Study Questions

file in progress - perennially

The study questions in this file will be updated through the course of the semester. Keep watching this space!

Monday 14 January

• When and where did Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides write their plays? In general terms, what sort of cultural background did they draw on in writing their plays?
• For what occasion(s) did Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides initially write their plays? How did their community involve itself in the plays' premiere production? In what ways was religion involved (think both about the specific divinity concerned, and about how the community understood itself to be interacting with the divinity through the performance)? How did the plays continue to be known, after the premieres?
• Be able to identify key stages and rough dates in the development of dramatic performance out of "dithyramb," chorally-performed narrative hymn. What innovations are credited to our playwrights? What personnel made up the performance-company for which our tragedies were written?

• Who are the principal characters in Euripides' Bacchae? How do family ties relate (most of) them to one another? What basic issue has put them in conflict with one another?
• Who make up the chorus of Bacchae? Where do they come from initially, and how have they gotten to Thebes? To what group of people, and to what individuals in particular, at Thebes is the chorus's position most similar - but what are some crucial differences (think particularly about the issue at conflict among the principals)?
• What does Didaskalia's page Introduction to Greek Stagecraft add to your knowledge of when, where, and how plays such as the Bacchae were initially performed at Athens? Think about how the occasions, the performance space, and Athenian conventions of staging would affect the way a fifth-century audience could experience the Bacchae.

Wednesday 16 January

• In what ways did the physical space of the Theater of Dionysus in Athens help relate the tragic plays performed there to other aspects of Athenian life? Think concretely of specific examples.
  As you read our plays, look for how the texts suggest they would have been staged originally. How would the physical space, and the conventions of staging the Athenians typically used to deal with the constraints of that space, have given emphasis to particular ideas in the texts?
  • Compare and contrast to the resources of modern theatrical performance and the conventions actors typically use now: what emphases is our theater well able to bring out in a play?
  • What ideas is a modern audience typically interested in having emphasized in a play? What techniques are used to emphasize them? Fifth-century Athenians might OR might not have had similar interests, and the techniques of their staging might or might not have been suited to making similar emphases. How can the plays tell us about what their original audiences were looking for?
• Over what concerns have Dionysus and Pentheus come into conflict? How are they concerned as individuals? How do their concerns extend to wider populations, and how do they each relate to these larger groups?
• What possibilities does the divine prologue of Bacchae open up for the resolution of the conflict? To think about what, in particular, this introduction does for the play, you may find it helpful to think about what a different kind of introduction might show or emphasize differently - speculate, for example, about how you might stage the play for a modern audience, if you were free to modify the opening - but be sure to come back to analyzing in concrete terms what Euripides achieved by setting up the play as he does.

• 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? What does he do to exploit them?
• 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 why the play handles 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?

Friday 18 January

• Analyze Pentheus's end of the conflict at the center of the Bacchae:
  • In what ways does Pentheus identify himself, consciously, with rationality and civic order?
    Strategy for this sort of question: Identify specific things Pentheus says that reveal how his viewpoint works. Be able to explain clearly, in concrete terms, how ideas that go beyond what he literally says can legitimately be inferred from what he says and does.
  • What sorts of things has Pentheus done in the past and does he expect to do in the future, to make operative his views of how Theban society should work?
  • How accurate are Pentheus's judgments, on the basis of the "evidence" Euripides gives the audience of the Bacchae? What factors is Pentheus missing out in his assessments?
  • To what extent would a fifth-century Athenian audience member have found things to agree with in Pentheus's views and assumptions: how far does Pentheus in the play represent Euripides' reflections on his fellow-citizens?
• How does the Bacchae assimilate madness, divine possession, altered vision, and theatrical role-playing? ( Think concretely first: What actions does the play use to connect these or related ideas to one another? Analyze what the actions do to make the connections. Progress to exploring why they should be connected.) In what ways was the experience of watching this tragedy like the events the tragedy portrays?

