CLST 273G-001: Classical Tragedy - Women and Gender Focus Fall Semester 2019 Dr. Jacqueline Long

Study Questions

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.) Keep watching this space!

Monday 26 August

• Begin to assemble ideas to use upon the literature we will be studying this term:
  • What are the mechanics by which "literature" does what it does?
  • How do plays do what they do, as opposed to other forms of literature? What relationship do performance and text bear to one another?
• What ideas did ancient Greeks associate with their terms drama, tragedy, comedy, and theater? How do these associations change the way you can approach our material, by comparison with modern American associations with these terms?
• What social expectations did ancient Athenians have for women, as opposed to men? How do these associations change the way you can approach our material, by comparison with modern American social values?
• Continue thinking about these questions and extending your understanding as we advance in our study.

• 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. Naturally, we'll build context as we go along. Notice how things we pay attention to in new plays also relate to ideas connected with plays we read before.
  • 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 Agamemnon 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 Agamemnon.
• What does the character of the Watchman do, in the Agamemnon's represented world and for the performance of the Agamemnon as a play? How does Aeschylus incorporate pre-history to his play's immediate plot?
• 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?

Wednesday 28 August

• As you read, try to picture how our plays would have been staged. What indications does the text give? Remember, only the things people in the play say are preserved in the original script.
  • How would the physical space, and the conventions of staging the Athenians typically used, have affected the way a play could come across to its audience?
  • Compare and contrast to the resources and conventions of modern theatrical performance: what elements of a play-script become easier or harder to show to an audience under different performance-conditions? How could similar impacts be made on the audience by different means?
  • Remember also the Athenian performance-convention of using only male actors: when you see a play calling on "female" perspectives in any way, pause and consider whether it generates a tension to have male players in those roles. Feminist inquiry into the Classical world always has to ask, where and how can male-authored texts and men's perspectives touch on women's experience?
• Begin noting evidence in our plays about fifth-century Athenian social practices and presumptions connected with gender: how different or how similar are they compared to modern American ones? Single out ideas that seem to be important to the plays, to raise in class discussion.
• For each play as we come to it, note how the prologue (opening scene) orients you in the myth on which the plot is based. To what ideas does the poet try to alert the audience?
• 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?
• 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?

• What characteristic interests does Wohl identify in feminist scholarship as applied to the study of Athenian tragedy?
• 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?

Friday 30 August

• As a general issue deserving further reflection, note how male-norming, a tendency to understand humanity in terms of the masculine gender, has from time to time affected ancient Greek ideas; the tradition of Classical humanism and scholarship of Greek antiquity; modern American society. We'll discuss instances that arise in our plays, but thinking about other instances too can help identify instances in the plays and understand possible consequences.
• Compare and contrast the Chorus's blame for Helen as a cause of the war, regardless of her agency, with their attitudes toward Agamemnon, who imposed the war on their city's population. How far are their sympathies a matter of gender? What other considerations operate in them?

• 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?

Wednesday 4 September

• According to this play, why did Artemis demand that Agamemnon sacrifice Iphigeneia? What duty and what reasoning compel Agamemnon to obey?
• 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. Compare and contrast Clytaemnestra's motivation and actions in this play with the motivation and actions male characters identify behind the Trojan War.
  • In what ways does Clytaemnestra -as some characters identify her- "think like a man" about what she does?
  • In what ways does Clytaemnestra think differently from androcentric thought-patterns traditional in Greek society, about her family?
  • Where does gender enter into Clytaemnestra's thinking and values, as expressed in Agamemnon? How does our, modern, theoretically-informed critical analysis compare with the analysis Clytaemnestra makes?
• 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?

• Who is Aegisthus? What is his problem? What does he have to do with the characters and action of Agamemnon?
• Reading-Journal entry due Friday: Cassandra experiences her vision with the Chorus three times (Fagles pp. 144-151, "Aieeeeee! Earth - Mother - " to "Your vision seems so true"; pp. 151-154, "Aieeeeee! - the pain, the terror!" to "he's hard to understand"; and pp. 154-158, "His fire! - sears me, sweeps me again - the torture!" to "I think that breaks the heart."): compare and contrast these three repetitions, in order to understand what Aeschylus does for his play by repeating this interior preview this way.

Friday 6 September

• How does Cassandra's separate experience with Apollo connect with the events she foreknows and will experience within the action of Agamemnon? How does this perspective change the way the play invites interpretation of the present action?
• By juxtaposing different characters' interpretations of past events, and staging competition between them whose views are more compelling (if not "right" in any absolute sense), how does the Agamemnon invite its audience to reassess their own social assumptions and cultural values? Collect pertinent evidence from specific utterances and actions in the text, and analyze concretely.
• Drama-history:
  • How did the "trilogy" format work for Athenian tragedy? (What does this term really mean, in this context?)
  • How was the citizenry of Athens involved in performances of tragedies?
  • After plays premiered at Athens, how did they continue to be known?

