Week 13

Glossary

Hubris: typically describes violent and excessive behavior rather than an attitude. When it offends the gods of ancient Greece, it is usually punished. The adjectival form of the nounhubris is "hubristic".

Hubris is usually perceived as a characteristic of an individual rather than a group, although the group the offender belongs to may suffer consequences from the wrongful act. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence, accomplishments or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power.

Aristotle mentions hamartia in Poetics. He argues that is a powerful device to have a story begin with a rich and powerful hero, neither exceptionally virtuous nor villainous, who then falls into misfortune by a mistake or error (harmartia). Discussion among scholars centers mainly on the degree to which hamartia is defined as tragic flaw or tragic error.

Critical Argument for flaw

Poetic justice describes the obligation of the dramatic poet, along with philosophers and priests, to see that their work promotes moral behavior.18th century French dramatic style honored that obligation with the use of hamartia as a vice to be punished Phèdre, Racine's adaptation of Euripides' Hippolytus, is an example of French Neoclassical use of hamartia as a means of punishing vice. Jean Racine says in his Preface to Phèdre, as translated by R.C. Knight:

″The failings of love are treated as real failings. The passions are offered to view only to show all the ravage they create. And vice is everywhere painted in such hues, that its hideous face may be recognized and loathed.″ 

The play is a tragic story about a royal family. The main characters respective vices; rage, lust and envy lead them to their tragic downfall.

Dramatic irony:This type of irony is the device of giving the spectator an item of information that at least one of the characters in the narrative is unaware of (at least consciously), thus placing the spectator a step ahead of at least one of the characters. 

According to Stanton, dramatic irony has three stages—installation, exploitation, and resolution (often also called preparation, suspension, and resolution) —producing dramatic conflict in what one character relies or appears to rely upon, the contrary of which is known by observers (especially the audience; sometimes to other characters within the drama) to be true. In summary, it means that the reader/watcher/listener knows something that one or more of the characters in the piece is not aware of.

For example, In Oedipus the King, the audience knows that Oedipus himself is the murderer that he is seeking; Oedipus, Creon and Jocasta do not.

Discussion of Quiz & Book

essay:

1.Discuss the role of hubris, or pride, that comes before the death of Agamemnon.

An answer to this question should focus on the speeches of the Chorus when they discuss the dangers of being too successful in life: "the gods fail not to mark / those who have killed many . . . and the vaunt of high glory / is bitterness; for God's thunderbolts / crash on the towering mountains." The scene in which Clytemnestra induces her husband to trod on the purple robes strewn in his path--the principal symbolic act of hubris, an act that foreshadows his death—is also very important. In analyzing these sections of the text, a knowledge of the Greek religious imagination is necessary. The Greek gods were all-too-human in their jealousies, and rather than reward human greatness, they tended to see mortal achievement as a threat to their own power. Therefore, when any human rose too high (like Agamemnon in this play), he risked being singled out for divine chastisement.

Lysistrata

a comedy by Aristophanes. Originally performed in classical Athens in 411 BCE, it is a comic account of one woman's extraordinary mission to end the Peloponnesian War. Lysistrata persuades the women of Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace—a strategy, however, that inflames the battle between the sexes. The play is notable for being an early exposé of sexual relations in a male-dominated society. The dramatic structure represents a shift away from the conventions of Old Comedy, a trend typical of the author's career. It was produced in the same year as the Thesmophoriazusae, another play with a focus on gender-based issues, just two years after Athens' catastrophic defeat in the Sicilian Expedition.