• 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 23 January

• Compare and contrast the Aquila Theater Company's videotaped performance of Agamemnon to what a fifth-century BC Athenian audience might have experienced. How do the resources of the medium, and established conventions of performance in that medium, shape the presentation of the play?
• On what traditional mythological background does Agamemnon draw? How does the play help remind the audience of this background, or direct their attention to particular facets? In what ways is the audience-community of fifth-century Athens encouraged to see itself as connected to the mythological past?
• How does Aeschylus establish the idea that the larger community has a stake in actions that immediately concern the principal characters of Agamemnon? How does the idea of community interest affect the impressions made by the principal characters?

• 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 other characters (especially Agamemnon and the Chorus) would make?
• Make up a history of the pre-action of Agamemnon, from Cassandra's point of view, as she recounts it within the play. What events does she know about? Why? What relevance do they have for the current action of the play?
• Who is Aegisthus? What is his problem? What does he have to do with the characters and action of Agamemnon?

Friday 25 January

• Compare and contrast the techniques Aeschylus uses to put background information into play in Agamemnon, to the techniques Euripides uses in Bacchae. How does the different style of exposition in each play affect the way the "problem" at the center of each play takes shape?
• What is the "problem" that centers Agamemnon? Explain how the words and actions of the play lead you to identify the "problem" as you do.
• Compare and contrast the characters of Clytaemnestra and Agamemnon.
  • What activities do they each do?
  • How are they each perceived by the people of Argos? What social assumptions lie behind those perceptions? How closely might fifth-century Athenians have shared these assumptions?
  • What loyalties do they each uphold? How far are they each willing to go to uphold their loyalties? What considerations inform their choices of loyalties?
• Besides background exposition of the family of Agamemnon, what does the character of Cassandra contribute to the thematic and dramatic structure of Agamemnon?

• 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 28 January

• In what senses is the character of Agamemnon at the center of the tragedy Agamemnon? In what senses is the character of Clytaemnestra at the center?
• How does what Aegisthus says in the last part of Agamemnon change the way the audience can interpret the preceding action? Compare and contrast the effects of his revelations to the earlier process by which Clytaemnestra's dissimulations to Agamemnon became clear.
• What is Electra's status at the start of Libation Bearers? Compare and contrast to Clytaemnestra and to Cassandra, as they represent two extremes on a continuum of woman's power in Agamemnon: whose position does Electra's resemble more? why?
• Compare and contrast Electra's character and relationship to knowledge, in the Libation Bearers, with Clytaemnestra's in the Agamemnon: does the daughter resemble her mother in any way?

• Who are the Chorus of Libation Bearers? What relationship does the Chorus have to the principal characters? How does the Chorus participate in the actions of the principal characters? Compare and contrast to the Chorus of Agamemnon.
• Who else, besides the Chorus and principal characters, participates in the central action of Libation Bearers? Why do they take the roles they do?
• 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?

Wednesday 30 January

• The Chorus of Libation Bearers, despite its social status, does exercise a kind of authority in the play: what kind? why? How might the fifth-century Athenian audience have been inclined to interpret the Chorus's authority and actions: does the Chorus represent their community in any way?
• Analyze the justification the Libation Bearers gives for Orestes' climactic action. How does the play lead the audience to interpret its decisive event? Do any counter-arguments to these justifications appear in the play?
  • What REASONS make Orestes believe he is right? Who gives him these reasons?
  • What POWERS support Orestes? How does he come to feel these powers operating?
  • What EMOTIONS carry Orestes through his act?
• Does the ending of Libation Bearers come as a surprise? Why or why not?

• Who make up the Chorus of the Eumenides? What concern do they have with Orestes' actions?
• 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? How far does this action meet the Chorus's concern with Orestes - does the Chorus's system for reconciling injury overlap with the system of Delphi in any way, or do they address totally different sets of considerations?

Friday 1 February

• What does the Pythia's prologue do to contextualize the problem that the Eumenides as a whole will address? Identify the ideas about the powers in the cosmos that she acknowledges, and consider how they might be applied to Orestes' case.
• How does the Chorus define what Orestes has done? How does Apollo define it? What presumptions, on each side, make their definitions impossible to reconcile?
• 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?

