Aesthetic Response and Traditional Social Valuation in Euripides' ›Electra‹

Tragic ›Kunstsprache‹ and the ›kharaktēr‹ of Heroes

Nicholas Baechle

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9783110611311
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Euripides' Electra opened up for its audience an opportunity to become self-aware as to the appeal of tragic Kunstsprache: it both reflected and sustained traditional, aristocratically-inflected assumptions about the continuity of appearance and substance, even in a radical democracy. A complex analogy between social and aesthetic valuation is played out and brought to light. The characterization of Orestes early in the play demonstrates how social appearances made clear the identity of well-born, and how they were still assumed to indicate superior virtue and agency. On the aesthetic side of the analogy, one of the functions of tragic diction, as an essential indication of heroic character and agency, comes into view in a dramatic and thematic sequence that begins with Achilles ode and ends with the planning of the murders. Serious doubts are created as to whether Orestes will realize the assumed potential inherent in his heroic genealogy and, at the same time, as to whether the components of his character as an aesthetic construct are congruent with such qualities and agency. Both sides of this complex analogy are thus problematized, and, at a metapoetic level, its nature and bases are exposed for reflection.

Index of passages discussed

• • Aristophanes
  • Frogs 1058–64
  • 1304–28
  • Peace 124–39
  • Wasps 1157–60

• • Aristotle
  • Rhetoric 1387a8–15

• • Euripides
  • Electra
  • 1–53
  • 34–9
  • 36–42
  • 43–9
  • 45–53
  • 82–111
  • 213–28
  • 228–89
  • 247–62
  • 274–82
  • 283–7
  • 294–6
  • 300–38
  • 319–31
  • 336–8
  • 357–63
  • 364–7
  • 367–90
  • 367–72
  • 373–9
  • 380–5
  • 386–90
  • 391–400
  • 404–7
  • 433–51
  • 479–81
  • 487–502
  • 487–92
  • 493–500
  • 493–4
  • 501–2
  • 503–12
  • 518–46
  • 518–26
  • 527–31
  • 532–7
  • 538–44
  • 545–6
  • 547–57
  • 547–9
  • 549
  • 550–62:
  • 550–1
  • 558–62
  • 563–78
  • 577–80
  • 581–4
  • 599–611
  • 618–25
  • 640–54
  • 655–63
  • 664–70
  • 685–93
  • 1177–232

• • Plato

• • Theaetetus 174e5–175b6

Notes

1

For discussion of the prologue and first episode, see 22–52.

2

See, further, the descriptions in the second strophic pair.

3

The text, as throughout, is Diggle’s (used by permission of Oxford University Press). On the interpretation and colometry of this passage, see Denniston; Cropp; and Willink (2009).

4

The designation of Electra’s (anonymous) husband is hard to translate. Neither “farmer” nor “peasant” is accurate. See 22, n. 1.

5

See 53–4.

6

For further discussion of the contrast between the Achilles of the ode and the Orestes of the earlier part of the play, see 57–8.

7

See lines 391–403, especially 401–3. For an expanded sketch of this interpretation of the ode’s stylistic effect, see 53–8. Of course, talking about an Athenian audience implies all the hermeneutic qualifications that come with making interpretative claims about an historically distant culture. (Compare, for example, Wohl (2015) xii.) That problem has to be taken for granted. But the variety of (hypothetical) responses elicited from that audience needs to be considered explicitly. The term “audience” will be used as a shorthand expression to refer to that part of the actual audience that took up the opportunities offered by the play to respond to such effects. Granted, the audience of the play’s first performance would have responded variously and would have had different degrees of attentiveness, acuity, and poetic/generic sensitivity. (Compare Revermann (2006).) On the other hand, many of the ironies and metapoetic effects created by the play – see 69–72 – were created for an audience that had an intimate experience, most often acquired over many years, with tragic conventions and style(s). The experience of the Athenian audience with tragedy must have run unusually deep, given tragedy’s long history as a form of poetic performance and the city’s engagement with it. Moreover, the audience’s distinctive intimacy with this dramatic form, historically speaking, was only reinforced by an equally intimate experience with Old Comedy as a contrastive genre. (See 11–15.)

8

See 53–4.

9

See, further, 16–21.

10

For summary judgments, see Rutherford (2010) 447–8 and Collard (2014) 237. For more detailed discussion, in relation to the Old Man’s stylistic self-presentation, see 17.

11

This is not to say that individual characters cannot be characterized linguistically in other ways to produce localized or intermittent effects. See the references below to van Emde Boas’ discussions of the language of the Autourgos and of Orestes, 21, 40, 50, and 51. (He does not discuss the Old Man’s language in any detail.) What matters most for this argument, however, is the consistent distinctiveness and perceptible elevation of the Kunstsprache as such, particularly in regard to characters of markedly different statuses.

12

See, further, 69–70, for an explanation of how these terms are understood and applied.

13

“Aristocratic” and “aristocracy” will be defined for the purposes of this argument as “assumed virtue combined with birth,” or eugeneia for short. For further discussion of the idea of birth in a fifth-century Athenian context, see 30–7.

14

For more discussion of character in this sense, see 37–8.

15

See the discussion at 78–86 and 124–33.

16

Compare Halliwell (1990a). The model he presents for the ways in which the Athenians might have thought about and evaluated character applies well to the problems inherent in Orestes’ characterization.

17

A good summary of these ideas is Jauss (1985/2001), especially 7–9 and 17–24. See, further, Jauss (1967/1982), especially 9–28 and 39–45 (with Holub (2002) 1–12 and 53–82, especially 3–4 and 63–9). See also Jauss (1980/1982) 139–48, especially 146.

18

See Jauss (1985/2001) 22–3 and Jauss (1967/1982) 22–8. In Jauss’ more general work on aesthetics as such, the range of possibility for aesthetic experience is admittedly much wider; this ­formulation reflects his engagement with Formalist ideas. Compare, for example, Jauss (1977/1982) 1–11.

19

The interpretation of Wohl (2015) 63–89 shares some common ground with the one presented here but develops in a much different direction. Wohl, too, argues that aesthetics and ideology are intertwined, though in different ways, partly because she starts from the aesthetics of Adorno. (Compare her summary ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: The complex analogy between social appearance and stylistic presentation and the provocations to cultural self-awareness played out in Euripides’ Electra
• I The initial presentation of the Old Man: Characterization and stylistic presentation of an oddly mundane, even anti-heroic, tragic character
• II The initial presentation of Orestes: Appearance, eugeneia, and social expectations about character and agency
• III Orestes, eugeneia, and aesthetic expectations about heroic characterization and agency
• IV Achilles and the first stasimon: Stylistic effect and the “appearance” of an heroic character
• V The Old Man again: The Kunstsprache and character construction
• VI The Kunstsprache, defamiliarization, and the metapoetics of character construction
• VII The Old Man and Orestes: The problem of eugeneia in the second episode
• VIII Metapoetics in the abortive first section of the recognition scene
• IX The recognition proper: the kharaktēr of tragic heroes
• X Unquestioned assumptions and the aesthetics of valuation: What can be made of this Orestes?
• Conclusion: Cultural context and tradition: Continuity of substance and appearance and the basis of the complex analogy
• Subject index
• Index of passages discussed