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, 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 14 October

• Using Euripides' Trojan Women as an example, but then extending your understanding by applying it to our other material, think about how categories articulate the way women's (and men's) identities are understood by their societies and cultures, and how literature uses individual characters to exercise and challenge culturally-determined categories:
  • What categories of women does Euripides distinguish from one another, as this play surveys how a lost war affects women's experience? What criteria define the categories, and what logic informs the criteria?
  • How does Euripides' Cassandra in this play 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? To what other female characters in other plays we have studied can the Cassandra of Trojan Women be compared fruitfully, and what insights can you form from the comparisons?
  • 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.
• 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?
• 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, would end up saving Helen's life (as a mythologically literate ancient Greek audience would know)? 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?

• Consult the Index of Dates so as to orient Hecuba, as a play, in relationship to the other plays we are reading.
• Compare and contrast Hecuba as a character and her situtation in this play to the Hecuba we saw in Trojan Women: who is she? where is she? what has she already suffered, by the moment the play begins?
• 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?

Wednesday 16 October

• 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? Look especially at what Odysseus says, as articulating Greek objectives.
  • In proposing alternatives to sacrificing Polyxena, how does Hecuba attempt to change the terms of the sacrifice from the Greek army's purposes?
  • Besides possible alternative sacrifices, what values and principles of social conduct 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?

• 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?

Friday 18 October

• In what ways does Polyxena acknowledge that at present the Greeks command superior force in comparison with their female Trojan captives, so that they are able to compel the women? In what ways does Polyxena propose to re-define the roles and relationships surrounding her death: what characteristics does she take onto herself and how does she do it? What does her proposed re-definition suggest (to audiences, if not to the Greeks in the play) about female capacity?
• 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?

• Orient Euripides' Helen chronologically with reference to the other plays we have read 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?
• Reading Journal-Entry assignment for next meeting: Euripides� Helen sets up a surprising premise, whereby virtually everything every Greek thinks he knows about Helen is untrue. How does the play set Menelaos in a crazier situation, whereby things he thinks he can count on to be important facts about himself, do not matter? Besides being funny, what does the play suggest this self-ignorance of Menelaos�s may mean? Look, for purposes of this writing assignment, at Menelaos's entrance up through his encounter with the Old Woman.

Monday 21 October

• What constraints control Helen's present position, according to Euripides' Helen? In what ways is her experience comparable to what the traditionally-envisaged Helen experienced at Troy?
  • Metatheatrical question: In what ways is Euripides' Helen's experience, as portrayed in this play, comparable with Euripides' own endeavors, as a playwright, in writing this Helen?
• What ancient Greek social institutions have helped protect Helen, thus far? (Think in terms of the anthropological sense of "institution," a system of social roles and social rules that a given society ordinarily treats its members' interactions as if they were governed by - whether or not they ever consciously articulate the details of the regulating ideas involved.) From what evils have these ancient Greek norms failed to protect Helen? 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?

Wednesday 23 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 deception help? Trace how differences between truth and knowledge are resolved through the action of the Helen.
• What characters respond to challenges by resorting to competitive self-assertion by means of force? 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? The nostos tradition includes a very important example of a male hero who has to use alternatives to force, Odysseus in the epic poem Odyssey; how much and by what means does the Helen associate force, or its alternatives, with one gender or with 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? how? On what principles do the associations rely?

• 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 so as 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 so as to resolve her complaints?

Friday 25 October

• Trace the dynamics of power in the household Andromache and Hermione both occupy. In the terms ancient Greek thought typically used to describe women's roles, what positions in the household do Andromache and Hermione each hold? What do these positions imply about their relationships with other members of the household? How well do these standard expectations seem to fit?
• Who ultimately controls decisions about membership in the household? What means do Andromache and Hermione each 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 improve 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.
• Identify themes and interactions in our plays that illustrate ideas whose scholarly investigation in Greek tragedy Wohl discusses.

• 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?

Monday 28 October

• Trace how Euripides sets up Andromache as an example of a character facing different forms of superior power over the course of her life: what patterns of behavior does she practice? How does her behavior see her through conflicts: what does she change by her behavior and what changes around her?
• 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?

• 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?

Wednesday 30 October

• Continue tracing the pattern Euripides sets up with Andromache: how do other characters facing prospects of oppression by superior powers follow or depart from the model Andromache constitutes? What judgments do the similarities and differences invite? Why?
• What resolution(s) does the conclusion of Andromache offer to the story Euripides depicts?
• Review how our plays thus far, as a group, set up certain characters as transcending limits of their position (a modern definition of "hero," as opposed to the technical meaning of "hero" in ancient Greek religion - do be attentive to that distinction): in what ways does Andromache conform? in what ways does she differ? with what parameters can we identify a general model of female "heroism," as conceived by ancient Athenian tragedy, emerging from our study-material?

