Classics 095: Greek Tragedy

Final
I expect that you will be able to complete this final within two hours. I will stop you after that (unless you explain to me well before the final why you in particular need additional time).

Facts for fill-in-the-blank questions:

• names and life dates of major tragedians
• characters in the plays we have read: their names and relations to other characters (e.g. "The propetess who is doomed never to be believed and who Clytaemnestra kills is named ___________." OR "Cassandra is brought home to Argos by _______________." OR "_______________ and ______________ are the children of Agamemnon and Clytaemnestra.") These will be 75% or more from the plays we have read since the midterm.
  
• The eras of Greek history
• Minoan and Mycenaean times: before 1100BCE
• Dark Ages: ca. 1100-800BCE
• Archaic Age: ca. 800-500BCE
• Classical Greece: 500BCE-323BCE

Brief Explanation items:

Expect a few questions about the same material as was on the midterm (3 items only):

• etymology of 'tragedy'
• Thespis
• City Dionysia
• ancient theaters as buildings
• Dionysus the god
• hubris
• anagnorisis
• peripety (aka peripeteia)
• the structure of tragedies (i.e. the labels for their parts)
• stichomythia
• choregos/choregus:
• deus ex machina: a god introduced into a play to resolve the entanglements of the plot
• ate
• didaskalos
• oedipus complex
• electra complex
• aristotle's poetics
• catharsis
• aristotle's ideal tragedy's traits

Expect the following more recent items:

• Shame culture versus guilt culture
• Sophocles' "Ode To Man"
• Satyr Play and "pro-Satyr play"
  
• Dionysiac religion
  

Also be ready for passage identification questions. You will be given a passage from a play and then asked to identify the speaker, the author, and the play, and to say something about the context. 75% or more will be from Antigone, Alcestis, Oedipus at Colonus, or Bacchae.

Essay Topic:

A good essay will clearly identify the questions it asks and will offer clear answers to those questions. It will go beyond the simple, obvious, easy answers to offer a picture of the complexities of its questions. It will be thoroughly supported by examples from the plays we read.

I have decided that you may use the texts, but only the texts, of the tragedies we have read, for this essay. You may mark up your texts minimally (underlining, highlighting, a word or two in the margin) to help you find the passages which you want to use. You may NOT write out your essay or any part of it in the margins and bring it to the exam to re-write into the exam booklet. 

Choose one of the following:

1. Discuss, using the examples of Antigone, Bacchae and Alcestis, how tragedies explore a significant set of boundaries and the classifications they create. The goal of this essay is to formulate, explain, and defend clear definitions of concepts found in the tragedies. To give you an idea, the following are sets of ideas separated by important but problematic boundaries and are also important ways to classify important human phenomena. Please choose one set to analyze: do not do more than one.
• Life and death.
  
• Mortal and immortal.
  
• Human and Animal.
  
• Monster, Human, God, Animal.
  
• Knowledge, Ignorance, Faith, and Belief.
  
• Rational, Irrational, Sanity, Insanity.
  
• Individual, family, city, ethnicity.
• Family member, friend, enemy.
• There are many more: you may come up with your own set, but it would be a good idea to ask me about it well before the final. Try e-mail, or even call me at home (859-9253) as I may keep irregular hours during exams.
  

1. This is really a particular application of the above: In tragedy, what makes a woman a woman? a man a man? a man womanly? a woman manly? a man human? a woman human? a man beastly? a woman beastly? a man excellent as a man? a woman excellent as a woman? a man bad at being a man? a woman bad at being a woman? The more specific you can be, the better. Examples are all important here. The best essay will probably not try to answer all the questions above in that same order, but rather will have its own principles of organization that follow its own logic but treat those questions nonetheless.