Week11

Introduction to Western Literature:

1.      Tragedy: a form of drama based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in audiences. While many cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, the term tragedy often refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilization. That tradition has been multiple and discontinuous, yet the term has often been used to invoke a powerful effect of cultural identity and historical continuity—"the Greeks and the Elizabethans, in one cultural form; Hellenes and Christians, in a common activity," as Raymond Williams puts it.

2.      Catharsis: the purification and purgation of emotions—especially pity and fear—through art or any extreme change in emotion that results in renewal and restoration. It is a metaphor originally used by Aristotle in the Poetics, comparing the effects of tragedy on the mind of spectator to the effect of a cathartic on the body.

3.      Drama: the specific mode of narrative, typically fictional, represented in performance. The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a collective form of reception. The structure of dramatic texts, unlike other forms of literature, is directly influenced by this collaborative production and collective reception. The early modern tragedy Hamlet by Shakespeare and the classical Athenian tragedy Oedipus the King by Sophocles are among the masterpieces of the art of drama.

4.      Thespis: according to certain Ancient Greek sources and especially Aristotle, was the first person ever to appear on stage as an actor playing a character in a play. In other sources, he is said to have introduced the first principal actor in addition to the chorus.

Thespis' wagon

5.      Reading or writing a article >>> What? What for? Example?

6.      Satyr play: an ancient Greek form of tragicomedy, similar in spirit to the bawdy satire of burlesque. They featured choruses of satyrs, were based on Greek mythology, and were rife with mock drunkenness, brazen sexuality, pranks, sight gags, and general merriment.

7.      Semele: in Greek mythology, daughter of the Boeotian hero Cadmus and Harmonia, was the mortal mother of Dionysus by Zeus in one of his many origin myths.

Jupiter and Semele

8.      Ecstasy: Intense joy or delight.

9.      Greek chorus: a homogeneous, non-individualised group of performers in the plays of classical Greece, who comment with a collective voice on the dramatic action. The chorus consisted of between 12 and 50 players, who variously danced, sang or spoke their lines in unison and sometimes wore masks.

Getty Villa - Storage Jar with a chorus of Stilt walkers

10.  Greek tragedians: Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.

11.  Inauguration: a formal ceremony to mark the beginning of a major public leader's term of office.

12.  Key points appear in boldface, quotation marks, dash, parenthesis or after but.

13.  Cocky: overly self-assertive or self-confident.