Western Literature 2016/12/1(Week12)

▲Three important tragedians

►Aeschylus
Aeschylus was an ancient Greek tragedian. He is often described as the father of tragedy. Critics' and scholars' knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier tragedies is largely based on inferences from his surviving plays. According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in theater allowing conflict among them; characters previously had interacted only with the chorus.

►Sophocles
Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides. Sophocles wrote 120 plays during the course of his life, but only seven have survived in a complete form: Ajax, Antigone, The Women of Trachis, Oedipus the King, Electra, Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus. For almost 50 years, Sophocles was the most celebrated playwright in the dramatic competitions of the city-state of Athens that took place during the religious festivals of the Lenaea and the Dionysia. He competed in 30 competitions, won 18, and was never judged lower than second place. Aeschylus won 14 competitions, and was sometimes defeated by Sophocles, while Euripides won 5 competitions.

►Euripides
Euripides was a tragedian of classical Athens. He is one of the few whose plays have survived, with the others being Aeschylus, Sophocles, and potentially Euphorion. Some ancient scholars attributed 95 plays to him but according to the Suda it was 92 at most. Of these, 18 or 19 have survived more or less complete (there has been debate about his authorship of Rhesus, largely on stylistic grounds) and there are also fragments, some substantial, of most of the other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly due to mere chance and partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined—he became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenes and Menander.

▲Oedipus complex
In psychoanalysis, the Oedipus complex is a child's desire, that the mind keeps in the unconscious via dynamic repression, to have sexual relations with the parent of the opposite sex.
The Oedipus complex occurs in the third—phallic stage (ages 3–6)—of the five psychosexual development stages: (i) the oral, (ii) the anal, (iii) the phallic, (iv) the latent, and (v) the genital—in which the source of libidinal pleasure is in a different erogenous zone of the infant's body. The Oedipal complex originally refers to the sexual desire of a son for his mother and does not have to be reciprocated.
Men and women who are fixated in the Oedipal and Electra stages of their psychosexual development might be considered "mother-fixated" and "father-fixated." In adult life, this can lead to a choice of a sexual partner who resembles one's parent.

▲In medias res
A narrative work beginning in medias res opens in the midst of action. Often, exposition is bypassed and filled in gradually, either through dialogue, flashbacks or description of past events. For example, Hamlet begins after the death of Hamlet's father. Characters make reference to King Hamlet's death without the plot's first establishment of said fact. Since the play focuses on Hamlet and the revenge itself more so than the motivation, Shakespeare utilizes in medias res to bypass superfluous exposition.

▲You've gone too far

It means you're warning someone who has crossed their limits of doing something.

▲Definition

◆playwright: a person who writes plays

◆foreshadow: to represent, indicate, or typify beforehand