The Dramatic Workshop's skillful production takes this dramatic history of the play into full account by employing several theatrically effective devices, including a newsreel curtain-raiser depicting the Nazi heyday. [14] Compared to the Oresteia [ edit ] Even though Oresteia is cosmic in scope and explores numerous topics, the two major themes of the trilogy – as suggested by Ian Christopher Storey and Arlene Allan – are the shifting notion of justice and the gender conflict. The Birth of a New Dike (Justice) Alan Sommerstein, Aeschylus, Loeb Classical Library, 3 vols. Greek text with facing translations, 2008

ORESTEIA OF Aeschylus by Jeffrey Scott Bernstein Book The THE ORESTEIA OF Aeschylus by Jeffrey Scott Bernstein Book The

An inexhaustible masterpiece is transformed into a glib anti-war morality play". Daily Telegraph. 1999-12-03. ISSN 0307-1235. Archived from the original on 2016-02-26 . Retrieved 2018-08-13. The Flies – an adaptation of The Libation Bearers by Jean-Paul Sartre, which focuses on human freedom In this “eye for eye” moral universe, it is difficult to make the distinction between those who wrong and those who are wronged. Clytemnestra cannot be blamed for thinking that the death of Agamemnon is neither ignoble nor unjust, because, after all, it was he who “by treachery brought ruin on his house,” willingly sacrificing his “much lamented” daughter Iphigenia only so that he is able to earn immortal fame and become the conqueror of Troy. But, as we learn through the words of the Chorus, neither did Agamemnon have a choice: he sacrificed Iphigenia to make amends to Artemis for killing her sacred deer. The matters get even more complicated in Libation Bearers when Orestes chooses to act as Apollo’s divine agent and avenge the murder of his father by killing his mother. Unfortunately, even Apollo’s intrusion doesn’t bring an end to the vicious circle of violence, as almost immediately after killing his mother, Orestes sees the Furies, the ancient parricidal retaliators.

The Oresteia of Aeschylus

For more on the complexity of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, see Bednarowski, P. K. (2015). Surprise and Suspense in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. American Journal of Philology, 136(2), 179–205. https://doi.org/10.1353/ajp.2015.0030

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Unprecedented” doesn’t even begin to describe the past few years, but we are immensely grateful to the community of in-person and virtual audiences who have challenged us and kept us afloat. We have pushed ourselves to determine the type of art we want to make, and the work we want to do for the people that we serve. Trousdell, Richard (2008). "Tragedy and Transformation: The Oresteia of Aeschylus". Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche. C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. 2 (3): 5–38. doi: 10.1525/jung.2008.2.3.5. JSTOR 10.1525/jung.2008.2.3.5. S2CID 170372385. Yale University Press: From The Earth, the Temple, and the Gods: Greek Sacred Architecture by Vincent Scully (New Haven and London, 1962).

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Part of this complicatedness is its polyphonic nature. Wilson enjoys and attends to the poem’s ensemble cast, some of them intriguing women who can do great damage to men when they open their mouths: the Sirens, who might hold you in their grip for ever with their seductive song; Charybdis, who is just one giant whirlpool of a mouth that might consume you; even Penelope, who is not always to be trusted to speak, and is twice silenced by sharp words from her son. The poem contains foundational moments of misogyny, which Wilson does not soften, but is also rich and flexible enough to contain sophisticated female characters, notably Helen of Troy, now returned to her husband’s palace to become Helen of Sparta once more. She is certainly not to be quieted. She enters the poem just at the moment when her husband, Menelaus, has tactlessly made a visitor – young Telemachus – weep. “Shall I conceal my thoughts or speak?” she says. She does not wait for permission, but ploughs on, making clear that, unlike her husband, she has immediately recognised the boy, even though she last saw him “the day the Greeks marched off to Troy, their minds/fixated on the war and violence./ They made my face the cause that hounded them.” This last line is translated by Fagles as “shameless whore that I was”, and by Stephen Mitchell as “bitch that I was”. The Greek is kunopis, a rare word literally meaning dog-face, or dog-eye. There are few contexts in which to see this word in use, but it is applied by Euripides to the Furies, terrifying creatures that “hound” murderers. It does not carry, argues Wilson, the overtones of female sexual destructiveness that are often applied in its translation. And so another small but significant transformation is effected. When Agamemnon ends, swift slaughter in a hot bath can seem a merciful ending for such a man. But this is far from the end of the matter. Clytemnestra and Agamemnon have two other children, Orestes and Electra, and we meet them in the second of the plays, Choephori. A wretched piteous dove, in quest of food, dashed amid the winnowing-fans, its breast broken in twain." [16]

