| What is the festival of Dionysis? | a religious festival |
| Who is Dionysis? | the god of wine and fertility |
| What is Thespis know as? | the father of acting |
| Where do we get the word thesbian from? | Thespis |
| How was drama born? | Drama was born when Aeschylus added a second character to plays, making it posible to create a conflict. |
| How did the Chorous move in the Orchestra? | from one side of the Orchestra to the other |
| The Chorous usually worked as what? | a group |
| What is a Myth? | An old story, rooted in a particular society, that explains a belif, ritual, or some mysterious aspect of nature. |
| What is the myth of Oedipus? | That he killed his father and married his mother. When he found this out he clawed his eyes out. |
| What is the Parodos? | The first Ode, or choral song, in a Greek tragedy, chanted by the Chorus as it enters the area in front of the stage |
| What is the Strophe? | Part of the Ode that the Chorus chants as it moves from right to left across the Orchestra. |
| What is an Ode? | Comments on the previous scene spoken aloud by the Chorus. |
| What is Dirce’s Stream? | A stream near Thebes. Dirce, an early queen of Thebes, was murdered and her body was thrown into the stream. |
| What is the Antistrophe? | Part of the Ode that the Chorus chants as it moves from left to right back across the Orchestra. |
| Who is Choragos? | The leader of the Chorus. |
| In Antigone who makes up the Chorus? | Older men |
| What is hubris? | The highest Greek sin where the people thought they were above everything (even the Greek gods). When the people thought they were greater than they were in reality. |
| What is an Ode used for? | They serve as both a way to separate one scene from the next, because there were no curtains, and also to provide the Chorus’s respnse to the previous scene. They follow each scene. |
| What is Acheron? | One of the rivers that dead souls were ferried across to reach Hades, a.k.a. the underworld. (Hades is also the name of the god of the underworld) |
| Who is Tantalos? | King whose punishment in the underworld was to suffer unending hunger and thirst. Though he stood in a lake, the waters flowed away from him whenever he tried to drink. Though branches of luscious fruit hung over his head, they always remained just out of reach. |
| Who is Niobe? | The daughter of Tantalos. An ancient queen of Thebes who had seven sons and seven daughters. Niobe boasted that she was superior to Leto because Leto’s only children were twins Apollo and Artemis. Offended, Leto complained to her children, who then slaughtered all of Niobe’s children. Zeus turned the weeping Niobe into a colom of stone. She continued to weep, however, and her tears became a stream. |
| What is blasphemy? | Action or words showing contempt for God. |
| What is the epode? | The final stanza of the Ode, following the strophe and antistrophe. |
| Who is Danae? | Daughter of an ancient king of Argos. The king imprisoned Danae in a bronze (brazen) tower when he learned from an oracle that she would have a son who would kill him. Zeus fell in love with Danae and visited her in her prison as a shower of gold. When Danae gave birth to Zeus’s son Perseus, the frightened king put Danae and her baby into a woden chest and tossed them into the sea. However, Zeus saved them, and when Perseus grew up, he did (unknowingly) kill his grandfather, as foretold. |
| What is tragedy according to Aristotle? | To arouse pity and fear in the audience so that we may be purged |
| What is tragedy? | A story that presents courageous individuals who confront powerful forces within or outside themselves with a dignity that reveals the breadth and depth of the human spirit in the face of failure, defeat, and even death. Tragedies recount an individual’s downfall; they usually begin high and end low. |
| What is a tragic flaw? | A fundamental character weekness, such as destructive pride, ruthless ambition, or obsesive jealousy. A tragic flaw is an error or defect in the tragic hero that leads to his downfall, such as greed, pride, or ambition. This flaw may be a result of bad character, bad judgment, an inherited weakness, or any other defect of character. |
| A real hero…? | 1. is responsible for their own downfall 2. is humble and enlightened by the tragedy 3. come to recognise their flaw and accept their consequences 4. doesn’t cures fate or the gods |
| The audiences reaction to the hero? | We feel that the hero’s punishment exceeds the crime, that the hero gets more of a punishment than they deserve, and we feel pity because the hero is a suffering human being who is flawed like us. |
| How is the prophet Teiresias ironic? | He is ironic because he is blind but he “sees all.” |
| Why does Creon change his mind on Antigone’s punishment? | Because Teiresias said that there would be death within his family if he didn’t let Antigone go. |
| What is the general conflict or main theme of the play? | A conflict of oposing views of what is morally right and what is morally wrong. |
Antigone Notes
February 16, 2020