Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Classical Greek drama'

How were Greek plays viewed in the fifth century BCE and by deepening our understanding of their visual dimension might we increase our knowledge of the plays themselves? The aim of this study is to set out the importance of the visual (opsis) when considering ancient Greek drama and provide a basis for constructing a form of “visual dramaturgy” that can be effectively applied to the texts. To that end, this work is divided into five sections, which follow a “top-down” analysis of ancient dramatic visuality. The analysis begins with a survey of the prevailing visual culture and Greek attitudes about sight and the eye. Following this is an examination of the roots of drama in the performance of public collective movement forms (what I have called “symporeia”) and their relationships to the environments they moved through, including the development of the fifth century theatre at the Sanctuary of Dionysos Eleuthereus in Athens. The focus then falls on the dramatic mask and it is proposed here that operating in this environment it was the visual focus of Greek drama and the primary conveyer of the emotional content of the plays. Drawing on new research from the fields of cognitive psychology and neuroscience relating to facial processing and recognition, gaze direction, foveal and peripheral vision and neural responses to masks, movement and performance, it is explained how the fixed dramatic mask was an incredibly effective communicator of dramatic emotion capable of eliciting intensely individual responses from its spectators. This study concludes with a case study based on Aeschylus Oresteia and the raising of Phidias’ colossal bronze statue of Athena on the Acropolis and the impact that this may have had on the original reception of the trilogy.

In this thesis, I argue that Sophoclean characters take shape through a number of different kinds of interaction. On the most basic level, interaction occurs between characters; interactions between characters, however, provide a framework for interactions between those characters and a variety of more abstract concepts. These interactions, by allowing characters to situate themselves with respect to concepts such as, for example, the social roles which shape the society of the play, provide a more complex picture of the personalities depicted onstage; a fuller view of Antigone’s personality, for example, emerges both from her own interactions with the concept of sisterhood and from the differences between her interactions with that concept and Ismene’s. At the same time, these interactions involve the audience in both the construction and the interpretation of Sophoclean characters; as they watch figures interact with each other onstage, the audience, in turn, interact with their own prior knowledge of the concepts which drive the characters of a play. In my five chapters, I discuss five different areas of interaction. In my first chapter, I look at interactions between characters and myth, arguing that Sophoclean characters emerge out of a tension between novelty and familiarity. In my second chapter, I discuss the interactions between characters and their social roles, looking at the problem of appropriate role performance as it applies to Sophoclean characters. My third chapter deals with characters and their memories; I argue that Sophoclean characters shape and are shaped by their memories of past events depending on shifting present circumstances. In my fourth chapter, I discuss the interactions between characters and the passage of time and suggest that Sophoclean figures are characterized by the ways in which they move through time and respond to its passage. In my final chapter, I look at the use of general statements by Sophoclean characters, arguing that the ability of characters to generalize successfully provides a useful measure of their ability to function in the world of the play.

The study of old age in the humanities has developed significantly in the last few decades, but there is still much scope for progress. This thesis, therefore, seeks to contribute to the growing academic discourse in this area by considering ageing as it is represented in ancient Greek theatre. At the same time, it seeks to take its place within Classical Studies by developing new readings of the plays. To develop a context for its analysis, this study begins with consideration of the contemporary demographics, social position, and stage portrayal of old age, and following this dedicates a chapter to each of the four surviving fifth century dramatists. In Aiskhylos’ Agamemnon, old age emerges as a crucial element in choral self-identity, and an important component of the authority that they display. Following this, the thesis considers the chorus of Euripides’ Herakles, in particular its use of metadramatic language, and the impact this has on plot-development and the representation of their age. The next chapter, on Oidipous Koloneus, shifts to consideration of the protagonist. The old age of Oidipous emerges as a powerful driver of his mental and spiritual power, and forms a striking background to the exploration of his character. The final chapter of the thesis examines how mechanisms of renewal that old men undergo in Aristophanes’ comedies (Knights, Akharnians, Peace, Wasps, Birds) differ across the dramas, and the impact this difference has on their interpretations. Such reassessments of ancient dramatic texts through the lens of old age can provide significant insight into the complexity of old men’s characterisations and of their involvement in the dramas. At the same time (from a gerontological perspective), this thesis’ analysis contributes to the developing discussion of the history of ageing, and highlights the differences between the ancient and modern worlds in this respect.