• 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?

Monday 9 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? ("Perform" here as a matter both of intention and agency and of just existing in position as patriarch.)
  • How do ancient Greek expectations about gender make Orestes' and Electra's experiences able to be identified as equivalent to one another, across the gender-differences that shape their lives?
  • 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? How can you tell?

Wednesday 11 September

• Continue to build on our work identifying gendered dichotomies in Agamemnon and the Libation Bearers, by tracing how conventional ancient Greek associations of ideas with the concepts male and female line up in either conflicting or collaborative ways within the plays' action, and how the conflicts or collaborations play out.
• Analyze the justification(s) the Libation Bearers gives for Orestes' climactic action. How does the play lead viewers/readers 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 which 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?
• As you add our new pages of Wohl 2005 to your conceptual toolkit, think about how it changes the questions you ask of a text to investigate its female figures as "signs" and as "generators of signs" within the text's action: can you add good examples to the ones she discusses? Think too about the differences between looking at a text in the terms it employs itself (with reference perhaps to some additional assumptions about human psychology generally) and looking at it in its historical and social context.

Friday 13 September

• What does the Pythia's prologue do to contextualize the problem(s) that the Eumenides as a whole will address? How can these powers in the cosmos relate 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 Athena (to whom Apollo refers Orestes, with his initial prophecy) represent - in Greek mythology generally and at Athens?
• What were the important moments in the development of Athenian tragedy as a literary form and performance-tradition? How was the city-state of Athens involved? How does the chronology line up with the dates of extant plays?

• What concerns principally motivate Athena, as she introduces herself, 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 does the jury trial solve in the dispute between the Chorus and Apollo-and-Orestes? What issues remain unresolved?
• What more does Athena do so as to resolve those issues?

Monday 16 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 ideas do they each attach to gender? 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 what 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 their relationship 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?
• Reading Journal-Entry assignment for next meeting: Compare and contrast the recognition between Orestes and Electra in Euripides' Electra (Morwood p.95, c. l.495, to p.98, c. l.595) with the recognition between Orestes and Electra in Aeschylus's Libation Bearers (Fagles p.184, l.168, to p.189, l.247): what does the way the recognition happens suggest about the relationship between the two siblings? What about the difference appears to be important to the way Euripides begins his play about the same mythological moment as Aeschylus?

Wednesday 18 September

• Trace the ways in which Euripides' Electra apparently refers specifically to Aeschylus's treatment of the myth of Orestes' revenge? How does Euripides make his connections: how does he point to elements in Aeschylus's version? How does he change or re-frame them? What different emphases result, and how do they shift the way Euripides' play interprets the myth?
• 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 much self-knowledge do Euripides' Electra and Orestes display? What details does the play use to confirm or disconfirm their statements about themselves, their situations, and their values?

• According to the messenger-speech, how does Euripides' 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 in this play, as well as to the Libation Bearers: what considerations appear most important to Electra and Orestes in assessing the deaths?
• How do Castor and Polydeuces apportion judgment of action and resolve the conflicts at the end of Euripides' Electra? (Depending where you hear about Greek mythology, you may know them as Castor & Pollux. "Pollux" is a Roman version of the Greek name "Polydeuces." They also get referred to sometimes as "the Dioscori," which means "Zeus's sons." 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)

Friday 20 September

• 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 does Euripides give of his characters and their interactions, by means of his revisions? Compare and contrast. Explaining, concretely, how specific elements of a text push you toward one interpretation or another of its significance, is one of the fundamental skills of literary study - and it's applicable to other forms of analysis and explication as well.
  • How do the different qualities of Euripides' characters, by comparison with Aeschylus's versions of the same figures in the myth, change what the plays suggest the myth is about?
  • How do Euripides' changes and critiques cue audiences to think about Aeschylus's plays, as examples of dramaturgy or literature more generally? How do they cue audiences to think about Euripides' own play?
  • How does Euripides cue his audiences to think about contemporary society, outside the play, in 5c BC Athens? what ideas about society extend to our modern American world?
• What does Euripides do for his drama by making his characters sometimes undercut their own statements?
• What forces hold 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 Euripides' 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?

From today's class:

• Compare and contrast Sophocles' Elektra 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 Elektra 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 Elektra'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' Elektra 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 Elektra?

