The Generations of Sophocles. Analyses of Generational Awareness, Generation Relations and Generation Conflicts Within the Sopho
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The generations of Sophocles Analyses of generational awareness, generation relations and generation conflicts within the Sophoclean tragedies Inaugural-Disseration in der Fakultät Geistes- und Kulturwissenschaften der Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg Dissertation im Ramen des Graduiertenkollegs der DFG “Generationenbewusstsein und Generationenkonflikte in Antike und Mittelalter. Autorin: Angeliek van Kampen M.A. Dekan: Universitätsprofessor dr. K. van Eickels Erstgutachter: Universitätsprofessor dr. H. Brandt Zweitgutachterin: Universitätsprofessorin dr. S. Föllinger Mündliche Prüfung: 22.9.2009 1 The Tragedy of Old Age is not that one is old, but that one is young.” Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891 2 1. Methodological Introduction 5 1.1. Main question, goal and justification of ‘generational research’ 5 1.2. The term ‘Generation’ 8 1.2.1 Definition 8 1.2.2 Research Equivalent 11 1.2.3 Summarizing 12 1.3. Methods 13 1.4. AccountaBility 14 2. General Introduction 16 2.1. Social developments due to political decision-making en demographical change 16 2.2. Greek theatre 18 2.3. Tragedy’s development and the introduction of the satyrplay 21 2.4. Sophoclean tragedies 25 3. Generational Awareness 30 3.1. Ancestors: the name, fame and glory of the family 32 3.2. The relation between young and old 39 3.2.1 Youth 40 3.2.2 In Old Age 47 3.3. Pattern of expectations 50 4. Generation Relations 58 4.1. Familiar, interfamiliar and surrogate 58 4.1.1 Family connections: emotionally or merely social-economically? 58 4.1.2 Friend or Stranger: Philia and Xenia 64 4.1.3 Concubines and bastardchildren 69 4.2. The influence of other positions of power within the tragic context 75 4.2.1 Gender 75 4.2.2 Political positions of power 80 4.3. Sociological Political Generations 84 5. Generation Conflicts in Antigone and Elektra 98 5.1. Generation conflict in Antigone 100 5.1.1 Three different generations 101 5.1.2 The conflict: Introduction and Escort 105 5.1.3 The conflict: Argumentation and Contents 109 5.1.4 The conflict: Cause and Consequences 112 5.2. Generation conflict in Elektra 118 5.1.1 Family relations: Elektra, daughter, stepdaughter and sister 120 5.1.2 Elektra´s complaining and the mother-role of the chorus 122 5.1.3 Improper argumentation? The dialogue with Chrysothemis 128 5.1.4 Elektra and Clythemnestra: the confrontation 132 3 6. Summary 138 6.1. Results 138 6.2. Assessment of the results 143 6.3. Preview 145 Literature 147 4 1. Methodological Introduction 1.1. Main question, goal and justification of ‘generational research’ In what way could such an explicit reproduction of generation relations contribute to the construction of tension within the tragedy and in what way does Sophocles functionilize these relations in order to serve this purpose? In order to get to a valuable scholarly contribution on the interpretation of generation relations in Sophoclean tragedies, my main question for this thesis is focussed on texts itself, rather than on the possible influence on it’s public. However, this is an historical thesis and throughout the examination the relation with historical reality will be shown; in my conclusion I will evaluate the generational relations within the Sophoclean tragedies within its historical timeframe. Examining sources in order to awnser the main question, I came across three issues: 1) Although MEIER has shown that the tragic genre had a clear purpose in society –democracy possibly supported on it; tragedies were fictional.1 However, fragments from Greek tragedies have, more than once, been interpreted as a mere representation of the society and resulted in assumptions of uncertain, parallels. Furthermore, 2) assumptions about the Athenian society were often substantiated with quotations and passages from different tragedies; from different tragedies of several authors or even with quotations and passages form works of different genres. This resulted in a irrational search for coherence between tragedies, which ironically, could also be detected this way; leaving aside whether this coherence is in fact truly useful or not. And last but not least, 3) tragic passages are also regularly taken out of their context. As a result, the actual meaning of a passage is very hard to define. Concomitantly, it is necessary to determine to what extent a certain passage was of influence on the plot or the story of a 1 MEIER, C. [1988] 10 ff. 5 tragedy and, moreover, if this passage may even have been crucial within the context of the myth on which the tragedy was based, in order to rightly estimate the value of the text.2 To tackle the first issue: This work does not represent an overview on tragic passages serving to underline historical assumptions. In order to extract relevant facts from these tragedies, we