Globalisation along with dramatic increases in immigration, have led to increased levels of diversification in modern societies. The rapid change of the Cypriot society to a multicultural and multilingual one has resulted in the presence of a multitude of additional languages in Cypriot primary classrooms, reinforcing the concern for the education of pupils whose first language is other than the dominant language of the country. As a primary school teacher I am concerned in developing an effective pedagogy that can support these pupils’ additional language learning. Thus, the specific action research project at the heart of this research examines how educational drama can be used to facilitate the acquisition of Greek as an additional language by ethnic minority pupils in a Cypriot primary classroom. Throughout this thesis language learning is understood as a social construct, a continual, negotiated exchange of meanings, between the child and the environment, drawing on social theories of language that stress the overarching importance of cultural and social interactions for second language learning. Guided by theory, this research argues for the inter-relationship between social and linguistic processes and how specific drama strategies enable both one and the other. Evidence from this research suggests that a dramatic context that reflects the cultural and linguistic diversity of the classroom has a positive effect in GAL students’ affective variables, and particularly the socio-cultural factors and the personal variables within oneself, as well as the affect on L2 learning of the reflection of that self to other people. Illustrative drama schemes, developed throughout the project, together with concrete examples of children’s work are provided to represent more clearly how living contexts and fictitious worlds can be created within which the different functions of language can be identified and developed. At the same time unconventional and anxiety-reducing strategies for assessing second language learning are presented.

In the Introduction the individual's consciousness is placed at the centre of the educational experience. The child's desire to create meaning is argued to be fundamental to the learning process. In Chapter One types of traditional tale are categorised. The similarities are seen as more important than differences and the storyteller as crucial to transmission. In Chapter Two, starting from the Greek civilisation from which they arose, the potential of Greek myths as structures for the development of ethical considerations is argued. A structuralist method of analysis is proposed. In Chapter Three the development of the structure of storylines through a process of storytelling-to-drama is traced within the development of the city-state. The idea of an aesthetic is introduced. In Chapter Four the art of oral storytelling is defined and its value as an educational medium highlighted. The theory of "junctures" is introduced to supplement the structuralist method of analysis of two examples of storyline that follows. In Chapter Five the value of storytelling as a method in educational drama is justified through its presentation of structure for the individual to manipulate in the construction of meaning. In Chapter Six children's work is analysed to show transmission of storyline and the development of aesthetic and ethical awareness through the manipulation of structure. In the Conclusion the implications for Classics, the curriculum and teaching methods are argued. These lie in the value to the individual child of the experiential approach. There are four appendices. The first is a journal describing the creative output of young children. The second is a journal describing the classroom improvisations of children aged eleven to thirteen. The third consists of transcripts and photocopies of dramatic reenactments by children aged eleven to thirteen. The fourth comprises aims of a Classical Studies department and outlines of Greek Storylines.

