Greek tragedy: definition of the genre, titles, authors, classical structure of the tragedy and the most famous works

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Greek tragedy is one of the oldest examples of literature. The article highlights the history of the emergence of theater in Greece, the specifics of tragedy as a genre, the laws of construction of the work, and also lists the most famous authors and works.

History of the development of the genre

The origins of the Greek tragedy should be sought in the ritual Dionysian holidays. The participants of these celebrations pretended to be the most famous companions of the god of wine - satyrs. To achieve a greater resemblance, they wore masks imitating goat heads. The festivities were accompanied by traditional songs - dithyrambs dedicated to Dionysus. It was these songs that formed the basis of the ancient Greek tragedy. The first works were created on the model of the legends about Bacchus. Gradually, other mythological subjects began to be transferred to the stage.

The word "tragedy" itself is formed from tragos ("goat") and ode ("song"), i.e. "song of the goat".

Greek tragedy and theater

The first theatrical performances were closely associated with the cult of Dionysus andwere part of the ritual of praising this god. With the growing popularity of such performances, the authors began to increasingly borrow plots from other myths, and gradually the theater lost its religious significance, acquiring more and more secular features. At the same time, propaganda ideas dictated by the current government began to sound more and more often on the stage.

Regardless of what formed the basis of the play - state events or legends about gods and heroes, theatrical performances remained significant events in the life of society, forever securing the title of a high genre for tragedy, as well as the dominant position in the genre system of all literature in general.

Special buildings were built for theatrical performances. Their capacity and convenient location made it possible to organize not only performances by actors, but also public meetings.

Comedy and tragedy

Ritual performances marked the beginning of not only tragedy, but also comedy. And if the first comes from a dithyramb, then the second takes as a basis phallic songs, as a rule, of obscene content.

Greek comedy and tragedy are distinguished by plots and characters. Tragic performances told about the deeds of gods and heroes, and ordinary people became characters in comedies. Usually they were narrow-minded villagers or greedy politicians. Thus, comedy could become a tool for expressing public opinion. And it is precisely with this that this genre belongs to the “low”, i.e. mundane andpragmatic. Tragedy, on the other hand, seemed to be something sublime, a work that spoke of gods, heroes, the invincibility of fate and the place of man in this world.

According to the theory of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, while watching a tragic performance, the viewer experiences catharsis - purification. This is due to empathy for the fate of the hero, a deep emotional shock caused by the death of the central character. Aristotle attached great importance to this process, considering it a key feature of the tragedy genre.

Genre specifics

The genre of Greek tragedy is based on the principle of three unities: place, time, action.

The unity of place limits the action of the play in space. This means that throughout the performance the characters do not leave one location: everything starts, happens and ends in one place. Such a requirement was dictated by the lack of scenery.

The unity of time suggests that the events taking place on the stage fit within 24 hours.

Unity of action - there can be only one key plot in the play, all secondary branches are minimized.

This framework is due to the fact that the ancient Greek authors tried to bring what is happening on the stage as close as possible to real life. About those events that violate the requirements of the trinity, but are necessary for the development of the action, the viewer was informed in a declamatory manner by the messengers. This applied to everything that happened outside the stage. However, it is worth noting that with the development of the tragedy genre, these principles began to lose their relevance.

Aeschylus

The father of Greek tragedy is considered to be Aeschylus, who created about 100 works, of which only seven have come down to us. He adhered to conservative views, considering the republic with a democratic slave-owning system to be the ideal of statehood. This leaves an imprint on his work.

In his works, the playwright addressed the main problems of his time, such as the fate of the tribal system, the development of family and marriage, the fate of man and the state. Being deeply religious, he sacredly believed in the power of the gods and the dependence of the fate of man on their will.

Distinctive features of Aeschylus's work are: the ideological sublimity of the content, the solemnity of the presentation, the relevance of the problem, the majestic harmony of the form.

Muse of Tragedy

In ancient Greece, it was believed that nine muses patronize the sciences and arts. They were the daughters of Zeus and the goddess of memory, Mnemosyne.

The Greek muse of tragedy was Melpomene. Her canonical image is a woman in a wreath of ivy or grape leaves, and her invariable attributes were a tragic mask, symbolizing regret and grief, and a sword (sometimes a club), reminiscent of the inevitability of punishment for those who violate the divine will.

The daughters of Melpomene had unusually beautiful voices, and their pride went so far that they challenged other muses. Of course, the match was lost. For impudence and disobedience, the gods punished the daughters of Melpomene,turning them into sirens, and the grieving mother became the patroness of the tragedy and received her distinctive signs.

Structure of tragedy

Theatrical performances in Greece were held three times a year and lined up according to the principle of competition (agons). Three authors of tragedies participated in the competition, each of which presented three tragedies and one drama, and three comedic poets to the audience. The actors of the theater were only men.

Greek tragedy had a fixed structure. The action began with a prologue, which performed the function of a tie. Then followed the song of the choir - parod. This was followed by episodia (episodes), which later became known as acts. The episodes were interspersed with the songs of the choir - stasims. Each episody ended with a komos, a song performed by the choir and the hero together. The whole play ended with an exodus, which was sung by all the actors and the choir.

The choir is a participant in all Greek tragedies, it was of great importance and played the role of a narrator, helping to convey the meaning of what is happening on the stage, assessing the actions of the characters from the standpoint of morality, revealing the depth of the emotional experiences of the characters. The choir consisted of 12, and later 15 people, and throughout the entire theatrical action did not leave its place.