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

Monday 4 February

• What type of scene constitutes the climax of an Athenian tragedy, based on the evidence of the plays we have read so far? How do elements like emotions, on-stage dialogue, and off-stage action combine to make a "climax"? What considerations make a particular event decisive for the course of action of a tragedy? Think in terms of specific passages of our texts, and be able to explain concretely how they illustrate and support your analyis.
• Having considered the dramaturgical problem of "climax" for Athenian tragedy in general, apply your conclusions to Aeschylus's Eumenides: in what ways does Orestes' trial form a climax? in what ways does Athene's argument with the Chorus after the trial form another climax?
• Of what Athenian civic institutions does the Eumenides give a "charter myth"? How does this play bridge the gap between the timeless past of myth to contemporary realities of Aeschylus's audience?

• Compare and contrast Euripides' Electra to Aeschylus's Libation Bearers as two versions of the same myth. 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 Electra? Why do they treat each other as they do - what does it show about Electra's fate following the death of her father?
  • What impulse and what purpose bring Orestes back to Argos?
  • How do Orestes and Electra recognize one another?
  • How do Orestes and Electra go about planning what they will do next?

Wednesday 6 February

• How is social stratification reflected in Euripides' Electra? How might comments about wealth and social class have been likely to resonate in democratic fifth-century Athens? How do they shade the "heroic" image of the characters of myth?
• How does Euripides portray the character of Electra? How accurately does she perceive or represent her situation, to herself and to others? How does the way she presents herself influence the way an audience can interpret her desires and actions?
• How integrated a society is portrayed in Euripides' Electra: how broad a community do Electra and Orestes have to rely on for support? How do they use this support? How well do they recognize it?

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

Friday 8 February

• By making his characters undercut their own statements, what does Euripides make his audience have to do to understand the action of his Electra? How do the techniques of Sophistic criticism contribute to Euripides' critique both of traditional/naive and of Sophistic attitudes?
• Compare and contrast how well Euripides' Electra and Clytaemnestra each justify their 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 holds Euripides' Orestes to his course of action? What does his level of commitment say about him? what does it say about what he intends to do? Compare and contrast to Electra.
• 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?

• 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?

Monday 11 February

• How closely do the gods and divine will appear to be involved in Sophocles' Electra? How is divine will communicated? How do human characters respond? What does Sophocles suggest about the relationship of human and divine worlds?
• What does Sophocles use Electra's soliloquies and dialogues with other characters to portray her experience as a result of Agamemnon's death, and her reactions to her experience? What aspects of her character and moral choices does he emphasize?
• In what senses is Sophocles' Electra a victim of Agamemnon's murder: what has happened to her material life, her social contacts, her capacity for action? How much will Aegisthus's plans for her change her situation? How does Sophocles' use of Orestes as a vector for action relate to his portrayal of Electra?

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

Wednesday 13 February

• How does Sophocles portray Clytaemnestra, both from what other characters say about her and from what she says herself? What network of moral choices produced the character with which she shows herself? How does her opposition help to delineate Sophocles' Electra and the moral choices available to her?
• We have now read versions of the myth of revenge for the death of Agamemnon by each of the three ancient Athenian tragic poets whose works have been preserved, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Compare and contrast WHAT each poet implies about the relationship between justice and revenge in connection with this myth, and HOW each poet goes about making these suggestions through his use of the literary form of a tragic play. Angles to consider include the following; what other considerations do you judge interesting and important?
  • What responsibilities does each poet portray blood-kinship as involving?
  • Where does each poet portray "private" interests (interests of the individual and of the family) as intersecting with "public" interests (interests of the community at large)?
  • What involvement does each poet suggest that forces beyond the individual, such as "nature" or the gods, have with individual moral choices and actions?
  • What techniques for portraying ideas at work through characters in action, debating and taking moral choices, do all the poets use? What techniques seem to be especially characteristic of each poet distinctively from the others? Think of specific examples you can discuss in detail to help demonstrate the general tendencies you discern.

