Eurolit Homework for 9/26/18

Study for Drama: Comedy/Tragedy Quiz on Thursday

Eurolit Notes for 9/26/18

Dionysus and Demeter are the two gods that suffer – Demeter because she loses her daughter for part of the year, and Dionysus because he is torn apart every year in a ritual sacrifice

Humans relate to these two gods because they suffer and because they give us food (Demeter) and pleasure/wine/a good time (Dionysus).

The big ideas in this text build upon Homer, who tells us that fear of death motivates people beyond anything else.

Philoctetes goes beyond this, and tells us that what really motivates humanity is fear of the unknown.

Greek tragedy also plays with the idea (paradoxically) of fate vs. free will.

What happens to us is up to fate, but our free will is how we choose to deal with it.

Almost all of our lives are predetermined, nevertheless, we are responsible for how we react to our fate.

All tragedy teaches us that it’s how you deal with what you are dealt. In Greek tragedy, the gods generally control the fate of humankind.

The tragic playwrights add a fifth category to the Homeric pattern, anagnorisis.

Arete – striving for excellence

Hubris – excessive pride

Ate – the tragic hero goes too far, exceeds the bounds meant for him by the gods/universe

Anagnorisis – recognition by the tragic hero that he has gone to far, it happens after they have gone too far, and does not mitigate the nemesis they face

Nemesis – the ultimate punishment the tragic hero faces

If you do not deal with your fate with any kind of balance – if the hero has any sort of excessive behavior – they will face nemesis.

Essay prompt for “Philoctetes”: How is Philoctetes a tragic hero?

Tragedy teaches us how we deal with fate. There’s also the idea that we also have freedom vs. happiness. We kind of don’t want the freedom, because with freedom comes responsibility.

Tragedies are studies of why the tragic hero makes the decisions he makes – how the decisions we make inform our fate, in large part.

There are forces outside of our control. We have to be humble and accept this.

Vicariously, the reader is able to learn from Philoctetes by realizing that there are things that will be beyond the reader’s control and that they will, perhaps, deal with those things better than Philoctetes has dealt with his fate.

Tragedy is not a bummer. We look at the tragic hero and think, “Wow, that guy’s awesome.”

As humans, we are all preconditioned to be losers. The ultimate paradox is that we are born to die, and yet, it is how we go about the dying that counts. It’s how we deal with what we are dealt.

Dionysus is a syncretized version of the god. There were many different interpretations of him that varied from city-state to city-state. The Dionysus represented in our reading is an amalgamation of many of these versions.

Dionysus, according to myth, was desired so much that he was devoured. Though the ladies who did this were remorseful, it eventually became obvious that his death had positive affects on their crops. This became an annual spring ritual in which a young man stood in for Dionysus and was devoured, torn limb from limb. Almost every society has a spring ritual such as this one where there is a blood sacrifice that is believed to rejuvenate the city/land.

The White Goddess by Robert Graves is a good book that deals with this topic.

Somebody has to suffer (they die, gouge out their eyes, etc.) – this is true in every society.

After many centuries of this Dionysian springtime ritual, a patriarchal society supplants the matriarchal society. They didn’t like young boys being sacrificed but were scared of the Maenads, so they began to substitute a goat for the young man. The word tragedy comes from the Greek phrase, which means “singing of the goat”.  This is where the phrase “scapegoat” comes from.

Catharsis – a purging of emotion. We have a sense of pity and fear for the tragic hero, and it is a relief that his circumstances are not ours. (“Boy, I’m glad I’m not Oedipus”).

Hamartia – what makes them breaks them. What makes Oedipus great? His intelligence. Why does he have no eyes at the end? His intelligence.

Peripeteia - a sudden reversal of fortune or change in circumstances. This means that what the character wants to avoid, they end up doing.

Dramatic irony – the audience knows something that one or more characters on the stage do not. It is at the heart of tragedy. It creates suspense.

Deus ex machine means “god from the machine”. This was a literal machine that would drop a thespian playing a god or goddess into the scene. It is the term used for describing when a conflict within the plot is solved seemingly out of nowhere. 

Dionysus is the god of chaos, revelry, suffering, rebirth, and wine. He is the opposite of Apollo, which creates a balance.