Midterm Exam 3/20/08 STUDY GUIDE GREEK DRAMA - harvey

MIDTERM STUDY GUIDE 3/20/08 2This essay topic can be thought of as an exercise in critical thinking. Thus I will be evaluating your retention of basicand essential concepts and play-facts, and the ways you leverage that knowledge in analyzing texts, i.e., howwell you base interpretations on factual knowledge, and how well you critique approaches themselves.By “interpretive lens” I mean things like:• Aristotle’s Poetics and its analytical models/concepts• “Aeschylean” epiphany• “the tragic formula” (koros etc.)• “the comic formula”• Aristotle’s PoeticsWithin the framework of such lenses you may well find yourself addressing such matters as:• the cycle of suffering/violence• utopian escapism• pathei mathos (knowledge through suffering)• blood-guilt• formal/structural features of drama (parodos, kommos, stasimon, parabasis, etc.)Even if the above helps you understand drama (and I’m not saying it does), still, its usefulness must stop shortsomewhere. How do you take it to the next level?MEMORIZE TITLES, AUTHORS’ NAMES, MAIN CHARACTERS, BASIC STORY-LINESREVIEW TERMS FROM QUIZ 1REVIEW TERMS SINCE QUIZ 1:• Areopagus Council, Areopagus court (Aeschylus Eumenides)• binding song (Aeschylus Eumenides)• blood-guilt• closure• deus ex machina (Medea, Ladies’ Day)• drasanta pathein. (the law of “let the doer suffer,” from Aeschylus Libation Bearers, lines 319–320: “stroke forbloody stroke be paid. The one who acts must suffer”)• Erinus (“Fury”)• paratragedy (Ladies’ Day, comedy generally)• pharmakos (OK)• pollution (OK)• sophist, sophistic (Medea)• Thesmophoria (Ladies’ Day)• thūmos (Medea)