En Colombia, un país entre dos océanos en el norte de la América del Sur, ha habido diversas manifestaciones del arte y la cultura en las que la presencia de la tragedia griega sigue siendo un recurso pertinente para hablar de las heridas de su realidad. Género y destino: la tragedia griega en Colombia es una reflexión enmarcada en sesenta años (entre 1954 y 2014) en los que las obras de Esquilo, Sófocles y Eurípides han estado presentes en sus escenarios, en sus letras o en sus nuevas tendencias audiovisuales. Por un lado, se estudian aquí los tres ejes a partir de los cuales el concepto de lo trágico hace presencia en sus distintas disciplinas artísticas. A saber: la tragedia, desde la perspectiva de la soledad del ser humano. Por otro lado, la tragedia de una sociedad inmersa en una espiral de violencia que no cesa. Y, en tercer lugar, la tragedia como género teatral. Estas tres líneas indican, a su vez, tres modelos de representación en los distintos escenarios colombianos: las puestas en escena ilustrativas (donde se prioriza el texto), las puestas en escena complementarias (donde se pretende crear una ilusión de realidad, conservando el texto pero interrogándolo a través del montaje) y las puestas en escena que prescinden de los versos antiguos, utilizando la tragedia griega como un detonante para enfrentarse a nuevas formas y a nuevas preguntas. Siguiendo las rutas señaladas, el presente estudio emprende un viaje que se remonta a los primeros montajes radiales inspirados en la tragedia griega, hasta llegar a los desafíos posdramáticos de la segunda década del nuevo milenio. Al mismo tiempo, a través de casi cien experiencias artísticas, se vuelve inevitable encontrar el reflejo de un país cercenado por el conflicto armado, donde la realidad y la ficción parecen establecer un tejido en el que se borran los límites entre una y otra. La tragedia griega se convierte en una manera de metaforizar el horror y de dignificar, de alguna manera, el sinsentido de una sociedad que se resiste a salir de su progresivo desconcierto. “Género”, “Destino”, “Tragedia griega” y “Colombia” son los cuatro ejes que guían la reflexión específica sobre el dolor y su traducción en térmi­nos artísticos. En un momento en el que las fronteras del arte tienden a confundirse, el presente estudio persigue las distintas maneras de cómo los versos de la antigüedad sirven para fustigar a una sociedad, en apariencia, lejana a sus modelos de representación. El espacio de la tragedia griega sigue expandiéndose y no sólo se circunscribe al mundo de “las tablas”. Por esta razón, el cine, la narrativa, la poesía o las artes visuales se han apropiado de ciertos mitos específicos de la antigüedad para encontrar puentes de comparación con el mundo contemporáneo. Sendos ejemplos del arte colombiano de finales del siglo XX y comienzos del XXI servirán para mostrar ese diálogo entre el mundo antiguo y el presente. Pero es al teatro donde, en última instancia, se regresa en las líneas que siguen. Género y destino: la tragedia griega en Colombia navega por las aguas de la historia de las artes escénicas de un país, a través de los gru­pos de mayor tradición (TEC, La Candelaria, Teatro Libre de Bogotá), pasando por sus mejores vanguardias (Mapa Teatro), reconociendo los puentes internacionales que se cuelan en sus distintas puestas en escena (Polonia, Italia, Grecia, España, Suiza, Guatemala), hasta llegar a las formas más recientes de representación y, de manera inevitable, a los centros de educación artística en donde se han gestado entusiastas proyectos de reconstrucción del espíritu trágico. De otro lado, será en tres grandes ciudades (Bogotá, Medellín, Cali) donde se refleje, de manera más clara, la necesidad de poner en escena distintos modelos teatrales en los que los acertijos de la Grecia antigua se convierten en talismanes reveladores para darle una nueva universalidad a las manifestaciones artísticas del país. Aunque se ha seguido la pista de la tragedia griega por distintos caminos entre selvas, ríos, playas o montañas, es en esta tríada de centros urbanos donde la presencia de los espectros de Esquilo, Sófocles o Eurípides ha sido más clara y, de alguna manera, más renovadora. En el análisis del recorrido de la tragedia griega en Colombia se verán los modos en que las distintas propuestas teatrales y artísticas han en­carado el conflicto de un país mediante las fábulas atroces narradas por los poetas de la antigüedad. En el presente estudio no sólo se viaja hacia atrás en los siglos, sino que se establecen dos necesidades: por un lado, el análisis de un género desde la perspectiva de sus distintas puestas en escena. Y, por el otro, la manera como se manifiestan los distintos signos de la violencia en una sociedad inmersa en un conflicto que pareciera no llegar nunca a un puerto de reconciliación. El teatro en América Latina, al interior de sus mejores vanguardias, ha estado comprometido de manera estrecha con las grandes luchas sociales de sus respectivos países. Colombia, en particular, ha vivido múltiples violencias y, desde los años cincuenta, ha atravesado el conflicto entre liberales y conservadores, ha pasado a las luchas de las guerrillas de izquierda con el orden establecido, ha narcotizado sus batallas por culpa de la ilegalidad de un negocio que triunfa gracias a su prohibición y, hoy por hoy, todas las sangres parecieran juntarse hasta hacer desaparecer los principios y los fines. En medio de esta borrasca, la tragedia griega se ha reescrito sobre los espacios de representación colombianos, como una de las múltiples maneras de desenredar el hilo de una fortuna que parece estar confundida con el desastre. Género y destino: la tragedia griega en Colombia es un viaje a través de distintos escenarios de representación y es, al mismo tiempo, una reflexión acerca de una sociedad que pareciera acostumbrarse a convivir con la fatalidad.
Genre and Destiny: Greek Tragedy in Colombia is a reflection framed by a period of sixty years (1954-2014) during which time the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides have been present on the country's stages, in its literature, and in its emerging audiovisual trends. We'll study the three axes around which the concept of tragedy in its various artistic disciplines makes its presence felt. First, tragedy from the perspective of human loneliness; second, the tragedy of a society caught in a spiral of endless violence; and, third, tragedy as a theatrical genre. These three lines point, in turn, to three models of representation in various Colombian scenarios: illustrative stagings (where text is prioritized), complementary stagings (aimed at creating the illusion of reality, preserving the text, but questioning it through the staging) and stagings which ignore the ancient verses and use Greek tragedy to trigger new forms and new questions. Based on the above, this study travels back in time to the first radio broadcasts inspired by Greek tragedy and on to the post-dramatic challenges of the new millennium’s second decade. At the same time, by taking a close look at nearly one hundred artistic experiences, we analyze a country at war, where reality and fiction seem so closely interwoven that the boundaries between them are indistinguishable. Greek tragedy becomes a metaphor for the horror and a means of somehow dignifying the absurdity of a society that refuses to rise above a progressive state of confusion. "Genre", "Destiny”, "Greek Tragedy" and "Colombia" are the four axes guiding this very specific reflection on pain and the way it is translated through artistic expression. In a time when the boundaries of art seem to have blurred, this study investigates the different ways in which the ancient verses are used to criticize a society that seems to have distanced itself from its models of representation. The space occupied by Greek tragedy continues to grow and is not limited to the stage. Because of this, film, narratives, poetry, and the visual arts have appropriated certain specific ancient myths that make it possible to bridge the gap with the contemporary world. There are many examples of late twentieth-century and early twenty-first century Colombian art that testify to this dialogue between the old and present-day worlds. But this study, ultimately, returns to the theater. Genre and Destiny: Greek Tragedy in Colombia explores the history of the nation's performing arts through some of its most traditional groups (the TEC, La Candelaria, Bogota's Teatro Libre) and best vanguard ensembles (Mapa Teatro), and by recognizing the international influences present in its different stagings (Poland, Italy, Greece, Spain, Switzerland, Guatemala), arriving finally at its most recent forms of representation and, inevitably, the arts education centers where enthusiastic projects are underway to redefine, once again, the tragic spirit. Genre and Destiny: Greek Tragedy in Colombia is both a journey through the country's different stages of representation and a reflection on a society that seems accustomed to living with fatality. It is a study of violence in a society centered on an analysis of its art forms, using the Greek tragedy as an aesthetic trigger.

