HUM 102W Lecture Notes - Clytemnestra, Aegisthus, Aeschylus

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Humanities
• Course: HUM 102W
• Professor: David Mirhady

Document Summary

Aeschylus" agamemnon is a difficult play for the modern reader. Like the prometheus bound, it shows many signs of the origins of tragedy as a series of choral songs: the action is relatively static, the speeches are long, and the language is highly metaphorical. There may be some solace for you in the fact that the play is even more difficult when read in greek. The agamemnon is the first play of the only surviving trilogy in greek tragedy, the oresteia. A complete understanding of the play can thus only be achieved by reading the other two plays, libations bearers and eumenides, but that will have to wait for another course. In this reading, your situation is analogous to the one everyone faces with prometheus bound. In that play, lie this one, there is an unflattering picture of divine justice. In prometheus bound zeus appears like a newly minted tyrant who overturns traditional notions of justice.