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Greeks:
The Greek literary heritage is considered classical because it is timeless
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The Greek Renaissance (800-600 B
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It was the age of great epic poets; poets who wrote of the deeds of mortal
men as well as of immortal gods
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Greek religion was polytheistic that means Greeks worshipped God as individual
deities or as pairs of deities
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The ancient Greeks worshipped many Gods as personifications of the forces of
the universe
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Each Greek city was under the protection of one particular God
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He, Zeus, was the
chief God of the Greeks
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Elements in The Greek Society:
Virtue: The main element was virtue; it was what made a man a good citizen, and
good citizens made a great state
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That is, it determined who should be slave or master, peasant or warrior,
citizen or non-citizen, Greek or barbarian
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Fate is often a major tripping point for the protagonist in a Greek
myth
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Rituals often play a major role in
Greek myths
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Greek oracle
was the priest or priestess who acted as a mediator between man and God
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Every oracle had a
distinct method of divination
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was considered valid indicators for
divination
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Philosophy:
• Philosophy served as the medium between Greek religion and Mythology
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The study of ideas is extremely important, because so much of what
we are as individual human beings and as a community depends on ideas
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Greek Mythology
The mythology served as something that provided people with explanation for
unknown things without the need to offer or exhibit any spiritual behavior or belief
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It shed light on the
Greek religion, culture, practices, beliefs and other mythological incidents
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Every Greek God was associated with specific aspects of life
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In addition to the characters, Greek
mythology often involves clever tales that teach lessons, explain rituals or natural
phenomena, and even tell the history of ancient Greece
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Chaos
According to Greek mythology, there was nothing but Chaos in the beginning
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It existed from the beginning of the universe
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The line between history, religion, and myth
was much more blurred in ancient Greece than it is in most current societies
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This is why the Greek mythology, religion,
and philosophy seem to be connected
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These myths were not set in stone
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This constant reinterpretation kept the Greek
myths fresh and relevant
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The Greeks called this process
the theatre
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Any polis (citizenship and
body of citizens/city in Greece) worth living in held annual theatrical festivals in honor of
Dionysus yet theatre would reach its apex (peak) in the Panathenaic Festival of Athens, in
which the greatest playwrights competed to perform their works
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Almost every Greek city had a theater in the center of the city
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” Drama is originated from ancient
hymns, called dithyrambs
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Later on, drama took a new structure, which was elaborated but yet kept what became the
basic characteristics of the Greek theater
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The Gods provoke the characters’ actions, act as
external forces upon the course of events and represent internal forces acting on
individuals
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What is the law of causality?
Causality, also referred to as causation, is the relationship between an event (the cause)
and a second event (the effect) where the second event is understood as a consequence of
the first and the first as a cause of the second
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Satyrs are goat men, drinking buddies of Dionysus
and known for their promiscuous behavior
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After the invention of tragedy and comedy, satyr
plays continued to be performed during festivals to provide comic relief between the
heavy tragedies
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To lampoon means to criticize using ridicule or sarcasm
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We actually get the word lampoon from the
statesman Lampon, who was viciously ridiculed in several plays by the Athenian
comedian Aristophanes
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They
also targeted ideas
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We see the same pattern unfold in Aristophanes' The Birds
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In this way, comedy was
the most current and up-to-date branch of Greek religion
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Greek tragedy is painfully
serious
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Despite all their virtues, Greek heroes suffer from the vice of hubris, or
excessive pride
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Throughout the play, the chorus acts as the moral compass,
telling the hero his beliefs are wrong, begging him to refrain from some disastrous action,
yet they are ignored
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As he bemoans his fate, the chorus sings, 'I told you so!'
and hammers home the moral
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Don't be like so-and-so
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With this basic formula, Greek tragedians built and refined the morality of their
culture
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Aristotle provided a detailed definition for what he calls tragedy in his
Poetics, he says:
“Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a
certain magnitude; in language
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Every Tragedy, therefore, must have six parts,
which parts determine its quality—namely, Plot, Characters, Diction, Thought,

Spectacle, Melody
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What are they and what is the
difference between them?
Recognition is a change from ignorance to awareness
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Suffering (pathos) is related to the emotional tension, which generates pity or fear
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They are considered the great tragedians of
the Greek drama
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525 – 456 B
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He is the first playwright in the Western world
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He is known for the Orestian trilogy, which set the pattern for other tragedies
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480 - 406 B
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) He had the reputation of a freethinker and was
highly unpopular in his time
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He is known for his portrayal of women
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Sophocles (c
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C
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He added a third
actor and scenery in his tragedy performances
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His characters were complex
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Some of his plays are: Antigone, Oedipus the King, and Electra
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Some assume that his date of birth is in 1200
B
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while others assume that it was between 850-800 B
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Homers epics were
ballads and were chanted for centuries until they were shaped into the form we
know today 540 B
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The Iliad narrates the events of the last year of the Trojan
War
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This war established a framework of myth that was embodied in Homer’s
Iliad and the Odyssey
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What are the elements in Greek tragedies?