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 these 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 confine 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. You must make clear what you're referring to in order to get your argument across. But the main emphasis of the assessment will be on how effectively you demonstrate skills of critical thinking in the realm of literary analysis and of logical argumentation in words, citing appropriate, cogent evidence on which you base your reasoning. The evidence is where your knowledge of our study-material comes in. 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 1 November

• 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.

• Orient Euripides' Bacchae in relationship to the other tragedies we have been reading by consulting the Index of Dates.
• Who are the principal characters in Euripides' Bacchae? How do family ties relate (most of) them to one another? What event has put them in conflict with one another? Why is it causing conflict: what differences does it stir up?
• Who make up the chorus of Bacchae? Where do they come from initially? Why are they now in Thebes? In what ways does their backstory compare to the central conflict in the play, among the principals? Is their interaction as a chorus with the principal characters different from what we have seen in other plays?
• What are the Theban women 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 Pentheus to his own purpose?

Monday 4 November

• What expectations about women's sexuality and social relations frame 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 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? Why would women, such as Ino, Agave, and Autonoe, get swept into this ideology?
• 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 in what ways does Dionysus also operate similarly as he imposes 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?
• 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 6 November

• What practical ends are served by Pentheus's cross-dressing when he goes to spy on the bacchants on Mt. Cithaeron? What symbolic resonances does his change suggest? How does this gesture connect with themes of religion, gender, identity, and theatricality in the play as a whole?
• Chart the development of the action of Bacchae from the Chorus's point of view. How do the actions of the principal characters affect this collective character? What interest does the Chorus maintain in the action - in the practical sense of "interest," what does the Chorus have to gain or lose, and in the emotional sense, what do they care about? When, in what ways, and for what apparent reasons do the Chorus's emotions shift? What does the Chorus's emotional judgment do for the audience?

• 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 toward her, so that she will defend their relationship in return? How does she change her position as she speaks to different people?
• What principles does Kreon 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 toward 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 Kreon's?

Friday 8 November

• 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 Kreon 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 Kreon's decree? What concerns engage them the most?

• What does Kreon expect from Haimon? Why?
• What does Haimon expect from Kreon? What does Kreon's dispute with Antigone do to the relationship between father and son?
• What does Eurydike expect from Kreon? What does Kreon's dispute with Antigone do to the relationship between husband and wife?
• What does the Chorus expect from Kreon? What does Kreon's dispute with Antigone do to the relationship between ruler and people?

Monday 11 November

• 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 Kreon 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 Tiresias 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 Kreon 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 Kreon'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 Kreon's decree. In what ways does her choice suit the peculiar nature of her family? What possibilities does Antigone leave open for Ismene?

• 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?

Wednesday 13 November

• 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 the play 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 for this play? How does he modify the implications of the "Taurian variant", as far as her character is concerned?
• Compare and contrast Iphigeneia among the Taurians to 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?
  • From where is Euripides getting the mythological variants he uses for his plots in these plays? How do these alternate stories reflect upon and shift the implications of the standard myths?
  • How do ancient Greek conceptions of geography facilitate Euripides' mythological interventions?
  • How do ancient Greek stereotypes of gender and power play when Greeks -male and female- are far from home amid "barbarian" wildness?

• 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?

Friday 15 November

• 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?
• 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?
• 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? What does invoking these practices and ideas do for the original Athenian audience's experience of the play?

• 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?
• Reminder: Reading Journal Entry due Monday - topic discussed in class.

Monday 18 November

• It seems to have been in his earlier, now lost, play of the myth of Phaedra and 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. To what extent, in what ways, does Euripides incorporate this background in his play?
• 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 tragedies.
• 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.

• Into what crisis does Theseus walk when he returns? What facts and what allegations does he immediately confront? 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?

Wednesday 20 November

• 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?

• Orient Sophocles' Women of Trakhis 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 the determination made which of her suitors would marry her?
  • What event, after the marriage was formed, placed Deianeira at the apex of a conflict similar to the conflict between her suitors - now 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?
• How does Wohl read the ending of Women of Trakhis? What indications do you see in the earlier part of the play that build toward her conclusion? Do you see counter-indications: what?
• Look back over our material this whole semester in light of Wohl's dual characterization of "tragedy's function as an ideological apparatus reproducing and reinforcing Athens' oppressive gender norms, and tragedy as a site of institutionalized questioning of or even resistance to those norms" (p.156). What examples stand out to you as instances either of our plays' reinforcing ancient Greek societal tendencies to privilege male-identified persons, characteristics, and activities over female ones, or else of their suggesting that type of privileging causes problems?

