An avid reader of mythology may notice that a typical Greek myth probably contains at least one person who can be admired for his heroics. In a Greek story, the definition of a hero or hero would be: “a figure is a representative of a man whose conflict is similar to those that the audience […]
Tag Archives: Greek Drama
Most of the tragedies of the Greek writers were lost in the fifth century before Christ, but some of the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides survive. Aeschylus, the elder, died in 456 B.C. Sophocles and Euripides, his younger contemporaries, died a few years before the close of the Peloponnesian War in 404 B.C. One […]
Since I do not have a copy of the original Greek, this summary of Aeschylus’ “Agamemnon” is based on the English translation of the tragedy that Moses Hadas wrote in the anthology “Drama Graeca” from Bantum Classic. A.W. Verral is a translator. The story begins with a prologue spoken by a watcher. For a year […]
The Greek drama Antigone, written in the fifth century by Sophocles, is the story of how far a sister will go to honor her recently deceased brother. Oedipus, king of the Thebans, seems to have had two sons: Eteocles and Polyneices. Eteocles banished Polyneices from Thebes to Argos, his father having died. Polyneices, the prince […]
The greater mystery of her personality and life, how a woman born with so much promise leads to such a sad and reclusive life makes Edith Bouvier Beale a fascinating story. Of course, the coat tail tie to the Bouvier-Kennedy dynasty adds impiety and interest. His story was recently told in an opera musical and […]
Since I do not have access to the original text of “The Trojan Women,” the following summary is based on an English translation by M. Hadas and J. McLean in an anthology entitled “Greek Drama.” The translators did a good job. However, no translation can be perfectly faithful to the original. For example, Hecuba compares […]
If you are college student, at some point you may be called upon to write an English term paper utilizing a specific type of literary theory as your thematic foundation. You may already be familiar with some of these critical theory terms and techniques: formalism, feminism, reader-response, new historicism, psychoanalytic, etc. One of the most […]
Jean Anouilh’s Antigone attempts to escape fate just like her famous father does, but her fate is not the singular, individualized fate of Oedipus; Anouilh recreates Antigone’s story to make her a symbol of universal fate and in line with contemporary philosophic thought. Oedipus comes face to face with his fate from the Oracle at […]
Aeschylus was a writer of tragedies who lived in the ancient Greek city of Athens. He treats the country city with honor in the drama entitled “Eumenides”. “Eumenides” is a more unusual tragedy. No one dies and has a happy ending. But it is the third story of the trilogy, in which there is plenty […]