Jill Sharp on a new version of the Oresteia | The High Window

The New American Library, Inc.: From Lucretius: On the Nature of Things, translated by Palmer Bovie and published by The New American Library. Reprinted by permission of The New American Library. The Oresteia ( Ancient Greek: Ὀρέστεια) is a trilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus in the 5th century BCE, concerning the murder of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra, the murder of Clytemnestra by Orestes, the trial of Orestes, the end of the curse on the House of Atreus and the pacification of the Furies (also called Erinyes or Eumenides). In Agamemnon, the long first play, the mood is dark and the language is dense, metaphorical and hard to parse. Clytemnestra, Agamemnon’s wife, has set up a relay of torch fires to bring her news of her husband’s victory at Troy, and the image of the relay signal also connects to the play’s larger story: the way events from far away and long ago still haunt the house of Argos. At Aulis, on the way to Troy, Agamemnon was forced to choose between sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia or abandoning the war to recover his brother’s wife, Helen. ‘Which of these is free from evil?’ he asks, in Oliver Taplin’s translation. Jeffrey Bernstein has the wordier ‘Which of these two ways is without evil?’ David Mulroy, the punchier ‘Can either choice be right?’ Agamemnon is in a position where there is no right answer, no guiltless way to act. Our daughter was tentative and unsure when we dropped her off at her first rehearsal and now it is one of her favorite activities. Melissa creates an inclusive, supportive environment where every child leaves feeling more confident.”Some scholars believe that the trilogy is influenced by contemporary political developments in Athens. A few years previously, legislation sponsored by the democratic reformer Ephialtes had stripped the court of the Areopagus, hitherto one of the most powerful vehicles of upper-class political power, of all of its functions except some minor religious duties and the authority to try homicide cases; by having his story being resolved by a judgement of the Areopagus, Aeschylus may be expressing his approval of this reform. It may also be significant that Aeschylus makes Agamemnon lord of Argos, where Homer puts his house, instead of his nearby capitol Mycenae, since about this time Athens had entered into an alliance with Argos. [24] Adaptations [ edit ] Key British productions [ edit ] These dense plays are concerned with a transition from a world of mystery to a world of history, from war to peace, from myth to reality, from aristocratic households to the democratic society of contemporary Athens. They describe the triumph of law over personal vendettas and revenge, and show the direct violence of the axe and the sword giving way to the buried structural violence of law and social institutions. They provide an implicit justification and celebration of recent Athenian history and the current political regime: in real life, the political and legal structures of democracy had replaced the old system of rule by tyrants, and there were still powerful aristocratic men in Athens who favoured oligarchy over democracy. But most fundamentally, the trilogy uses all these interwoven narratives to tell a story that justifies the triumph of men over women. The institution of the all-male democratic law court, presided over by its male-biased judge, is presented as the only possible solution to the endless violence of the earlier world, one in which the experiences and voices of angry, wronged, grieving women were allowed to matter as much as those of men. The first two plays show the terrible cost, to both men and women, of a society in which men favour their bonds with one another over those with their mothers, wives and children. When Agamemnon kills his daughter, his men ‘tie a fetter round her/lovely cheeks and face,/a gag to hold her tongue from words to put her/house beneath a curse’. The final play reframes the problem of female suffering by including no human female characters: the powerful Furies are far more menacing than pitiable, and their semi-violent subordination by Athena, who threatens them with her father’s thunderbolt, is presented as the only possible way for the play’s vulnerable male human, Orestes, to be saved. The Oresteia of Aeschylus - translated by Jeffrey Scott Bernstein with masks by Tom Phillips is published by Carcanet. Chris Tandy as Odysseus in the Mark Bruce Company’s 2016 dance version. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian P oetic​ translation is a critical, interpretative practice, similar in certain ways to the writing of introductions. But it is also a creative, imaginative activity, requiring a different voice from that of a teacher or critic. And once he moves from prose to verse, Taplin provides an insightful, elegant rendition of the play; his critical prose limps, but the Muse sings through his translation. The same can’t be said for Mulroy or Bernstein.

Oresteia - An Introduction - Humanities LibreTexts 1.38: The Oresteia - An Introduction - Humanities LibreTexts

Mulroy and Taplin, meanwhile, adopt, at first glance, fairly similar approaches to each other: both use not only metre but also, for the lyrical choral passages, rhyme, to re-create something like the formal poetic effects of Aeschylus’ elaborate verse style. I hope these translations are symptomatic of a trend in classical verse translations towards using more of the rich resources of Anglophone poetics. Mulroy’s handling of metre and rhyme is technically proficient: his lines scan, his rhymes rhyme, and he manages to combine these accomplishments with a rendering of the Greek that is reasonably accurate and fairly easy to understand. But his English is fussy, archaising and stiff. Here, again, is the triumphant Clytemnestra: Now it is time to let this version of the Oresteia speak for itself, without apologies or statements of principle (petards that will probably hoist the writing later). A translator’s best hope, I think, and still the hardest to achieve, is Dryden’s hope that his author will speak the living language of the day. And not in a way that caters to its limits, one might add, but that gives its life and fibre something of a stretching in the process. In translating Aeschylus I have also tried to suggest the responsion of his choral poetry - the paired, isometric stanzas that form the dialectic dance and singing of his plays in Greek - but I have done so flexibly. and using English rhythms. The translation has its leanings, too, yet they are loyal to Aeschylus, at least as I perceive him, and loyal to the modem grain as well. There is a kinship between the Oresteia and ourselves; a mutual need to recognize the fragility of our culture, to restore some reverence for the Great Mother and her works, and especially to embrace the Furies within ourselves, persuading them, perhaps, to invigorate our lives. I hope this kinship can be felt in the English text and supported by the introductory essay.The murder of Agamemnon, from an 1879 illustration from Stories from the Greek Tragedians by Alfred Church The rhyme and half-rhyme, here and elsewhere, create a sense of an ornately poetic and claustrophobic dramatic world. MacLeod, C. W. (1982). "Politics and the Oresteia ". The Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 102. doi: 10.2307/631132. JSTOR 631132. pp.124–144. Smyth, H.W. (1930). Aeschylus: Agamemnon, Libation-Bearers, Eumenides, Fragments. Harvard University Press. p. 455. ISBN 0-674-99161-3. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., and Faber and Faber Ltd: From ‘The Dry Salvages’ and ‘East Coker’ from Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot.