns of relationship/interest and response, so as
to be able to explain what each individual is caring about.
For tonight's reading:
- How do Andromache's problems get resolved -however temporarily- within the play:
who exercises what authority, to what effect?
- What reaction is produced by the resolution of Andromache's problems? Who feels
what as a result?
- What acts and what interests characterize Orestes, as the Andromache
presents him? Why does he care about Hermione?
- What plot-lines does Thetis resolve? How?
Friday 29 October
From today's class:
- What assumptions about women and their characters -their ways of dealing with
their circumstances- are voiced within Andromache? What social causes are
reflected within these assumptions? How well does the play's action bear out these
assumptions? What additional considerations, besides the social causes you can
identify within voiced assumptions, are reflected in the depicted actions? How does
Euripides use women's actions to critique common assumptions about women?
- How does Euripides set up Andromache as an example of a character facing
different forms of superior power over the course of her life? How does he play
other characters off the model he makes Andromache constitute: where do they
use similar patterns of response, where do they differ, and what judgments do the
similarities and differences invite?
- What resolution(s) does the conclusion of Andromache offer to the story
Euripides depicts?
For tonight's reading:
- Orient Euripides' Iphigeneia among the Taurians in relationship to his
other plays by consulting the Index of Dates.
- What is Iphigeneia doing in Tauris: how did she get there, and why? What is she
doing now? How does this story relate to the myth(s) of Agamemnon sacrificing her
at Aulis, as referred-to in other plays we have read?
- Why is Orestes in Tauris? (Which parts of his myth(s) does this play take into
account?) What crisis does his arrival now provoke?
Happy
Halloween!
From today's class:
- In what ways does the "Taurian variant" of Iphigeneia's story -the
basis Euripides took for this play- recast the older tradition that
Iphigeneia was sacrificed by her father at Aulis? What cultural ideas are
associated with Tauris and its people in this play, as opposed to cultural
ideas it associates with Greeks? What ideas about ethnicity, revenge,
gender, and the divinity of Artemis does the play imply? Explain how the
continuities and role-reversals of the mythological variant help construct
these ideas.
- How does Euripides characterize his Iphigeneia? How does he modify
the implications of the "Taurian variant", as far as her character is
concerned?
- How does Euripides build up to the recognition between Iphigeneia
and Orestes? What do reminiscences of Aeschylus's Oresteia and
Euripides' own Electra do for the Iphigeneia among the
Taurians?
For tonight's reading:
- How do Iphigeneia, Orestes, and Pylades plan their escape? Who
takes what initiatives? Note similarities and differences with Euripides'
Electra and Helen. What role does the Chorus play?
- How does Iphigeneia persuade Thoas to let her do what she plans
with the statue of Artemis and with the two blood-guilty Greeks? What
religious assumptions does she exploit? How does she combine truth and
untruth in what she tells him?
- What goes wrong with the escape-plot? How is the conflict resolved?
Some observations with which to go forward on writing and argumentation:
- Ugly little technical errors we all make occasionally, but which look really bad when they're
written down and persist in making sentences less clear and solid than they should be: keep them out of your writing.
- Standard American style demands that if you are dealing with a singular entity
and want to use the "apostrophe-s" form of its noun to show possession, the noun
gets an apostrophe and an s at the end, even if the noun itself ends in an s (e.g.,
Aeschylus's play); the only exceptions are nouns whose
final s comes after a long-e sound (e.g., Euripides' play)
and Jesus'. See further General
Guide to Apostrophes, Strunk
& White, Jack
Lynch, or The Oatmeal. Plural nouns
that end in an s get the apostrophe after the s (e.g., the plays' interpretations
of Greek myth); plural nouns that don't end in an s follow the rule for singulars
(e.g., women's concerns).
- If the idea to which you are referring back, from one sentence to something you
said recently, is not clearly enough identified by "it" or "they/them" for a reader to
know what you mean, saying "this/that/these/those" is not going to be any clearer: use
a noun with the demonstrative, or rephrase the back-reference more fully. If "it" or "they/them"
suffices, use "it" or "they/them". Do not use "this/that/these/those" all by itself. This
point is discussed in our print edition of Strunk & White under the lemma "This."
