THEATRON PERCEIVED: THE SEEN, THE UNSEEN, AND THE SEERS IN GREEK TRAGEDY A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Sarah Christine Norman August 2011 © 2011 Sarah Christine Norman THEATRON PERCEIVED: THE SEEN, THE UNSEEN, AND THE SEERS IN GREEK TRAGEDY Sarah Christine Norman, Ph. D. Cornell University 2011 What if the ornate purple fabric in Agamemnon was not on stage at all? What if the cataclysm at the end of Prometheus Bound was not staged? This dissertation argues that ancient Greek tragedy demanded an active, imaginative engagement from the audience in order to create theatrically real props and action that may not have been visible on the stage. Drawing on philosophical texts as well as key tragedies, including Sophocles’ Philoctetes, Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes and Prometheus Bound, and Euripides’ Heracles and Hippolytus, this study further shows that seeing was itself understood as a powerful force, almost a physical touch between seer and seen object, and that this understanding is a crucial concept behind ancient anxieties about the powers and dangers of theatrical spectatorship. Chapter 2 delineates the major functions of props in Greek tragedy, ultimately proposing that the unique functions of props do not always demand the presence of a visible prop on stage. Instead, some may have been theatrically real yet physically absent, too small to see, or very abstract. These objects, “rhetoricized props,” emerge through the language of the play, dramatic context, actors’ gestures, and imaginations of the spectators, which collaborate to create the theatrical reality of the props. Chapter 3 builds on the idea of rhetoricized props to approach action that takes place on stage but that seems too unwieldy to have been represented fully with ancient stagecraft. Several key scenes yield a range of techniques that serve as indicators to the spectators of what is happening and how they should imagine it, even if they cannot see it. Chapter 4 explores ancient philosophical texts that attempt to explain the mechanics of perception. The Greeks seem to have understood vision as involving a close connection between seer and seen, and this serves as framework for understanding tragic scenes in which characters cover themselves or others to avoid being seen. If one can become polluted by simply seeing a polluted person, such as Heracles after he has murdered his family, what might that mean for those who watch theatrical performances? BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Sarah Christine (Powers) Norman was born to Steve and Sue Powers in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She graduated from Baylor School in Chattanooga and attended Emory University as a Chris A. Yannopoulos Scholar, majoring in Classics and Theater Studies. After completing an honors thesis on ancient Greek and Roman comedy, she graduated with High Honors in 2005. She worked as the Literary Department Intern at the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, New Jersey for the year 2005-2006, assisting in production dramaturgy, literary management, and education programs. In fall 2006, she entered Cornell University and earned her Master of Arts degree in Theatre Arts in August 2009. She has presented her work at several conferences, including Theatre Symposium and the Society for the Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image, and her article “Helen’s Theatrical Mêchanê: Props and Costumes in Euripides’ Helen” appeared in Volume 18 of Theatre Symposium. iii For Kelly and Stephen, with whom I first developed my imagination and theatrical aspirations. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am particularly indebted to my advisor, Jeffrey Rusten, for the many hours of discussions and feedback, as well as for his suggestions of interesting visual art pieces and non-dramatic texts that I likely would not have found on my own. Nick Salvato provided many suggestions to help me balance this project between the theater studies and classics disciplines, and the independent study of spectatorship theories that I took with Don Fredericksen is largely responsible for my methodology and theoretical perspective. Pietro Pucci and Fred Ahl welcomed me into their Greek seminars on Euripides and Sophocles, and I am grateful to them and to the rest of the Classics Department for the support they provided to me and to my interdisciplinary work. Of course, I am also thankful for the support of my home department of Theatre, Film, and Dance, including those who have taught graduate seminars as well as Donna Miller, whose administrative help has been invaluable. Special thanks go to Louise Pratt (whose handouts on Greek grammar are still my reference of choice), Niall Slater, and the rest of the Emory Classics Department, for all of their encouragement and guidance during my undergraduate years. Thanks also to Alice Benston, whose Aesthetics and Criticism course remains a foundation of my knowledge and thinking, and to the Emory Theater Studies Department, where I first began to think of making theater more than a hobby. Floyd Celapino and Kristin Vines first taught me Latin at Baylor School, and their enthusiasm for Latin and the classical world is largely responsible for my own. Finally, thanks to all of the family and friends who have been so supportive during these five years, especially: Steve and Sue Powers, Kelly Powers, Stephen Powers, Lauren Aimone, the Norman family, Graduate Christian Fellowship, and St. Catherine of Siena Church. Mere “thanks” are insufficient for Michael Norman, who is definitely the best thing I am taking away from Cornell. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1, Introduction: Stage and Spectator............................................................. 1 Part One: The Creative Work of Spectators in the Theater.................................. 1 Reader-Response Theory: The Move to an Interactive Model in Literary Criticism ............................................................................................................ 4 Bodily Presence and Communication................................................................. 8 Imaginative Participation: Interpretation, Affect, Emotional Contagion, and Cooperative Creation ........................................................................................10 The Battle over the Arm-Rest: and Other Elements of Context..........................19 Part Two: Introduction to the Classical Greek Theater.......................................22 Narrowing the Scope: Chronology, Geography, and Genre................................23 !"#$%&' (Theatron): The Physical Space...........................................................28 !(#$#) (Theatai): Spectators in the Theater........................................................36 The Stuff of the Theater: Costumes, Masks, and Machinery..............................41 Conclusion........................................................................................................47 Chapter 2, Objects of Imagination: Props Seen and Unseen on the Greek Tragic Stage........................................................................................................................52 The Stage Property: Towards a Definition.........................................................53 What Is It, and What Does It Do? Categorizing Props .......................................63 A Special Case: Props as Points of Contact .......................................................76 Summary: Types and Functions of Props.........................................................107 Unseen Props: From Trinkets to Dragon-Chariots ...........................................108 Conclusion......................................................................................................125 vi Chapter 3, Staging the Unstageable: Battles, Earthquakes, and Destruction............128 Unstageable Action: The Approach of the Army in Seven against Thebes.......131 The Fall of Heracles and His House ................................................................147 Did the Earth Quake? The “Palace-Miracle” Scene in Bacchae .......................157 Exploding the Boundaries of the Stage in Prometheus Bound..........................167 Conclusion......................................................................................................182 Appendix to Chapter 3: Full Texts of Key Passages ........................................184 Chapter 4, The Touch of the Spectator: Perception as a Point of Contact................201 Epiphany: Gods on the Stage...........................................................................202 Defiling Sight: The Limits of Appropriate Seeing ...........................................220 Perception in the Ancient World: Mechanics and Implications........................242 Theories of Perception: The Presocratics.........................................................244 Theories of Perception: Plato ..........................................................................251 Theories of Perception: Aristotle.....................................................................257 Conclusion: Implications of Perception...........................................................264 Chapter 5, Conclusion: Seeing in the “Seeing-Place” .............................................268 Aristotle: Tragedy, Poetry, and Opsis..............................................................269 Perception and the Ethics of Spectatorship: A Case Study in Plato..................280