• What events prompt Sophocles' Elektra to change her decisions what she should do? With what reasoning does she respond to events and govern her decisions?
• How does Sophocles' Elektra 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 Elektra's reactions say about her?
• Who dies? When? How is the killing conducted?
• What future does the end of the play set up?

Wednesday 25 September

• How does Sophocles portray Klytemnestra, both from what other characters say about her and from what she says herself? Compare and contrast Sophocles' Klytemnestra with Aeschylus's and with Euripides'. What elements of Klytemnestra's circumstances does each poet emphasize? What attitudes does each poet ascribe to Klytemnestra, that govern her response to her circumstances? In particular, how well justified does each poet make Klytemnestra and her actions with regard to Agamemnon, to Elektra, and to Orestes? What considerations govern your judgment of what could make Klytemnestra seem better justified or worse justified?
• 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' Elektra take the momentous decision to try to avenge Agamemnon herself? How does Chrysothemis respond? How can an audience perceive Elektra'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 Elektra or Chrysothemis does what the circumstances governing Elektra'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 Friday.

• 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 concerns 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 concerns 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 the literal words of the text to understanding its literary, social, cultural, and historical significance.
• Bring a couple of clear-writing pens or pencils, so you will have backup.
• Good luck!

Friday 27 September

• CONGRATULATIONS! You have completed the first examination.
• Make second thoughts work for you: what more could you say about the ideas touched on by the exam? How do similar concerns arise in other plays? You will continue to have opportunities to tie in these themes again.

• Orient Iphigeneia at Aulis 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?

Monday 30 September

• What thematic concerns of Iphigeneia at Aulis would have resonated significantly with Athens' recent history and politics 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.
• To the extent the Iphigeneia at Aulis gives you indications to judge, how would Agamemnon, the Old Man, Menelaus (and, thinking back about this question again when you've read the whole play, also Iphigeneia and Achilles) each say the position of a leader was defined? What responsibilities would they each judge a leader bears? What reasons do you see influencing their understandings, either relating to their individual circumstances or to other considerations?
• 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?

Wednesday 2 October

• Compare and contrast the reactions of Clytaemnestra and of Achilles to the ruse Agamemnon practiced to get Iphigeneia to Aulis. From their perspectives, what norms were 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 from 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 Sophocles' Aias (alternative transliteration 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' Aias take place - at what point in its traditional mythological story-context? What events have happened recently? How does Aias evaluate them?
• With what gendered ideas does Aias identify himself? What statements in the play support this identity? What obstacles does Aias face in retaining this identity for himself?
• What history of a relationship has Aias had with Athena? What actions of his do her conversations in the prologue, with Odysseus and with Aias, pick up on?
• Who is Tekmessa? How is she connected to the action?

Friday 4 October

• In thinking the Greek army should have awarded him Achilles' arms, what understanding of armies and their values does Aias apply: for what reasons does he think they "ought" to have honored him? In what ways do these ideas construct an image of manliness?
  • How does Aias apply his thinking to the Greek leaders he blames for the decision?
  • How does Aias apply his thinking to himself in the aftermath of his reaction?
• Compare and contrast Odysseus's reactions to Aias's: what is different in the dynamic of ideas Odysseus perceives?
• Compare and contrast Tekmessa's reactions to Aias's.
  • On the one hand, how does Tekmessa's present social position fit in the matrix of Aias's thinking about armies and values of masculinity - so that her acceptance of her position has reinforced Aias's ideology, at least in his perceptions?
  • On the other hand, how has having had to accept the weaknesses of her position given Tekmessa emotional resources Aias lacks? What can she do that he has cut himself off from being able to do?

• Who is Teukros? What relationships does he have with the other characters in Aias? With what other characters does his position in his own family correspond?
• Compare and contrast how Menelaos, Teukros, Agamemnon, and Odysseus, in the second half of Aias, each assess the circumstances they are in and their relationships with Aias: what patterns of thinking underlie each of them?

Wednesday 9 October

• In what ways does Telamon, Aias's and Teukros's father, form a point of reference for anxieties Sophocles dramatizes both Aias and Teukros feeling? What patterns of thought do Aias (more tacitly) and Teukros (more explicitly) ascribe to Telamon? What characters within the action of Aias 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 Aias as an inquiry into some points of patriarchal thinking?)
• How does Sophocles position Teukros in relationship to Aias? How does Sophocles position Teukros in relationship to the army? How does Teukros 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?

• Consult the Index of Dates so as to orient Trojan Women, as a play, in relationship to the other plays we are reading.
• What purpose is outlined specifically in the prologue of Trojan Women? Who adopts this purpose? Why? 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 11 October

• 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 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 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?

• 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?

Revised 8 October 2019 by jlong1@luc.edu
http://www.luc.edu/classicalstudies/