- "However" is only allowed to start a sentence when it means "in whatever way" (e.g.,
"However you look at Clytaemnestra, with or without sympathy for her grievance, she is
an unmistakably strong character.") When it means anything like "but" or "nonetheless", it
comes in the middle of a sentence and creates emphasis within it (e.g., "One problem, however,
complicates Apollo's oracle for Orestes: in order to avenge the kindred blood of his father's
murder, he must kill his mother.") Comma-splicing two sentence together and depositing a "however"
in the middle compounds the misplaced "however" with a comma-splice: both errors make the
sentence uglier. ("Orestes recognizes his sister, however, he does not tell her
who he is," can be corrected in any number of ways, e.g., "Although Orestes recognizes his
sister, he does not tell her who he is"; but if you want to use "however," you've got to
give it its own job to do, e.g., "Orestes recognizes his sister. He does not, however, tell
her who he is.") This point is discussed in Strunk & White, print and
online, under the lemma "However."
- Unfair argumentative tactics characters in a play may use, but which audiences are
thereby invited to see through; they are never legitimate in logical analysis or expository argument:
- Derailing an argument by spurious association of ideas: When Clytaemnestra tells Electra
that some children always prefer one parent over the other, Electra always was a father-preferrer,
Clytaemnestra herself must just accept the fact -and does, so much so that she forgives her
daughter her hostility- Clytaemnestra is not being magnanimous. She's forestalling any argument
Electra might make why murdering a man (who happens to have been her father) could be wrong, by putting
it in the same category as a child's falling asleep easier at a deep-voiced lullaby than a high-pitched
one, or some other innocuous preference her generalization encompasses: Clytaemnestra is placing the
baby in the bathwater and then throwing them both out. Even if a child preferred Mama, she could not
legitimately be expected to back up Mama unhesitatingly when Mama kills Daddy.
- Loaded questions (and indirect questions in your writing):
When Electra asks Clytaemnestra why she did not allow Orestes to inherit
Agamemnon's property and social position, but instead shared them herself with Aigisthos, she's
not really asking. She's accusing Clytaemnestra of appropriating goods and power Classical Athenian
law would have judged should pass automatically, at the death of a male head-of-household, to his
male offspring (as these concepts map onto the royal family of the myth); they would never have become
property of the widow to dispose of in a second marriage of her own (let alone the male
head-of-household's murderess). In a context where everyone understands the norms being referred
to, it may be rhetorically effective to ask a question rather than to make a direct charge.
But in expository argument, it's better to state positively the ideas that are at stake.
For example, the sentence "She said what she was going to do" does not tell you what she was
going to do: it tells you the fact that she conveyed the information. You still need to get
the list of actions separately. When you're summarizing the scene, set the information forth directly.
- Misrepresentation by blurring chronology: When Clytaemnestra identifies a grievance at Agamemnon's
bringing an enslaved sexual partner home and installing her in the same house where his
wife was supposed to be residing, she speaks in accordance with Classical Athenian social values:
real-life and fictional texts show such an installation was regarded as a grave insult to a wife
and her family. But according to standard versions of this myth, Clytaemnestra's adultery with
Aigisthos long pre-dated Agamemnon's return. Probably we should understand a similar distortion
in the opposite direction when Electra says Clytaemnestra solicited male sexual attention
the moment Agamemnon left Argos to go to war: the traditional account of Agamemnon's murder as
Aigisthos's revenge-story doesn't give him an opportunity to get at Clytaemnestra to seduce her until a good
safe interval after Agamemnon is away in Asia, and even the connection of Clytaemnestra with
her own motive at the sacrifice of Iphigeneia needs an interval for the Greek fleet to suffer
adverse winds at Aulis before the sacrifice is called for. If the affair was a secret, nobody
but the parties should have known exactly when it started within the interval of Agamemnon's
leaving and his coming back and being killed: both Clytaemnestra and Electra seem to be picking
the extreme moments of the span, where Clytaemnestra's adultery would be either most or
least condonable to conventional Athenian social values.