Since classical times, the witch has remained an eerie, powerful and foreboding figure in literature and drama. Often beautiful and alluring, like Circe, and just as often terrifying and aged, like Shakespeare’s Wyrd Sisters, the witch lives ever just outside the margins of polite society. In John Marston’s Sophonisba, or The Wonder of Women the witch’s ability to persuade through the use of language is Marston’s commentary on the power of poetry, theater and women’s speech in early modern Britain. Erichtho is the ultimate example of a terrifying woman who uses linguistic persuasion to change the course of nations. Throughout the play, the use of speech draws reader’s attention to the role of the mouth as an orifice of persuasion and to the power of speech. It is through Erichtho’s mouth that Marston truly highlights the power of subversive speech and the effects it has on its intended audience.

Challenging the common notion that mythological comedies simply burlesque stories found in epic and tragedy, this dissertation shows that comic poets were active participants in creating and transmitting myths and argues that their mythical innovations influenced accounts found in tragedy and prose mythography. Although no complete Greek mythological comedy survives, hundreds of fragments and titles reveal that this type of drama was extremely popular; they were staged in Greece, Sicily, and Southern Italy and make up about one-half of all comedies produced in some periods. These fragments, supplemented by Plautus' Amphitruo (the only nearly complete mythological comedy), vase-paintings, and ancient testimonia, shed light on the vibrant tradition of comic mythology. In chapter one, I argue that ancient scholars' and prose mythographers' citations of comedies invite us to view comedians as authoritative myth-makers. I then survey the development of mythological comedy throughout the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. The plays' titles reveal common mythical topics as well as a number of comic myths that survived independent of the tragic tradition. In chapter two, I argue that Cratinus' Dionysalexandros and Epicharmus' Odysseus the Deserter are wildly innovative comedies that challenge previous accounts for mythological authority. In chapter three, Epicharmus' Pyrrha and Prometheus, Pherecrates' Antmen, and Cratinus' Wealth Gods are studied to show how comedians created new stories by fusing myths together and by combining myth and historical reality. In chapter four, I look at the affairs of Zeus to show the dramatists' different approaches to the same mythical material. While tragedians tend to focus on the suffering of Zeus' victims, comedians feature Zeus' humorously outlandish and usually harmless seductions. In chapter five, on the Amphitruo, I show how Plautus has transformed a myth about the birth of Heracles into a story about Jupiter's long-term affair with a pregnant woman. In chapter six, I enter the debate about comedy's influence on tragedy and argue that mythical variants invented by the comic poet Cratinus have been incorporated into Euripides' Trojan Women and Helen, which demonstrates that, as early as the fifth century, comic poets were seen as mythological authorities.
2017-06-30T00:00:00Z