• Review our readings and your class notes in light of the study questions from individual days (this file, above) and the general Study Guide for this exam: what are some of the most important issues in Aeschylus's, Sophocles', and Euripides' tragedies? What do the plays tell us about these issues? Do you still agree with the conclusions we drew in class meetings? Why or why not? What evidence supports your interpretations now?
• Be prepared to cite specific, concrete details from the individual plays in order to support the conclusions you now draw.
• Be prepared to explain logically and specifically how this evidence supports your arguments.
• Bring a couple of clear-writing pens or pencils, so you will have backup. I will supply blue books.
• Good luck!

Friday 15 February

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

• Who is Prometheus? What has he done to incur confinement?
• What was the context of Prometheus's actions: what else was going on, that made what he did seem so terrible?
• What alternatives did Prometheus have? What can he do now?
• What actually happens on-stage?

Monday 18 February

• As a group, they were great. THANK YOU!
• As you will detect, even a great exam inspires me to make suggestions about writing an even greater exam if you had it to do all over again, or interesting ideas you give me that would be worth pursuing farther. Please read all my marginal comments, consider what I'm pointing you towards, and do feel welcome to come talk with me about pursuing them.
• Spelling note: the only really pervasive problem was the name of the god of theater: DIONYSUS (Latinized spelling) or DIONYSOS (more-Hellenic spelling) are the acceptable variants. You know from the Bacchae that you don't want to get on his nerves.

• What criteria do classical scholars use to think about whether a text, such as Prometheus Bound, was really written by whom our manuscripts say it was? Why would this issue of "authenticity" matter?
  • In the case of Prometheus Bound, how strong are the arguments for and against authenticity?
• Know the technical terms for the structural elements of a classical Greek tragedy: prologue, parodos, episode, stasimon or ode (including subdivisions strophe and antistrophe), exodos. What do they mean? Be able to identify them in the plays we read (it will help in reading published scholarship that uses these terms as familiar points of reference).
• What has Prometheus done for humankind, according to the Prometheus Bound? How has he changed the balance of (potential) power in the cosmos?
• How does the poet use dialogue with and without Prometheus to measure the significance of what he has done? What perspectives of judgment are held up for the audience to consider?

• Who is Io? What is happening to her? Why? What connection does she have with the future of Prometheus and Zeus?
• Who is Hermes? What perspective does he represent? Compare and contrast his interactions with Prometheus with Might's and with Oceanos's.
• How does Prometheus Bound deal with the issue of time? When does the play focus on the past? on the present? on the future? How does the action of the play relate, in each of those sections, to those time-frames?

Wednesday 20 February

• Analyze the plot of Prometheus Bound. What actually happens over the course of the tragedy, in the way of crucial decisions or events? What interaction brings about change?
• What is achieved in the interactions depicted in Prometheus Bound that fail to bring about change in anyone's circumstances? Dramatically speaking, what is the point of these conversations?
• By what means can a kind of dramatic excitement be achieved in performance of Prometheus Bound? Think both about resources of performance and about what is embodied in the script.
• In what ways are human beings implicated in the fate of Prometheus, following his initial benefactions to them? How does the binding of Prometheus both attempt to separate Prometheus from humanity and, as Prometheus Bound shows, set up immediately and ultimately to connect the achievements of the human race even more closely to the eternal order of the gods?

• What is happening in Thebes at the start of Oedipus the King? How does the population of the city-state relate to Oedipus as their ruler: what do they expect him to do about the crisis? on what basis do they form their expectations? How does he answer their expectations: what responsibility does he take for the community?
• What has Oedipus done for the community of Thebes in the past?
• Of what use has Teiresias's prophetic insight been to the community of Thebes in the past? What answer does Teiresias give to Oedipus's questions now? How does the Chorus react? How does Oedipus react?
• What attitudes to social prominence, to power, and to social responsibility does Creon display? Compare and contrast to Oedipus.
• What oracle does Jocasta report Laius and she received? What did they do about it? What conclusions does she draw from the episode?