- Misrepresentation by taking things out of proportion: When Clytaemnestra says that Agamemnon's
sacrificing Iphigeneia wouldn't have made her kill him in revenge if he hadn't also tried to
install Cassandra as a slave-concubine at home, she is stepping around the tricky question of
whether a god's calling for an act, such as killing your own child, that would otherwise be
perceived as unholy, could make it holy and therefore obligatory after all. She's also suggesting
adultery is on a par with murder. It isn't. (To be sure, Classical Athenians wouldn't have been
as tolerant of a wife's having sex with another man as they were of a husband taking additional
sexual partners provided he didn't try to give them any status that might seem to encroach on
his legally-married wife's. Euripides explores gender-imbalances too, as in Clytaemnestra's fantastic hypothesis
of Menelaos being carried off so that she might have been called on to sacrifice Orestes: the prospect
is patently absurd, but it highlights the points at which gender affects how acts are read as
ethically wrong or right. This argument is off-the-wall, but scrupulously fair.)
From today's class:
- Compare and contrast the trajectory of Iphigeneia in Iphigeneia
among the Taurians to the trajectory of Helen in Helen,
another play Euripides wrote at about the same time (see the
Index of Dates). What is Euripides doing
in these plays to change the data of the traditional myths attaching
to the Trojan War?
- How do ancient Greek conceptions of geography facilitate
Euripides' mythological interventions in these plays?
- How does the stereotypical notion of gender and power play when
Greeks -male and female- are far from home amid "barbarian" wildness?
- Compared especially to Aeschylus's Oresteia and Euripides'
own Electra, how does Euripides "re-write" the traditional story
of Orestes in order to bring him to Tauris: what ideas does he change
and what ideas does he re-use?
- Who gets rescued in Iphigeneia among the Taurians, at the
level of humanity and at the level of divinity? In what sense(s) does
the concept of "rescue" apply: what are the perils from which the parties
are rescued? what are the forces that hold them in peril or the obstacles
that block their way? how are those forces or obstacles neutralized?
- For what Athenian and Attic religious practices does Iphigeneia
among the Taurians give an authorizing story (a.k.a. "charter myth";
Attica is the name of the region of which Athens is the city and center
of collective functions)? What ideas do these practices of worship
enshrine in the community? How does the play pick up on related ideas?
For tonight's reading:
Review your reading, your notes, your reading-journals, your
presentation-papers, the Study Questions in
the other file and in this file,
the Study Guide for Exam 2, and in short all
material assigned to date, for Exam 2 on Friday.
- What are major concerns we have been focusing on, especially since Exam
1? 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 not only what evidence from our texts you have in
mind, but also how the evidence you are citing helps to support your
insights.
- Study Questions in thes e-files 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!
Friday 5 November
From today's class:
- CONGRATULATIONS! You have completed the second 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.
For tonight's reading:
- Orient Sophocles' Ajax in relationship to the other tragedies we
have been reading by consulting the Index of Dates.
- When and where does the action of Sophocles' Ajax take place - at
what point in its traditional mythological story-context? What events have
happened recently? How does Ajax evaluate them?
- With what gendered ideas does Ajax identify himself? What statements in the
play support this identity? What obstacles does Ajax face in retaining this
identity for himself?
- Who is Tecmessa? How is she connected to the action?
Monday 8 November
From today's class:
- What ideological structures make the Greek army's not having awarded him
Achilles' arms such a problem for Ajax? In what ways do these ideas construct an
image of manliness? How does Ajax apply the pattern of thought
to the Greek leaders he blames for the decision? How does he apply the pattern
of thought to himself in the aftermath of his reaction?
- Compare and contrast Odysseus's reactions to Ajax's: what is different in
the dynamic of ideas Odysseus perceives?
- Compare and contrast Tecmessa's reactions to Ajax's.
- On the one hand, in what position has the history of her relations with
Ajax placed her? How has her acceptance of this position reinforced his ideology?
- On the other hand, how has having had to accept the weaknesses of her own
position given Tecmessa emotional resources Ajax lacks? What can she do that he
has cut himself off from being able to do?
For tonight's reading:
- What history of a relationship has Ajax had with Athena? What actions of his
do her conversations in the prologue, with Odysseus and with Ajax, pick up on?
- Who is Teucer? What relationships does he have with the other characters in
Ajax? With what other characters does his position in his own family
correspond?