Initially, only one actor acted in the tragedy, he was called the protagonist, he conducted a dialogue with the choir. Aeschylus later introduced a second actor called the Deuteragonist. There could be conflict between these characters. The third actor, the tritagonist, was introduced into the stage performance by Sophocles. Thus, in the work of Sophocles, the ancient Greekthe tragedy has reached its pinnacle.

Traditions of Euripides

Euripides brings intrigue to action, using a special artificial technique called deus ex machina, which means "God from the machine" to solve it. It radically changes the meaning of the choir in the theatrical performance, reducing its role only to musical accompaniment and depriving the dominant position of the narrator.

The traditions established by Euripides in the construction of the performance were borrowed by the ancient Roman playwrights.

Heroes

Except for the choir - a participant in all Greek tragedies - the viewer could see on stage the incarnation of mythological characters known since childhood. Despite the fact that the plot was always based on one or another myth, the authors often changed the interpretation of events depending on the political situation and their own goals. No violence was to be shown on stage, so the hero's death always took place behind the scenes, heralded from behind the scenes.

The protagonists of ancient Greek tragedies were gods and demigods, kings and queens, often of divine origin. Heroes are always individuals with extraordinary fortitude, who oppose fate, fate, challenging destiny and higher powers. The basis of the conflict is the desire to independently choose their own path in life. But in the confrontation with the gods, the hero is doomed to defeat and, as a result, dies at the end of the work.

Authors

Among all the authors of Greek tragedies, the most significant are Euripides, Sophocles and Aeschylus. Their works to this day do not leave the theater stages around the world.

Despite the fact that the creative legacy of Euripides is considered exemplary, during his lifetime, his productions were not particularly successful. Perhaps this is due to the fact that he lived during the decline and crisis of Athenian democracy and preferred solitude to participation in public life.

The work of Sophocles is distinguished by an idealistic depiction of heroes. His tragedies are a kind of hymn to the greatness of the human spirit, its nobility and the power of reason. The tragedian introduced a fundamentally new technique into the development of stage action - ups and downs. This is a sudden turn, the disappearance of luck, caused by the reaction of the gods to the overconfidence of the hero. Antigone and Oedipus Rex are Sophocles' most accomplished and famous plays.

Aeschylus was the first Greek tragedian to receive worldwide recognition. The performances of his works were distinguished not only by their monumental conception, but also by the luxury of their implementation. Aeschylus himself considered his military and civil accomplishments more significant than his achievements in tragedian competitions.

Seven against Thebes

The staging of the Greek tragedy by Aeschylus "The Seven Against Thebes" took place in 467 BC. e. The plot is based on the confrontation between Polynices and Eteocles - the sons of Oedipus, a famous character in Greek mythology. Once Eteocles expelled his brother from Thebes to single-handedly rule the city. Years have passed, Polynices managed to enlist the support of six famous heroes and with their help he hopes to regain the throne. The play ends with deathboth brothers and a sublimely sad funeral song.

In this tragedy, Aeschylus addresses the theme of the destruction of the communal-tribal system. The reason for the death of the heroes is a family curse, that is, the family in the work does not act as a support and a sacred institution, but as an inevitable instrument of fate.

Antigone

Sophocles, Greek playwright and author of the tragedy "Antigone", was one of the most famous writers of his time. He took a plot from the Theban mythological cycle as the basis of his play and demonstrated in it the confrontation between human arbitrariness and divine laws.

The tragedy, like the previous one, tells about the fate of the offspring of Oedipus. But this time, his daughter, Antigone, is at the center of the story. The action takes place after the March of the Seven. The body of Polynices, who after his death was recognized as a criminal, Creon, the current ruler of Thebes, orders to be left to be torn to pieces by animals and birds. But Antigone, contrary to this order, performs a funeral rite over the body of her brother, as her duty and the immutable laws of the gods tell her. For which he takes a terrible punishment - she is walled up alive in a cave. The tragedy ends with the suicide of Creon's son Haemon, Antigone's fiancé. In the end, the cruel king has to admit his insignificance and repent of his cruelty. Thus, Antigone appears as the executor of the will of the gods, and human arbitrariness and senseless cruelty are embodied in the image of Creon.

Note that this myth was addressed by many playwrightsonly Greece, but also Rome, and later this plot received a new incarnation already in the European literature of our era.

List of Greek tragedies

Unfortunately, most of the texts of the tragedies have not survived to this day. Among the fully preserved plays of Aeschylus, only seven works can be named:

• "The Petitioners";
• "Persians";
• "Prometheus chained";
• "Seven against Thebes";
• trilogy "Oresteia" ("Eumenides", "Choephors", "Agamemnon").

The literary heritage of Sophocles is also represented by seven extant texts:

• "Oedipus Rex";
• "Oedipus in Colon";
• Antigone;
• "Trachinyanki";
• "Ayant";
• "Philoctetes";
• Electra.

Among the works created by Euripides, eighteen have been preserved for posterity. The most famous of them:

• "Hippolytus";
• "Medea";
• "Andromache";
• Electra;
• "The Petitioners";
• "Hercules";
• "Bacchae";
• "Phoenicians";
• "Elena";
• Cyclops.

It is impossible to overestimate the role that ancient Greek tragedies played in the further development of not only European, but also world literature as a whole.