Most Greek tragedies contained the following elements in their structure:
Prologue (which describes the situation and set the scene)
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Ode (a song sung by the Chorus between scenes)
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The messenger in these plays is to report the off-stage events; violent scenes are not
to be performed on stage
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The chorus seems to set up the standard
by which an action will be judged
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Unity of place refers to the setting in which the events should take place on one
unchanging scene
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Oedipus the King
A tragedy written by Sophocles
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This play provides an excellent example for what Aristotle
considers essential elements in an excellent tragedy plot; recognition and reversal
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Moreover, we have the character of Oedipus written under a psychological
analysis of a man who had all and then lost everything because of the destiny he
couldn’t escape
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Characters
Oedipus: king of Thebes
Priest of Zeus
Creon: brother of Locasta
Jocasta: queen of Thebes
Teiresias: a seer
A Corinthian Shepherd
A Theban Shepherd
Elements of the play
Teiresias sets the emotion of the play towards one direction
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The two shepherds play an important role in this play
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They are the ones
who brought the important information that led Oedipus to discover the truth
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She kept explaining
to Oedipus how prophecies are not true using her own experience with an old
prophecy that says her son will kill her husband and marry her
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She made
Oedipus more curious and skeptical at the same time
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She rushed into her room to hang herself
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These two shaped the plot of this tragedy in a way that made Oedipus becomes the
perfect tragic hero
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His curiosity to know the truth and fear of fulfilling the prophecy led him to do what
he feared the most
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It was by chance that he heard he is not Polybus’s son while being in Corinth
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It was by chance that he encountered the Sphinx and answered the riddle
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It was by chance that he met the two shepherds and knew the truth
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It is true that gods controlled his destiny by giving such prophecy but it
was him who controlled the chance of him fulfilling such prophecy
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What was the recognition and reversal moment in Oedipus the king?
The recognition in the play can be seen when Oedipus knows the true identity of the
person he has killed and how the prophecy has been fulfilled
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How did Oedipus the king include the perfect ingredients of a tragic play according to
Aristotle?
Sophocles's Oedipus the King to Aristotle outlined the characteristics of a good tragic
hero
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In Oedipus's case, he is superior because of a social standing and
because he is the only person who could solve the Sphinx's riddle, which shows how
smart he is
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Catharsis, in Greek, means "purgation" or
"purification"; going through these strong emotions will leave viewers feeling ecstatic, in
"a good cry" to make one feel better
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Although Oedipus is a clever man,
he is blind to the truth and refuses to believe Teiresias's warnings
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A tragic hero suffers because of his
hamartia "error in judgment
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In Oedipus the King, fate is an idea that surfaces
again and again
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Good tragedies are filled with irony
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Whenever a character attempts to
change fate, this is ironic to an audience who knows that the tragic outcome of the story
cannot be avoided
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Its story revolves around two different attempts
to change the course of fate: Jocasta and Laius's killing of Oedipus at birth and Oedipus's
flight from Corinth later on
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Jocasta kills her son only to find him restored to life and married
to her
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Both Oedipus and Jocasta thought they’ve overcome
the trappings of fate, only to find that the oracles were right after all
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In an attempt to comfort Oedipus, Jocasta tells him that oracles are powerless; yet at the
beginning of the very next scene we see her praying to the same gods whose powers she
has just mocked(45-50)
Oedipus is happy over Polybus's death as a sign that oracles may not be true, yet he will
not return to Corinth for fear that the oracle's statements concerning Meropé could still
come true (52)
Instead of relying on the gods, Oedipus counts on his own ability to root out the truth;
after all, he is a riddle-solver
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Oedipus's search for truth fulfills the oracles'
prophesies
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As Jocasta says, if he could
just have left it all alone, he would never have discovered the horrible workings of fate
(55)
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In the
Oedipus myth, marriage to Jocasta was the prize for ridding Thebes of the Sphinx
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In killing the Sphinx, Oedipus is the
city's savior, but in killing Laius (and marrying Jocasta), he is the cause of the disease
that has struck the city at the play's opening
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Audiences would have known the Sphinx's words: "what is
it that goes on four feet in the morning, two feet at midday, and three feet in the
evening?" Oedipus's answer, of course, was "a man
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There is much talk of Oedipus's birth and his exposure as an infant ? here is the baby of
which the Sphinx speaks, crawling on four feet (even though two of Oedipus's are
pinioned)
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And at the end of the play, Oedipus will
leave Thebes an old blind man, using a cane
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Oedipus is more that merely the solver of the Sphinx's riddle, he himself is the
answer
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When
Oedipus refuses to believe him, Teiresias cries, "have you eyes, / And do not see your
own damnation? Eyes, / And cannot see what company you keep?" (37)
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Teiresias knows
that Oedipus will blind himself; later in this same speech he says as much: "those now
clear-seeing eyes / Shall then be darkened" (37)
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Oedipus is blessed with the gift of perception; he was the only man who
could "see" the answer to the Sphinx's riddle
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He is blind to the truth, for all he seeks it
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Thebans worship Zeus
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He noticed that they’re upset
because they were burning incense and saw their tears
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The priest represents the children
The priest collected children to pray to god so the god feels merci
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Their farms don’t grow
We find that the priest gave up on the god because they’ve been praying with no
answer
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is the closest thing to a monologue
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Affect example: anti-theatrical movement: the chorus is deleted
during the 16th c theatre because they are not played so they’re not necessary
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Tiresias was angry he told him the truth
He was only afraid that his daughters will not marry
Democracy and Theatre:
In ancient Athens, politics and theatre went hand in hand
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Sophocles - the 5th-century BC playwright whose tragedy Oedipus the
King was part of the inspiration for Freud's "Oedipus complex" - is a nice example of
how the blend worked
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The Athenian conception of democracy gave a central role to
frank and open speech, and the theater was a privileged locus of such speech
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Greek drama includes a large number of powerful, dynamic
and dangerous women



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