The musical analysis of Greek tragedy has traditionally been limited to studies of meter and metatheatrical language. This dissertation seeks to establish a new approach to ancient dramatic song by demonstrating that the linguistic pitch accents of tragic lyrics often trace the melodic contours of their lost musical settings. In the papyri and inscriptions that preserve music notation alongside Greek lyrics, intonation and melody are often coordinated according to set principles, which are well established by previous scholarship. Through the creation of software that applies these historical principles to tragic texts, I demonstrate that stanzas sung to the same melody are significantly more similar in their accentual contours than control groups that do not share a melody. In many instances, the accents of these paired texts consistently trace the same pitch contours, allowing us to reconstruct the shape of the original melody with a high degree of confidence.After a general introduction, the dissertation’s first two chapters address the historical basis for this approach. Chapter 1 reviews the evidence for the musical structure of tragic song, confirming the widely held view that paired stanzas were generally set to the same melody. Chapter 2 turns to the evidence for the role of pitch accents in ancient Greek song, including the ancient testimony and musical documents, and a computational study of accent patterns across all the lyrics of Aeschylus’ surviving tragedies. The methodology developed in these first two chapters is applied in two case studies, in which I reconstruct and interpret the accentual melodies of select tragic lyrics. Chapter 3 analyzes the musical design of the chorus’ entrance song in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, along with sections of the Kommos from Choephori. In both cases, I argue, melody would play an integral role in highlighting the themes of repetition and reversal within the Oresteia. Chapter 4 turns to the music of Euripides’ Medea, a play that has been central to previous discussions of accent in tragic music. Reading the lyrics and accentual melodies within the framework of musical history as understood in the fifth century bce, I argue that Euripides uses a contrast between ‘old’ and ‘new’ melodic styles to position his chorus at a turning point within literary history. In the dissertation’s final chapter, I address the reception of Medea’s music in a fragmentary comedy, the so-called Alphabet Tragedy of Callias. Together, these interpretive chapters provide a template for future work applying methods of musical analysis to the accentual melodies of ancient Greek song.

This study explores how in central plays of Euripides – namely, Alcestis, Hippolytus, Helen, and Bacchae – bodies, landscapes, and objects (both seen on stage and described in speeches, dialogues, and choral odes) serve as media for assessing affective states, materializing the characters’ feelings and sensations and hence enabling the audience to vividly perceive them. My focus is grounded in the ancient conceptions of bodies and the senses in material from the Pre-Socratic and the Hippocratic writings, including theories about how the surrounding environment influences bodily types. It is also underpinned by theoretical perspectives that have come to prominence in recent research in ancient literature and culture. First, it draws on insights from phenomenology, aesthetics, and affective theory that in ancient drama highlight embodiment, synaesthesia, and the circulation of affects among characters and spectators. Second, it engages with works inspired by the new materialisms, which have produced a new attention to the mutual and symbiotic relationship between humans and nonhuman entities. Finally, it is based on the “enactive” approach to cognition, which makes a compelling case for visualization (e.g., spectators’ imagination of the things sung, spoken, or narrated) as grounded in the active, embodied structure of experience. Building on such theories, I posit that Euripides’ plays illustrate how the characters’ feelings and emotions combine with sensory indicators (sight, taste, smell, and touch), so that they operate as visible marks of states usually conceived of as inner. These states are, I suggest, exteriorized not only on bodies but also in their surroundings, such that landscapes as mapped onto the dramatic stage and objects with which the characters interact function as supplements to embodied affective manifestations. In addition to onstage action, I focus on how Euripides’ language triggers a strong resonance in the spectators’ imagination. In this regard, my argument takes up the insights of ancient critics such as Longinus, who has praised Euripides’ ability to generate “emotion” (τὸ παθητικόν) and “excitement” (τὸ συγκεκινημένον) in the audience through “visualization” (φαντασία) and “vividness” (ἐνάργεια). Thus, I examine how references to onstage performance and visualizing language interact, giving the spectators a full picture of the dramatic action. In Alcestis, I explore how embodiment, sensorial phenomena, and physical interactions put the characters’ feelings of pain and grief on prominent display, eliciting the audience’s sensory reaction. In Hippolytus, I examine how the characters’ emotions blend into the surroundings, such that forms, colors, and textures of landscape and objects allow the spectators to perceive inner states more forcefully. In Helen, I investigate how material and nonhuman things, such as rivers, plants, costumes, weapons, statues, ships connect to the characters as parts of an affective entanglement that heightens the experiential appeal of the characters’ feelings and sensations. In the Bacchae, I regard Dionysus’ action as an affective force that spreads throughout the world of the play, cracks, and mutates things, including human and animal bodies, natural elements, and objects. This action creates an enmeshment between things, which is embodied by the thyrsus topped with Pentheus’ head (mask) that gives the spectators a keen sense of the multiple, productive, and transformative nature of Dionysus’ power. In conclusion, this study argues that bodies, landscapes, and objects represent the privileged sites for exploring the affective exchange between the characters and the audience, refining our understanding of the intensity, impact, and reception of the Euripidean theater.

