Euripides

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Euripides Iphigenia at Aulis

• Why??

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NYTimes Letter to Editor

• In ''Make Them Fight All of Us'' (column, Jan.
  12), Thomas L. Friedman suggests an increase in
  the gas tax as a means of reducing our reliance
  on foreign oil imports
• I have long felt that the public was not given
  the opportunity to express its nationalism by
  sharing in the sacrifice of this war in Iraq. Gas
  rationing would certainly serve that purpose
• Douglas L. Roberts, Scottsdale, Ariz., NYT, Jan.
  12, 2007

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Why?
CLYTEMNESTRA If a man should ask you why,
why, Do you kill your daughter, what answer will
you make?
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Why? Because.

• b/c family would die if not
• not right
• ag would look weak
• weakness issue
• bad answer
• whats family?
• looking weak not good enough
• better to kill family than be forced into that
  place

• iphi scrd for greater good
• but is it the greater good
• symbolic value of sacrifice motivates
• ethic of respect very understandable
• is getting helen back for the greater good??

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Questions for Film Why?

• Play and film how
• similar?
• different
• Iphigenias conversion
• convincing?
• not?
• Oracle
• real?
• ploy?
• What would Platos Socrates say?

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Agenda

• Introduction to Play
• Play Facts, Features
• Closing Discussion Why
• Read Play

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Introduction to Play

• Play Facts, Features

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Play Facts, Features

• Produced
• March 405 BCE
• posthumously
• tetralogy
• Iphigenia at Aulis, Alcmaeon, Bacchae, satyr play

• Text
• interpolation
• corruption
• Dramaturgy
• realism
• suspense
• Theme, topicality

CHORUS And then I came upon the fleet, / An
indescribable wonder (305) ACHILLES all
because / A terrible passion (eros) has seized
all Greece not without / Heavens
contrivance. AGAMEMNON O child, a mighty
passion (Aphrodite) seizes Greek soldiers and
maddens them to sail (361)
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Play Topicality?

• Spartan war (431-404)
• Great Plague (431-426)
• Sicilian Disaster (413)
• Oligarchic coup (411)
• Battle of Arginusae (406)
• ensuing trial

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Myth Variant Versions

• Epic Cycle
• Agamemnon
• boastful hunter
• Artemis
• wrathful wind-reverser
• sacrifice
• deer for girl
• girl to goddess
• Aeschylus Agamemnon
• adverse winds, sacrifice deterrent
• no substitution

Sacrifice of Iphigenia, Pompeii
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(No Transcript)
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Closing Discussion Why

• Read Play

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Our Quote
We confess poetry's charms but if she cannot
show that she is useful as well as delightful,
like rational lovers, we must renounce our love,
though endeared to us by early associations.(Soc
rates in Platos Republic)
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My questions

• Read play for intended meanings?
• Which are
• good ones?
• bad ones?
• Inscribe meanings onto it?
• Means to you
• What to do with that?

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Your answers

• Intended meanings
• call to arms
• draw parallel to athenian families
• strangeness of family relations
• purely for entertainment

• Inscribed meanings
• motivational tragedy
• good/bad
• motivational necessarily bad??
• propaganda
• gives soldieir sense of empowerment
• process of reading necessarily subjective