must, above all, bear in mind that theatre is and was an art-form, representing in may ways the epoch, in which it came into existence, but it did not mirror the society one on one. Secondly: I emphasise that for this research one tragedy will be considered the smallest and the largest part being analysed, concerning my hypothesis: not merely one passage nor Sophocles’ oeuvre as a whole have been examined as such, in search of other meanings of the texts than would appear to one, when considering -at least or just- the tragic context in which it must been viewed. Another consideration supporting this method, is the way I treated the relation between myth and tragedy in this research. Thirdly: in her summary of the use of exactly this relation in modern scholarly findings, FÖLLINGER, for her research on Aeschylian tragedies, rightly chose to consider tragedies to be myths themselves and not to recede into a search for an ‘Urmythos’.3 Her twofold nuances of BURKERT’s definition of myth, is therefore also considered to be applicable on this research: (…) traditionelle Erzählungen, die –auf biologisch oder kulturell vorgegebenen Aktionsprogrammen beruhende- Sinnstrukturen bilden und eine komplexe, überindivuelle Wirklichkeitserfahrung verbalisieren. (…) To which “…von individuellen Autoren erfundene oder gestaltete Erzählungen durch Tradierung zu Mythen werden.” And with regard to ‘überindividuel”: “Ein Mythos stellt also nicht die Widerspiegelung von Wirklichkeit dar, sondern Mythen werden angewandt im Sinne von Exempla oder Sinnangeboten (…).”4 Although I do not want to alter this definition in any way, however, the remark I made above, that a poet had limited possibilities for adaptation of a myth into a tragic trilogy, needs clarification. Also in this research, I will not make an attempt to compare the tragic context 2 In order to trace these myths: ed. TRZASKOMA, M., SCOTT SMITH, R., BRUNET, S., PALAIMA, T.G. Anthology of classical myth Cambridge 2004. I will come back to the relation between myth and tragedy in this research below. 3 FÖLLINGER, S. Genosdependenzen, Studien zur Arbeit am Mythos bei Aischylos, Göttingen 2003, Einleitung (hier p. 14) BURKERT, W. „Myth –Begriff, Struktur, Funktionen“ in Mythos in mythenoser Gesellschaft. Das Paradigma Rom. Ed. GRAF, F., Leipzig 1993, 9-24. FÖLLINGER summarizes the most important literature on this theme. 4 FÖLLINGER [2003] 13-14. 6 with a possible basic, or first myth. Though I do consider the balance between tradition and innovation, as FÖLLINGER comes to describe the relation between myth and tragedy, too important to be left out of the analyses completely. Exactly the collective interest, which must also have been applicable to the myths orally handed down, leads to believe that the so frequently cultivated collectively known stories, must have caused limitations as well.5 The poets –mainly- based their tragedies on these originally oral, traditional narrations, of which the audience at the beginning of a play, must at least have known a main part of the plot, the premises or the results. Too radical derivations of ‘the known’ –for instance Elektra not containing matricide- would cause risks considering the judging public in this contest.6 These considerations result in the fact that I will not analyze the relations between the figures in the Sophoclean tragedies as being framed by possible mythological structures. On the contrary one tragedy being considered a whole, analyzed concerning my hypothesis, cause fragments not be taken into consideration in this work, in contrary to FÖLLINGER’s research. Nonetheless, with this thesis I aim to find out the function of generation relations in these diversely interpretable and widely interpreted Sophoclean tragedies, in order to understand these pieces in a more detailed way, within the frame of the Athenian society in the 5th century BC.7 In order to serve this goal, three questions are at the centre of this thesis and have determined the structure of this work: 1) In what way are generations defined: how is generation- consciousness constructed and reproduced in the tragedies? 2) How are people (characters) of different generations related to each other? 3) In which tragedies can we establish a conflict of generations and what is the influence of this conflict on the tragic context, the course of action and the plot of the play? 5 Cf. § 2.3 p. 21: The (re-)introduction of the satyrplay supports that assumption. 6 As FLASHAR , H., ‘ Familie, Mythos, Drama am Beispiel des Oedipous’, in CH 19, 1994, 51-74. however did show with the Oedipous mythology, we have to bear in mind that most of what we know about Greek mythology is Ovidian and that we are largely influenced by the tragic poets. I do therefore not argue which details could or could not have been altered and to what extent this could have been done; what exactly too radical would mean. This, in my opinion, is the again not of influence on the point I want to make here.