- Compare and contrast the assessments
Menelaus,
Teucer,
Agamemnon, and
Odysseus each
make in the second half of Ajax: what patterns of thinking underlie each
of them?
Wednesday 10 November
From today's class:
- In what ways does Telamon, Ajax's and Teucer's father, form a point of reference for
anxieties Sophocles dramatizes both Ajax and Teucer feeling? What patterns
of thought do Ajax (more tacitly) and Teucer (more explicitly) ascribe to
Telamon? What characters within the action of Ajax embody similar
patterns of thought? To what extent does the play as a whole endorse or
criticize such patterns? How does it endorse them or criticize them:
be able to identify statements and actions and explain
how they operate. (In other words, how can you analyze Ajax as
an inquiry into some points of patriarchal thinking?)
- How does Sophocles position Teucer in relationship to Ajax? How does
Sophocles position Teucer in relationship to the army? How does Teucer use
the family, as an institution of Greek culture, to confront the cultural
institution of the army? What perspectives are associated with either pole
of this debate? What actions do they each require, and why?
- What third term does Odysseus offer in the final scene, so as to mediate
between the ideology and demands of the family and the ideology and demands
of the army? How does Sophocles resolve the dilemma he explores in this play?
For tonight's reading:
- Orient Sophocles' Women of Trachis in relationship to the other
tragedies we have been reading by consulting the
Index of Dates.
- Who is Deianeira? What standard ancient Greek social practices were
involved in forming her marriage, and what special factors operated in the
particular case of marrying Deianeira?
- Who were her suitors?
- How was a decision made between her suitors?
- What event, since the marriage was formed, placed Deianeira at the apex
of a similar kind of conflict - between her husband and who else? What
happened?
- What has Deianeira's husband been doing lately? What implications do his
recent actions seem to have for the marriage?
- What does Deianeira want? What does she propose to do in order to get
what she wants?
Happy Armistice Day / Veterans' Day!
Friday 12 November
From today's class:
- Compare and contrast Deianeira's marriage to the normative expectations
of ancient Greek culture. How much of a marriage would Sophocles' original
audience have felt that Deianeira has? What does the relationship amount to?
- How does Deianeira react to Iole - what patterns of social concerns
control her response
before
Deianeira knows Iole's specific identity and status;
as Deianeira is
confronting Lichas about the deceit he has practiced with reference to Iole's
specific identity and status; and
in
the comparative privacy of the reactions she shares with the Chorus while Lichas
is off-stage? Compare and contrast Deianeira's reaction(s) to Iole to the reactions of
other wives we have seen in similar circumstances.
- How do Deianeira's emotions and ideas characterize her? How do they relate
to the dynamics of the marriage she has experienced hitherto?
- What options does Deianeira see herself having for a practical response to the
circumstances Iole represents: what does she consider as a possible action, and
reject, and what does she propose to do? How do these alternatives and Deianeira's
thinking about them relate to the dynamics of the marriage she has experienced?
For tonight's reading:
- How does Hyllus respond to the course of actions that unfolds in the second
half of Women of Trachis? Who asks him to do what, when? How does he feel?
What reasons does Sophocles suggest lie behind Hyllus's various emotions?
- How does Deianeira respond to the consequence of her actions? How does she
feel, and what does she do? What reasons does Sophocles suggest lie behind
Deianeira's various responses?
- How does Heracles respond to what is happening to him? What concerns are
important to him? What seems not to be important? What reasons does Sophocles
suggest lie behind Heracles' concerns?
Monday 15 November
From today's class:
- In what ways does Sophocles establish parallels between Deianeira's
experience and Heracles', so that Women of Trachis presents her too as
fulfilling paradigms of transcendence that an ancient Greek audience could have
viewed as constituting heroic activity? Compare and contrast how commonly
understood ancient Greek gender-norms of "femininity" frame Deianeira's challenges
and transcendence, with how commonly understood ancient Greek gender-norms of
"masculinity" frame Heracles'.
- In what ways does Hyllus act to redeem the past and the dissent between his
parents? How far does his redemption go, and where does Sophocles mark boundaries?
