billybookblog

*contains spoilers* In typical fashion, I seem to have approached this all the wrong way round: having ventured head-first into the realms of Greek tragedy without a compass, I tackled Sophocles first, Euripides second and Aeschylus third. Aeschylus is considered by some to be the inventor of the Greek tragedy as it is became popularly known, developing the previous set up of single actor performances, obviously accompanied by a Chorus, to introducing several actors and a chorus, which allows for a greater scope of theatrical possibilities. This development went on to inform the works that followed – namely those of Sophocles and Euripides. What one does see in The Oresteia, having considered this, is that Aeschylus clearly set the bar very high – too high for others to reach, in my view, and, whilst the works of Sophocles and Euripides were unique and beautiful, Aeschylus is clearly the master of the three tragedians. The Oresteia is a trilogy of plays: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers...

*contains spoilers* I was hoping that it would be enough for me to write in the space given on this blog simply “JUST. SUPER. WONDERFUL”, but as I’m primarily using this blog to keep my critical muscles toned, admittedly in a somewhat relaxed and playful workout, I thought it would, a) not be very scholarly of me, and, b) be unfair on a novel that gave me so much pleasure not to explain why I thought it was “just super wonderful”. The fictional town of Cranford is based on a town that Gaskell knew very well, Knutsford in Cheshire, and is the setting of a set of vivacious ladies and spinsters who dwell in and around this town. I say several when I mean a lot, and Gaskell presents the novel through the nostalgic eye of a character called Mary Smith, who is only explicitly named in the penultimate chapter, where even then it is in passing as part of a larger conversation. Gaskell’s use of Mary as this passive and faceless narrator allows the reader to witness the experiences and expressio...

*contains spoilers* Euripides brings us, once more, to the fates of Agamemnon, Iphigenia, Clytemnestra, Orestes and Achilles, and in doing so he offers what I believe to be one of the most magnificent of the tragic plays: Iphigenia at Aulis. The play opens outside Agamemnon’s tent in Aulis, where the Achaean army are hell bent on setting sail for Troy so that they can win their glory for Greece, and in doing so, restore Helen back to her rightful place at Menelaus’s side in Mycenae. Near the tent are the sterns of the wooden boats of the Achaean army, shored upon the banks of the strait of Euripus, whose mercurial currents are reflected in the fluctuating natures of the characters. One of these characteristic shifts occurs rather early on in the play, in fact, as Agamemnon disputes with his brother, Menelaus, as to whether the wooden tablets on which he has written to Iphigenia, warning her not to join him in Aulis, should be delivered at all. Menelaus, desperately hoping for the war w...

*contains spoilers* At the time of Euripides writing this piece, Bacchus, more commonly known as Dionysus, was only then just being integrated into the Greek pantheon from the Near East. In fact, the Bacchae story itself was already commonly known amongst the Greeks, and had been penned by the likes of Aeschylus, who, as you well know, preceded both Euripides and Sophocles. By that point, however, worshipping Dionysus was still in its embryonic stage, and what we see in this particular piece is Euripides addressing the two extremities, restraint and release, and how these two squared up on Dionysus’s introduction to Greek society. Much later on, nevertheless, after Euripides’s death, Dionysus was eventually established as the god of religious ecstasy, fertility, wine and prophecy. It also must be stated that Bacchae won Euripides the much-coveted first prize in the annual contest, though Euripides was unfortunately dead at this point – it would have been his first victory! Bacchae now ...

*contains spoilers* Virgil’s The Aeneid continues where Homer left off at the end of The Iliad, though instead of following the fate of the Greeks, as Homer did with his exquisite follow up epic, The Odyssey, Virgil focuses on the troublesome journey that the Trojans must face having escaped the sacked and still-burning Troy. There is one key reason for this being Virgil’s focus, and that is that Virgil was a Roman poet writing at the time of the reign of Caesar Augustus. Indeed, Caesar Augustus himself commissioned the piece, and it is not merely coincidence that the fate of the Trojans is invariably linked with the establishment of Rome; Caesar Augustus wanted his reign further validated, and the way to do that was to insinuate himself in the established mythical tales of the time. The Aeneid is, therefore, more than just an admirable mythical epic poem - it was a powerful political tool put to very good use. Considering the context in which the piece was written (a Rome that had alr...