Friday 22 November

• 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 with Herakles? 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 Likhas 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 Likhas 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?

• How does Hyllus respond to the course of actions that unfolds in the second half of Women of Trakhis? 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 Herakles 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 Herakles' concerns?

Monday 25 November

• In what ways does Sophocles establish parallels between Deianeira's experience and Herakles', so that Women of Trakhis 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 Herakles'.
• 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?

• 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 of geography, 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?

Monday 2 December

• Analyze how Euripides in Medea uses dramatic technologies and conventions, such as the number of principal actors between whom scenes are divided or speech from off-stage. What effects does he generate affecting this play's feeling of intimacy or formality in relationship of characters to the audience? How do these effects influence an audience's evaluation of the play's characters and plot?
• Analyze how Medea presents herself to the Chorus and describes the conditions women face in their marriages generally, because they are women, and she faces in her marriage specifically, because she is foreign. In what ways does Medea claim to be like the women of the Chorus? In what ways does she claim to be different? How does each claim work to build sympathy?

• What problems do Jason and Creon acknowledge Medea is facing? What causes do they assign to her problems? How do their analyses line up with her experience: what facets of her being do they recognize, and what facets do they disregard or fail entirely to perceive?
• Who is Aegeus? What concern of his own is he dealing with as he passes through Corinth? In what ways does it compare or connect with Medea's problems?
• Looking ahead: Study Guide for the final exam.

Wednesday 4 December

• Trace how Euripides contrasts and combines various axes of difference in Medea: gender (female and male), ethnicity (barbarian and Greek), class (humble -slave or citizen- and noble). In what ways can different kinds of difference be thought of as converging and providing analogies for one another? How far does this way of thinking about difference provide valid insights, and at what point does it start to distort?
• In what ways does Medea define for the Chorus -and the Athenian audience- a concept of heroism for women, comparable to conventional heroic ideals Greek cultural traditions applied to men? Draw the comparisons, and identify the points of similarity and difference. What arguments does she use to encourage the Chorus to buy in to this idea? How do they respond?
• Compare and contrast the analyses of Medea's past actions she and Jason each make. Given that they are both referring to exactly the same acts, what reasons can you identify to explain why they assess them so differently? Think not only about how 21st-century gender-assumptions might operate in a parallel encounter, but still more about what evidence our texts this semester provide for 5th-century Athenian assumptions about gender, national origins, more-than-commonly-human powers to shape circumstances, and any other factors you see operating in either Jason's or Medea's views: why, in their own context, are they unable to understand one another?

• How does Medea feel about her children? Why? Do not rely on inference, but very carefully trace exactly what she actually says - especially on highly charged topics, you need to be sure you do not import cultural values from another time and place before you understand social interactions in their own context. Once you have established a contextualized understanding, then you can re-evaluate the action from other perspectives and recognize not only what social and cultural differences make those perspectives different, but also how they are operating. Keeping these mechanics straight gives you greater analytical power.
• Trace over the course of the play how the Chorus evaluates Medea. What considerations function uppermost in their minds at different times? How do they relate their own experiences and general, normative, Classical Greek social values to Medea and her actions?
• Looking ahead: Study Guide for the final exam.

Friday 6 December

• When, and why, does the Chorus begin to feel differently from Medea about the revenge she proposes to take on Jason? What line do these women draw between Medea's position and what they will endorse?
• What considerations govern Medea's thinking, especially on the points that make her evaluate her plans differently from how the Chorus evaluates them? What principles does she build her ideas of marriage upon?
• What feelings about marriage and family does Jason show? What lines can we draw within him between fatuous self-importance and more other-directed impulses: how does the evidence of the play back us up?

• Cues for many ideas to consider are assembled in the Study Guide for the final exam.
• Also consider for yourself: what are some of the most important concerns of classical Athenian tragedy, especially as it relates to concerns of women and gender? What do the individual plays we have read tell us about these concerns? Do you still agree with the conclusions we drew in class meetings - how has your study of additional plays deepened and modified your understanding of the ones we read earlier? What evidence in the plays supports the interpretations you now judge are best? Identify which passages especially well illustrate important concepts, patterns of understanding and interpretation, or kinds of expression: they 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 these e-files (above and from before the midsemester) flag important issues within our material. Typically they are fairly open-ended: they encourage you to think through what our texts imply, and explore the connections you find. Exam questions will suggest a tighter focus, in the interests of being possible to answer within the scheduled exam period. But by thinking about the issues raised by class discussions and the study questions, and noting passages of our texts that provide important evidence, you will prepare yourself well 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!

Revised 5 December 2019 by jlong1@luc.edu
http://www.luc.edu/classicalstudies/