Scribd
Upload
55 views2 pages

Tragedy Tradition Part 1

This document summarizes and analyzes connections between Shakespearean tragedies and Greek tragedies. It discusses how traditions of tragedy are passed down through generations and the links or gaps that exist in these traditions. Specifically, it examines how works like Shakespeare's Hamlet may echo or be influenced by earlier Greek works like Aeschylus' Oresteia through recurring themes and unexpected parallel relationships between the texts. The document advocates thinking about influences in a flexible, non-linear way rather than through rigid theories and emphasizes that connections between older and newer works can be more metaphorical than direct.

Uploaded by

Arggonaut
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
55 views2 pages

Tragedy Tradition Part 1

This document summarizes and analyzes connections between Shakespearean tragedies and Greek tragedies. It discusses how traditions of tragedy are passed down through generations and the links or gaps that exist in these traditions. Specifically, it examines how works like Shakespeare's Hamlet may echo or be influenced by earlier Greek works like Aeschylus' Oresteia through recurring themes and unexpected parallel relationships between the texts. The document advocates thinking about influences in a flexible, non-linear way rather than through rigid theories and emphasizes that connections between older and newer works can be more metaphorical than direct.

Uploaded by

Arggonaut
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

12/10/2015

Dr. Raphael Lynne


Tragedy Traditions: Between Shakespeare and the Greeks

Series Questions
How are words and actions of tragedy passed down?
Are there links or gaps in the tradition?
How do works make us think about how news is passed on? Whose
job is it to transmit messages?
How are the horrific issues of tragedy turned into artistic forms?

Spiegelman Maus (on handout)

-Challenge to tradition on how tradition passed down – why does


the son not heed the words of his father?
-Note erasure of orchestra in bottom left corner – son does not
concede authority to his father in writing history.
-Or is the orchestra left in, barely visible, almost by accident?

-Tragedy has often had a musical accompaniment – this graphic


novel joins and doesn’t join that tradition.

-Think about figure of journalist/storyteller in tragedy – the son in


Maus has to ‘draw out’ the story of the tragedy.

Section A
1)Agamemnon
-Focus on receiver of news
-Play opens with physical discomfort, not tragic concerns
-Watchman’s job is to wait for news – the beginning of something in
this case, rather than the end
-The news of victory will not be welcomed

2)Hamlet
-Scene of waiting for news has a tradition in tragedy
-Each line has a double meaning – ‘Long live the king!’ very
resonant in Hamlet
-Is there a shadow of Oresteia here?

What is it to say that there is a connection, something shared,


between Shakespeare and Greek tragedy?
How can we figure the relationships between earlier and later
texts?
We need a flexible, mobile way of thinking that can be adapted to
individual moments, rather than an overarching theory of influence.

The tragedy paper enables a way of studying texts that allows


parallel and unexpected relations, recurring things, between very
culturally and historically various texts.
3)Ben Johnson
-This comment about Shakespeare and the classics has weighed
heavily on literary tradition
-Shake. often compared to classics, and postulated to have read
them
-We need to be careful of tracing links between S. and Greeks that
are too direct, perhaps they need to be more metaphorical.

Influences can be thought of in genetic terms for transmission of


tragedy – See Baldwin on handout.
-Rather than thinking in terms of family trees, rather think of
unpredictable transmissions. Recessive characteristics?
Elusive/unmappable characteristics?

Genetic metaphor gives framework for thinking, offering a


complicated lineage of familial characteristics, with indirect routes.

4)Winter’s Tale
-Shadows Euripides’ Alcestis
-Alc. dies in place of her husband Admetus, but Heracles arrives
and fetches her back from death by wrestling with Death
-Agreement not to take a new wife agreement needed for it to
work.
-Paulina extracts a similar deal here from aunts – P racks up
pressure as Heracles does, and aunts comply as Admetis does
-Cleo suggest it’s a strange bargain to strike, but also that there is
something disruptive about it.
-This echo suggests more than random reappearance, but hard to
say that Sh. is invoking Alcestis directly.

5)Antony and Cleopatra


-Inspired by Plutarch - but actually Bacchus, not Hercules in
Plutarch. Soldier 2 misremembers it. Or is it Shakespeare that
misremembers? Or is it done intentionally to associate Antony with
Hercules rather than Bacchus?
-Gods and music appear recessively in this Shakespeare scene –
under the Earth, invisible, not walking the stage.

See indirect and direct influences section on handout for possible


reading.

You might also like