- How does Sophocles use the concept of transcendence in this play to explore
dimensions of gender and heroism?
For tonight's reading:
- Orient Sophocles' Antigone in relationship to the other
tragedies we have been reading by consulting the
Index of Dates.
- What principles does Antigone claim to be upholding, in acting as she does?
What criteria does she use to determine whether or not she will consider someone
as friendly towards her, so that she will defend their relationship in return?
- What principles does Creon claim to be upholding, in acting as he does? What
criteria does he use to determine whether or not he will consider someone as
friendly towards him, so that he will defend their relationship in return?
- On what basis does Ismene choose to act as she does? Compare and contrast her
motivations to Antigone's.
- On what basis does the Sentry choose to act as he does? How do his motivations
relate to Creon's?
Wednesday 17 November
From today's class:
- What mythological background does Sophocles identify as important to the
themes he is undertaking in Antigone? How do myths connected with Thebes
tend to relate concerns of the polis and concerns of the oikos to
one another? How do both
Antigone
and 
Creon show that both
polis and oikos are essential to their positions, even while they
each claim to give priority to one or to the other?
- How does the Chorus react to Creon's decree? What concerns engage them the most?
For tonight's reading:
- What does Creon expect from Haemon? Why?
- What does Haemon expect from Creon? What does Creon's dispute with
Antigone do to the relationship between father and son?
- What does Eurydice expect from Creon? What does Creon's dispute
with Antigone do to the relationship between husband and wife?
- What does the Chorus expect from Creon? What does Creon's dispute
with Antigone do to the relationship between ruler and people?
Friday 19 November
From today's class:
- Trace throughout the Antigone how Sophocles
differentiates the
concerns of the oikos and the concerns of the polis, and how
Sophocles connects
the concerns of the oikos and the concerns of the polis.
- First off, identify what the text of the play
does (always a first step: you need to be able to base
your assessments concretely in order for them to carry any conviction): where
does Sophocles connect ideas relating to the oikos and ideas relating
to the polis, and what patterns of difference, similarity, and
interdependency do the sets of ideas follow?
- How accurately do Antigone and Creon each place themselves as if at
opposite poles: are they really as exclusively concerned for oikos or
polis, respectively, as they each suppose?
- How does Teiresias change the calculus about what is wrong with failing
to bury a corpse: in what ways do considerations of the supernatural order
connect family and state in the concern to dispose properly of the dead -
and of the living as well?
- What violence do Antigone and Creon each do to the real oikos and
the real polis with which they are each immediately concerned, by abstracting
their values and directing their attentions to "The Family" and "The State" as
institutions?
- How do the outcomes of Antigone's and Creon's choices and actions
suggest criticisms of the positions they each take? How well, in the
event, do they each support the relationships they each conceive of
themselves as defending? In what respects do they fall short?
- Antigone chooses the path of death knowingly. The audience knows it
from the first moment she reports Creon's decree. In what ways does her
choice suit the peculiar nature of her family? What possibilities does
Antigone leave open for Ismene?
For tonight's reading:
- Orient Euripides' Hippolytus in relationship to the other
tragedies we have been reading by consulting the
Index of Dates.
- Who is Hippolytus, by birth and by character? What problem in his
behavior does Aphrodite identify? What does she propose to do about it?
- How closely does Hippolytus, in action, correspond to what
Aphrodite says about him in the prologue?
- Who is Phaedra, by family and by individual character? How is she
affected by her passion? What does she want to do about it? How does
the Nurse trap her? What does the Nurse propose to do about Phaedra's
condition? How does Phaedra react when she has done it?
Monday 22 November
From today's class:
- It seems to have been in his earlier, now lost, play of the myth of
Hippolytus that Euripides shocked Athenians with his image of women's
sexuality as such; what does he set up as the central thematic issue
of this Hippolytus?
- How does Euripides use the structures of his
dramatic form to call the audience's attention to this theme?
- Compare and contrast other examples of this type of conflict in the
other tragedies we have read: how do our playwrights generate tragic
engagement out of
religious
conflict? conflict
of different
sets of "rules" for conduct? What aspects of the conflicts do they seem
especially to have expected audiences to be interested in?