This study sets out to reveal the groundbreaking use of monody in the late plays of Euripides: in his hands, it is shaped into a potent and flexible instrument for representing emotion and establishing new narrative and thematic structures. Engaging with the current scholarly debate on music, affect, and characterization in Greek tragedy, I examine the role that monody plays in the musical design of four plays of Euripides, all produced in the last decade of his career: Ion, Iphigenia in Tauris, Phoenician Women, and Orestes. These plays are marked by the increased presence of actors’ song in proportion to choral song. The lyric voice of the individual takes on an unprecedented prominence with far-reaching implications for the structure and impact of each play. The monodies of Euripides are a true dramatic innovation: in addition to creating an effect of heightened emotion, monody is used to develop character and shape plot. In Ion, Iphigenia in Tauris, Phoenician Women, and Orestes, Euripides uncouples monody’s traditional and exclusive connection with lament. In contrast to the work of Aeschylus and Sophocles, where actors’ song is always connected with grief and pain, in these four plays monody conveys varied moods and states of mind. Monody expresses joy, hope, anxiety, bewilderment, accusation, and deliberation. Often, and simultaneously, it moves forward narrative exposition. The scope and dramatic function of monody grows and changes: passages of actors’ lyric become longer, more metrically complex, more detached from the other characters onstage, and more intensely focused on the internal experience of the singer. In the four plays under discussion we see a steadily increasing refinement and expansion of the form, a development that rests upon the changes in the style and function of contemporary music in the late fifth century. By 415 B.C., many formal features of tragedy had become highly conventionalized, and determined a set of expectations in the contemporary audience. Reacting against this tradition, Euripides successively redefines monody: each song takes over a traditional Bauform of tragedy, and builds upon it. The playwright uses the paired monodies of Ion to pose a conflict of ideas that might otherwise be conveyed through an agon. In Iphigenia in Tauris the heroine’s crisis and its resolution are presented in lyrics, rather than as a deliberative rhesis. In Phoenician Women, Antigone, Jocasta, and Oedipus replace the Chorus in lamenting the fall of the royal house. Finally, the Phrygian slave in Orestes sings a monody explicitly marked as a messenger speech that inverts the conventions of the form to raise questions about objectivity and truth in a disordered world. In examining these four plays, I hope to show some of the various potentials of this new Euripidean music as a major structural element in tragic drama, insofar as it can heighten emphasis, allow for the development of emotional states both subtle and extreme, reveal and deepen character, and mirror thematic movements. Euripides establishes monody as a dramatic form of considerable versatility and power. The poetry is charged with increased affect and expressivity; at the same time it articulates a new self-consciousness about the reciprocal capacities of form and content to shape one another. Here we may discern the shift of sensibility in Euripides’ late work, which proceeds pari passu with an apparent loosening of structural demands, or what one with equal justice might recognize as an increase in degrees of freedom. As the playwright repeatedly reconfigures the relationship between form and content, the range of what can happen onstage, of what can be said and sung, expands.

This paper is focused on the concept of catharsis in classic Greek tragedy. In the first part, it traces historical context of this term particularly trough the work of Plato; and later, the main effort is devoted to Aristotle. It looks closely in Aristotle's Poetics and Politics, which are the only works where he mentions catharsis. After research of the Aristotle's texts, the study presents variety of interpretations that have arisen over centuries, examines them and derives an elementary understanding of catharsis. The second part of this work tries to trace catharsis in a sample of preserved tragedies of main Greek dramatists. It investigates tragic characters, plot and tragic emotions (i.e. pity and fear). The scope is to compare the Aristotle's theory and practice of dramatists, who lived one century before the theory had rised. Last but not least the study concludes by bringing forward an evaluation of this approach to the theory of Aristotelian catharsis.