UCLR 100C-002: Interpreting Literature - Classical Studies Personal Voices in Greek and Roman Literature Spring Semester 2024 Dr. Jacqueline Long Monday-Wednesday-Friday 9:20am-10:10am Life Science Building 412

Study Guide for Exam 2: Athenian Drama

Format

• short identifications: basic information to identify or define, plus a brief statement of the item's importance to our studies (small credit per item, but adding up to a significant component of the exam)
• passages of translated Athenian dramas we have read (tragedies and comedies): identify where the passage comes in the action of the play from which it is quoted and, focusing on the two or three most important ideas in connection with fifth-century Athenian tragedy or comedy that the the text illustrates most prominently, explain in concrete specific terms what it illustrates, how, and why it matters (each passage-essay earns a medium amount of credit, adding up to the biggest component of the exam)
• essay: demonstrate how specific, concrete evidence from different plays and logical reasoning enable you to answer a thematic question and a better understanding of the thematic concern (the thematic essay also earns a medium amount of credit: a significant component of the exam)

Goals

Tactics

• Literary texts represent human thought. They express ideas through words deployed both so as to convey meaning and so as to have aesthetic effect. They work in relationship to literary forms - genres - conventional in the literary communities that produce them, variously following and departing from precedents in ways that engage the expectations of audiences familiar with those communities' traditions. Literary texts thus invite interpretation.
• Concrete, specific answers display not only knowledge of texts assigned for the class, but also judgment identifying pertinent information within the texts, understanding why and how the information matters, and skill explaining.

Strategy

• We have shared attention discussing many significant elements and aspects of our material. They are not everything that could be important, but they open up connections to additional valuable insights - to attentive inquiry that brings knowledge and interest and thoughtful reasoning to bear on the texts.
• Think about how the different elements of our course-work serve the design of the class.
  • Recognize different kinds of inquiry we have explored: historical, social, cultural, aesthetic, rhetorical, literary-historical, feminist, mythological, humor-theory. What different questions have we asked? How have different questions and different exercises opened up different ways of interpreting our texts?
  • Pursue significance: ask, "why does it matter?" Take your answers seriously. Be able to explain them. Be able to show what evidence supports them, and how.
  • Identify insights you have gained. Consider how you can carry them into both broader and deeper inquiries, and gain yet better understanding: capitalize on your learning.

This Study Guide is not a demand for universal absolute knowledge. It surveys course-material covered in this unit with the goal of helping you to assemble a representative sample of important ideas and illuminating passages. This reserve of dynamically correlated knowledge will equip you to make substantive connections, on an exam or in future: 5c BC Athenian tragedy and comedy will never lose their potential for relevance. Use the Guide to help review. Are concepts familiar? Could you explain how they relate to our study-material, what makes the concepts important? What's a passage or two that makes a good illustration? With an overall view of our material sketched out, you will be ready to connect ideas and passages you have thought about to items on the exam.

Concepts, facts, and information all part of our material's context, discussed in class: be able to identify the item and to state, briefly, concrete reasons why it is important for understanding our material. (The parenthetical notes are suggestions.)

• the playwrights whose work we've read (names, rough dates of playwrights and plays, biographical information we know that relates to important ideas or techniques in the plays, the playwrights' distinctive techniques and thematic preoccupations as dramatists)
• major characters in each play we've read (who are they, what about them is important in the play or plays in which they figure)
• the identity of the chorus/es in each play we've read (who are they, how each chorus relates as a corporate character to the principal characters, what about each chorus is important to the play as a whole)
• important parts of an ancient Greek theatre: theatron/cavea, eisodoi, orchestra, stage-platform, skene, ekkyklema
• Athenian festivals: City Dionysia, Lenaea, Thesmophoria
• formal divisions of an ancient play: for tragedy prologue, parodos, episode, choral ode a.k.a. stasimon, exodos; for comedy also parabasis
• concepts and terminology conventionally used in studying Classical drama, e.g., charter-myth, chorus, climax, comedy, denouement, deuteragonist, drama, hybris, lyric meter, messenger-speech, myth, principal character, protagonist, tragedy, trilogy
• ancient Greek social practices that relate to ancient Greek drama, e.g., chorus, citizenship, civic cult, community, festival competition, hegemonic leadership, initiation, liturgy, mystery-religion, omens & prophecy, slavery, supplication
• concepts used in literary analysis, e.g., comic hero, deviance, genre, joking, fetishization, liminality, metaliterary, norm, transgression
• terms relating to social constructs that may be reflected in literature, e.g., androcentrism, class, gender, "hero" as a technical term of religion, hierarchy, marriage, misogyny, oikos, patriarchy, patrilinial descent, polis

• qualities and predilections of the principal characters of Athenian tragedy and comedy
• how the principal characters relate to one another
• how tragic and comic Choruses relate to the principal characters and vice versa
• how both principal characters and Chorus relate to the audience and Athens
• how social norms of fifth-century Athenian life color the plays' presentation of traditional mythological stories or of fantastic plots based on contemporary events and concerns
• the functions in Athenian civic life of drama and of tragic and comic plays
• how traditional religion and myth relate to fifth-century Athenian tragedies and comedies
• how our plays reflect and reflect-upon traditional social order and humans' relationships to one another individually, to other groups within human communities, and to their communities as a whole

Tactics especially for exam-writing

• Identifications come across especially clearly and convincingly when you back them up by mentioning a specific point in one of our texts that illustrates your idea.
• Show significance.
• Show the evidence that supports your argument and explain your reasoning clearly, logical step by logical step. Take your reader with you, in order to persuade.
• With passage-essays, you've got text right there in which you can anchor your discussion very specifically. Take advantage of this resource for concreteness and detail.
• Connect the dots: when you want to add a passage to your discussion, in support of your interpretations or for comparison, show what makes it relevant - then when you explain what's going on in it, it will also help support your central argument.
• Building on discussions we've had in class and taking even further the understanding we've established together, shows how you are growing your own learning. It makes exam papers truly exciting. Education aims above all for you to develop your knowledge, skills, confidence, and the interest to claim an inquiry for yourself. Go for it!

Revised 19 March 2024 by jlong1@luc.edu
http://www.luc.edu/classicalstudies/