- How does Euripides incorporate references to the mythological
background of Hippolytus's and Phaedra's ancestry? Note that this
background tends to "breed" the elements of the conflict into
Hippolytus and Phaedra individually - as distinct from Euripides'
approach in this play. What use does Euripides make of this background?
- How does Euripides portray the world of Hippolytus's life and
preferred worship? Compare and contrast to the worlds of men's concerns
we have seen in other plays.
- How does Euripides portray the world of women in Hippolytus?
What assumptions about women's lives and concerns does the Chorus bring
to its guesses about what Phaedra is suffering? Compare and contrast to
the women's lives we have seen portrayed in other tragedies.
For tonight's reading:
- Into what crisis does Theseus walk when he returns? What
facts and what allegations does he confront immediately? What
inferences does he draw?
- How does Hippolytus defend himself? Does he honor the vow he made
to the Nurse, about which he famously (in the view of Athenians, later)
said, "My tongue swore, but my mind was still unpledged"?
- To what extent does Artemis resolve the crisis? What remains
unsolved?
Happy Thanksgiving!
Monday 29 November
From today's class:
- How does Euripides in Hippolytus knit together ordinary social and moral
assumptions and values, in such a way that they produce disaster:
preferring silence
to scandal; 
a mother's
(or wetnurse's) protecting
her children's future; choosing
life over despair and death; keeping
an oath - not to mention ideas about
adultery,
incest, and
virginity?
- How do the clashes of concerns and good intentions engage the audience?
- How does Euripides invite re-examination of ordinary social principles? What principles
does Euripides appear to recommend in the re-evaluation? Be able to explain how the text of
the play supports your analysis.
- Which elements of Artemis's final disposition respond to concerns expressed
by human characters in the play, and in what ways do they respond? Which elements
respond to other concerns, and what are those concerns? How do the responses meet the concerns?
For tonight's reading (Aristophanes'
Thesmophoriazusae,
ed. Eugene O'Neill, Jr., on-line by courtesy of Perseus
Digital Library):
- From what social situation does the plot of Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae ("Women
celebrating the Thesmophoria") take its start: how does the action presuppose that
women and
tragedy are each involved
in the shared life of the Athenian community?
- What "public profile" does Thesmophoriazusae assign to
Euripides? What basis does the play indicate supports this public image? Compare
and contrast to your own reading of our selection of Euripides' tragedies - what
confirmation of this alleged popular image can you identify?
- Consulting the Index of Dates for reference,
orient Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae (produced at the City Dionysia
in 411) in relationship to the tragedies we have been reading. How does it line up
with Euripides' portfolio, in particular: how broadly based and how current is the
image of Euripides that Aristophanes presents in this comedy?
Wednesay 1 December
From today's class:
- Why should fifth-century Athenian comedy have cared about tragedy? How were the
two genres connected in performance, each to the community of Athens and both to one
another? Compare and contrast the salient points of how the two literary forms
each deploy plots, characters, language, and ideas, as general background to your
specific analysis of what Aristophanes does in Thesmophoriazusae.
- What was the festival of the Thesmophoria in fifth-century Athens? What elements
of the real women's ritual practice does Aristophanes pick up on? What elements of
fantasy does he inject?
- What ideas about women and the operation of gender does Aristophanes presume his male audience would
entertain, to judge from the point of departure for his comic plot?
- What ideas about how tragedy is composed does Aristophanes presume his audience
would entertain? What literary concerns does he indicate caught contemporary audiences' attention?
For tonight's reading (more
Thesmophoriazusae;
and the Zeitlin is on class reserve at Cudahy Library):
- What specific points does Aristophanes assign to the women's indictment
against Euripides? How does Mnesilochus answer them? How much do the indictment and the
answer each connect to
Euripides' plays,
based on the selection of them we have read, and to
Athenian ideas
about women, based on the understanding we have formed?
- What elements of sex and gender operate when the women unmask Mnesilochus's
disguise?
- What elements of Euripides' plays operate when Mnesilochus attempts to free
himself from the women's penalty for infiltrating their festival? What literary devices
does Aristophanes poke fun at? What themes of identity and disguise -especially as they
relate to being female or male- does he develop?
