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Greek Theatre Scholarship - Coggle Diagram
Greek Theatre Scholarship
Bacchae Scholarship
Wyles - The chorus' ecstatic joy is chilling, while heightening the pathos for the circumstances of Pentheus' destruction
Carey - Pentheus, while being the secular and central power in Thebes, becomes within the community, an outsider, a man whose acts and ideas are alien, shocking and often inexplicable to the other human characters
Wyles - In the tragic frame, the scene is transformed and this enables the audience to appreciate Euripides' dramatic mastery - he can make cross dressing, which had proven comic potential, tragic
Garvie - the most striking paradox is that the god who throughout the play promises joy will at the end, produce only suffering and horror
Wyles - The appearance of Pentheus cross-dressed and with Bacchic accessories offers a visual representation of Dionysus' full control over him
Roisman - Pentheus has enough of the positive in him to arouse sympathy as he is torn to pieces
Morwood - Agave is degraded by what she carries (the head) since such treatment of a human is non-Greek in its barbarism
Roisman - We see the young king lose a struggle with his own irrational impulses, as he had earlier lost the battle with external irrationality
Morwood - Dionysus has profoundly disrupted the city's social structure, the women have abandoned not only their looms but their children too
Roisman - Agave's recognition scene is one of the most painful and harrowing scenes in Greek tragedy, no parent can watch it and not sympathise
Stuttard - Bacchae includes issues of gender and identity, madness and rationality, vengeance and repression, foreigness and fanaticism
Goldhill - The chorus of the Bacchae focuses on the paradoxes and problems of Dionysiac worship - uncertain tensions between potentials of human reason and order and the potential for destruction, violence, madness in human society
Oedipus Scholarship
Garvie - Before she goes, she tried to stop Oedipus from seeking to learn more but Oedipus is completely preoccupied with discovering the secret of his birth. His excitement contrasts with her horror, which itself contrasts with the joyous mood with which the episode began
Garvie - As so often in Sophocles, it is the minor characters whose behaviour is more attractive than the hero's
Garvie - It seems that both fate and Oedipus' own chracter are responsible for his fall
Higgins - Watching Oedipus' fate unfold, the audience identifies with the hero, sharing vicariously in the horror of the reversal he suffers and acknowledging the power of destiny
Garvie - It is not so much his crimes as his discovery of them that leads to his fall
Higgins - Oedipus seem outwardly the ideal king, revealing his intelligence, responsibility and energy but his overly eager insistence that Creon announce the oracle's words publicly betrays a certain arrogance about his abilities
Garvie - Oedipus is the only character for whom to live a painless lie is worse than to accept a painful truth
Higgins - The ridicule of the prophet and his prophecy reflects a change in Athens during the fifth century BC, when the proponents of reason began to challenge the authority of spiritual power
Garvie - Oedipus never says 'I wish I had not found out' for he has gained what he values the most - knowledge
Higgins - The pity and terror aroused by Oedipus' tragic fall brings about a catharsis, the realisation that the power of fate cannot be overcome by will even that of a king
Garvie - In one sense, Oedipus doesn't fall at all, he sets out to uncover the truth and by the end of the play, he succeeds
Fagles - Oedipus is his own destroyer
Garvie - Tiresias is physically blind, while Oedipus is physically sighted but knows nothing
Goldhill - Oedipus is a paradox in himself, both a saviour and a monster. Oedipus conquers a monster, the sphinx, becomes leader of Thebes and yet this leads to the discovery of Oedipus' untenable position in the order of the city, as he has gone against norms of society by killing his father and marrying his mother, ultimately bringing suffering to Thebes
Garvie - Oedipus is ignorant but determined to know, whereas Tiresias knows the truth but is determined to suppress it
Frogs Scholarship
Cartledge - Dionysus is characterised as cowardly and effeminate
MacDowell - Aristophanes uses gods as comic characters to make the audience laugh, but this doesn't mean he didn't believe in gods. Comic performances were to make fun of everyone and it was assumed that gods were sensible enough to take a joke
Cartledge - The choice of Eleusinian initiates would reassure the audience that the religious properties weren't entirely neglected
Arnott - The advice given in the parabasis ended up being a recipe for disaster, giving rights back to the Oligarchs led to a reign of terror
MacDowell - Comedy is one safe place where taboos can be broken and normal conventions can be overthrown (mocking a god)
Bettendorf - The primary function of the play isn't literary criticism but political action
Dover - Aristophanes puts the arguments that those characters would say, without revealing his own standpoint
Hall - Ultimately serious when discussing political matters
Halliwell - The parabasis is probably an attempt to strike a chord in tune with a growing mood of solidarity in time of a political and military crises
Barrett - In no other play did Aristophanes endeavour so earnestly to fulfil the poet's proper function in society
Henderson - The poets, despite their jokes, argue about the most divisive issues of the day
General Theatre Scholarship