Friday 22 February

• Based on references in Athenian tragedies we have read so far, what general principles would an ancient Greek understand to govern the operation of fate? How much is fixed? How much is conditional? How may humans (or gods) gain insight into what is fated? Identify specific pieces of evidence, and explain what they tell us.
• What revelations of fate or fact does Oedipus the King show as having been made absolutely explicitly, and yet being impossible to understand? Why is it impossible for the hearers to understand these messages: what does their failure imply about the process with which human beings understand information? Note that anger is a consequence, not a cause, of misunderstanding in these cases.
• Connect the plague at Thebes to ancient Greek ideas about blood-guilt (think about the evidence we have read that reveals these ideas): why is the whole state literally sick over Laius's murder?
  • What relationship between ruler and ruled does this physical connection imply?
  • How has Oedipus been adopted into this relationship with the people of Thebes? How does he identify with the role of ruler he has assumed, and with a ruler's responsibilities to his people? Compare and contrast with Creon's "rational" position on rulership.

• Trace the stages of evidence and inference in which Oedipus uncovers the truth about his past, both before the action of Oedipus the King and within the play. By what paths does Oedipus arrive at belief and understanding?
• What inferences does Polybus's death lead Oedipus to make about his fate? Why would his hypothesis be plausible on the basis of what he knows at this point?
• How does Oedipus react when he learns the full truth about what he has done in his life? What does he do? What reasons does he give for what he does now?

Monday 25 February

• Given that the crucial decisions and actions of Oedipus's life-story have all happened before Oedipus the King begins, what does the play have left to tell? What concerns motivate the action of the play? What does the fact Oedipus is so moved by these concerns tell the audience about him? Think both about his public role and his identification with it, and about his personal identity.
• How do the choral odes of Oedipus the King connect with the action in the scenes they punctuate? What general perspective on the role of divine will and religion in human affairs is given by the odes?
• How, does Oedipus the King suggest, do human fate, human will, human knowledge, human actions, and human responsibility relate to one another? How much can Oedipus control? How well does he manage, given the fate he was dealt? How much responsibility does he take for his unwitting actions?

• 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 related about her in the Oresteia and the Electra-plays we have read?
• Why is Orestes in Tauris? What crisis does his arrival provoke? How is it resolved, and what new plan becomes necessary?

Wednesday 27 February

• 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 ideas about ethnicity, revenge, gender, and the divinity of Artemis does this variant imply? Explain how the continuities and role-reversals of the variant 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 Orestes' relationship with Pylades, as portrayed in Iphigeneia in Tauris, help to characterize him as a human being, and in relationship to Apollo?
• How does Euripides build up to the recognition between Iphigeneia and Orestes? What do reminiscences of the Oresteia do for the Iphigeneia in Tauris?

• How do Iphigeneia, Orestes, and Pylades plan their escape? Who takes what initiatives? What role does the Chorus play in the plot?
• 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 1 March

• Who gets rescued in Iphigeneia in Tauris? 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 obstacles that block their way, and how are those forces or obstacles neutralized?
• What Athenian or Attic religious practices does Iphigeneia in Tauris give an authorizing story for ("charter myth"; Attica is the name of the region for which Athens, as center of collective functions of the city-state, gives its name)? What ideas do these practices of worship enshrine in the community? How does the play pick up on related ideas?
• How do ideas about gender and the capabilities of female and male beings contribute to the play's final escape, transformations, and redemption? Be able to point out and analyze significant patterns of behavior Euripides' audience would have seen as particularly gendered.

For next week's reading:

• How does Aristotle subdivide categories to get from the general idea and problems of representation to the specific forms of drama and epic: what sort of a problem does he conceive the understanding of tragedy to be a part of? Why does he believe human beings care about such issues?
• How does Aristotle distinguish epic from drama: what does he say are the crucial differences between these forms? How does Aristotle distinguish tragedy from comedy?
• What does Aristotle define as the qualitative parts that constitute tragedy? How does each of these parts contribute to tragedy?
• What features does Aristotle argue that plot should have, in order to make its contribution to tragedy as well as possible? How would each of these features contribute to the effective functioning of a tragic plot?

This file last updated 1 March 2002 by jlong1@orion.it.luc.edu.
http://www.luc.edu/depts/classics/