- What does the parabasis (a dramatic structure specific to Athenian
Old Comedy, in which the Chorus addresses the audience directly for an extended passage:
lines 785-845) have to do with the rest of the play? What ideas about women does
Aristophanes use the parabasis to present?
Friday 3 December
From today's class:
- How is Aristophanes' figure of the younger tragic poet Agathon integrated
with his focus on Euripides in Women at the Thesmophoria? Be able to
explain how Agathon contributes to the play, both to its
plot and
to the scope
of its concern with contemporary tragedy, literary representation, and its artistic qualities.
- Compare and contrast the women's indictment of Euripides with the results of
a scholarly and feminist reading of many of his surviving plays.
- Be able to identify specific passages in plays we have studied that illustrate Euripides' attitude
to traditional Greek gods and religion, and to explain the nuances of this attitude
the passages display. If not quite what the women complain about, what is
unsettling about Euripides' portrayals of gods and ethics?
- Be able to identify specific passages in plays we have studied that illustrate Euripides' attitude to
women, their cultural experience, and their capacity for action. Explain the nuances
of this attitude that the passages display. If not quite what the women complain
about, what is unsettling about Euripides' portrayals of women?
- How do Aristophanes' parodies of Euripidean tragedy (as far as we can tell)
pick up on their points of reference in tragic plays the historical Euripides actually wrote? What
elements of the originals does Aristophanes re-play? In which ones does the parody
seem "just" to be making fun, highlighting a feature of the original that, taken out
of context, can seem ludicrous? In which ones does the parody engage more profoundly with
challenges Euripides' tragedies pose to conventional Athenian thinking? Analyze how
the parodies operate.
- How does the Chorus of Thesmophoriazusae operate in its role of
(comically) representing Athenian women? How does the Chorus use comedy's discourse
of reality to challenge directly Athenian male thinking about gender?
For tonight's reading (more
Thesmophoriazusae;
and the Zeitlin is on class reserve at Cudahy Library):
- As the series of parodies continues, continue to catalogue what elements of Euripides'
plays operate when Mnesilochus attempts to free himself from the women's penalty for infiltrating
their festival. What literary devices does Aristophanes poke fun at? What themes of identity
and disguise, constraint and power -especially as they relate to being female or male- does he develop?
- How does Aristophanes' character Euripides resolve the women's claims? What complications remain after
he makes his peace with them? How do they involve gender? How are they resolved?
Monday 6 December
From today's class:
- Trace how Aristophanes successively defines and re-defines the problem of Euripidean
tragedy with which Thesmophoriazusae is engaging. With what concerns does the comedy
engage, ultimately?
- How do Aristophanes' parodies of Euripidean tragedy (as far as we can tell)
pick up on their points of reference in tragic plays the historical Euripides actually wrote? What
elements of the originals does Aristophanes re-play? Analyze how the parodies operate. Be able
to explain both how the parody "makes fun," highlighting a feature of the original that, taken
out of context, can seem ludicrous, and how the ensuing comic action identifies critically
significant ideas within the fun.
- How does Aristophanes play his Chorus of "Women at the Thesmophoria" against generic expectations
for the parabasis of a comedy to break comic illusion and discuss the "real" Athens? What views
about women does Thesmophoriazusae endorse? How does this discourse relate to
the action of the plot, and to
Aristophanes' critique of
Euripides' plays?
- How does the ending of Thesmophoriazusae resolve both
Aristophanes' critique of
Euripides and Aristophanes'
plot? What does it say about Aristophanes' claims for comedy and comic doctrines of pleasure that
the two solutions are distinct: how is the fear of otherness that creates misogyny to be resolved?
For tonight's reading:
- Orient Euripides' Medea in relationship to the other
tragedies we have been reading by consulting the
Index of Dates.
- Who is Medea? Where is she, when the play begins? In what circumstances? How
did she get there, in terms both of geography and relationships and experiences?
- How does Medea evaluate her past? What does she think is important about where
she's been and what she's done? What alternative evaluations does the play contrast
with hers?
- How does Medea compare her own experience to the common experience of Greek
women, such as the women of the Chorus she addresses? In what respects is her
experience like theirs, and in what respects is it different?
- Looking ahead: Study Guide for the final exam.
