Greek literature terms

Agon (ἀγών)

In drama, the debate section which often occurs near the middle between two (or more) characters. Often takes the form of stichomythia - when dialogue goes lines by line. Derived from the word contest.

Anagorisis

Recognition”

Describes the turning point in a tragedy, when the tragic character recognizes the truth of his/her circumstances

The example: Oedipus discovering his wife is his mom and that he killed his dad / blinds himself

Aporia

"Perplexity"
A state of puzzlement, or an impasse / a paradox
May arise in philosophy when two equally plausible options are presented
Plato's dialogues are often called 'aporetic' because they end in a state of aporia
"The Socratic method proceeds by reducing the pupil to a state of aporia (or puzzlement) and admission of complete ignorance (not to mention irritation), and then drawing out knowledge by a process of questioning, a process of intellectual 'midwifery'

Catharsis

"Relief"
A cleansing that the audience feels after experiencing powerful emotions that a strong drama brings forth
Often with tragedy
Tragedy allows the audience the feel intense, sometimes disturbing, emotions that cannot be experienced in real life without terrible cost

Choregos

any wealthy Athenian citizen who paid the costs of theatrical productions at festivals during the 4th and 5th centuries BC.
Since the spirit of these contests was highly competitive, a rich, helpful, and charitable choragus gave the playwright an advantage. If the play won a prize, however, it officially was awarded to the choragus.

Chorus

Required for each of the various genres of performance
A monolithic group that comments on the events of the play with one unified voice
12-50 members
Dance, sang, spoke in unison, sometimes wore masks.
Often put in the Doric dialect, and has strange features.

Dactylic Hexameter

The meter in which epic poetry is written

Consists of 6 feet of either two long syllables (spondaic) or three syllables (one long, two shorts = dactylic) each

The fifth syllable is ALMOST always dactylic

The last syllable is always spondaic

Example: Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey; Virgil’s Aeneid

Ekkyklema

"Roll out machine"
A wheeled platform rolled out through the skene
Often used to portray events which would take place inside. Stage magic

ekphrasis

Verbal description of a visual setting or an object within the text, often having a symbolic relationship to the text as a whole
Idea is to attempt to make the written description of the object even more incredible than (or as descriptive as possible of) the object itself
Most famous example: the shield of achilles in Homer. Speaking out of the plot.

Elegy

a poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead. Poetry written in elegiac couplets ( a hexameter line + a pentameter line)
Many do discuss death / lamentation - but can also be about alot of other topics
So like a haiku except not at all, because it goes 656 and not 575.

Epic cycle

-a collection of Ancient Greek epic poems that related the story of the Trojan War. There is also a Theban cycle

Epithet

A word or phrase which accompanies the name of a deity (usually in epic)
Common + well known ones are indications of place / function / connection to other gods
Almost every god/goddess in the theogony is acompanied by an epithet - but its unclear if cultic epithets and literary ones were the same
Epithets are a product of the 8th + 7th century - do not appear in prior epigraphic text (linear b)

Episodos

In drama, the sections of dialogue that come between choruses
Where the action takes place
In Iambic Trimeter

Iambic Trimeter

The meter in which the episodes of drama are written

Consists of three metra of four syllables each

Alternating longs and shorts, but some variation is possible

Example: Euripides’ Medea

Also includes iambic poetry

Aristotle says this is the closest meter to natural speech - but earlier poets use it slightly differently

Ktema Es Aei

= "possession for ever"
Quote by Thucydides (1.22)
Refers to a an enduring work of literature

logographer

Greek historiography originated in the activities of a group of writers whom the Greeks called logographoi (“logographers”). Logography was the prose compilation of oral traditions relating to the origins of towns, peoples, and places.

No manuscripts of these authors have survived

Hecataeus of Miletus

Herodotus combines the work of previous lographers into a coherent, historical piece on the Persian Wars

Machine

"Towards the right (western) end of the stage area a crane ( mēchanē , machina ) could be manipulated from behind the stage building to bring gods or heroes through the air onto the stage, or to have them fly up from it, like Bellerophon on Pegasos in a scene of Euripides which Aristophanes parodies in Peace." (OCD)
Machine was a crane used in Greek theatre, especially in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. Made of wooden beams and pulley systems, the device was used to lift an actor into the air, usually representing flight

mime

Interpretive performance or performer

“From early times solo performers, by play of gesture, voice, and feature, gave imitations of neighing horses, etc. (Pl. Resp. 396b), and small companies, called in Sparta δεικηλίκται‎ (? ‘masked men’), elsewhere αὐτοκάβδαλοι‎ (‘improvisers’) or in Italiot towns φλύακες‎ (phlyakes), presented short scenes from daily life (e.g. ‘The Quack Doctor’) or mythology, probably on a hastily erected stage in the market-place or in a private house; such performers belonged to the social class of acrobats” (OCD)

Literally - mimicking something in a believable way

Aristotle discusses this in great detail in his poetics

Middle Comedy.

Not much known about this stage of comedy, transitional stage between Old and New Comedy

“The term ‘Middle Comedy’ was coined by a Hellenistic scholar as a convenient label for plays produced in the years between Old and New Comedy (c.404–c.321 BCE)...probably no single kind of play deserves to be styled ‘Middle Comedy’ to the exclusion of all others.” (OCD)

“The defeat of Athens in 404 BCE vitally affected the comic stage; the loss of imperial power and political energy was reflected in comedy by a choice of material less intrinsically Athenian and more cosmopolitan” (OCD).

New Comedy

5-act structure

The plays of New Greek Comedy were geared more about everyday people/occurances rather than being politically motivated like Old Comedy, “Thus, the chorus, the representative of forces larger than life, recedes in importance and becomes a small band of musicians and dancers who periodically provide light entertainment”

Usually about a father-son conflict over a woman. Begins with the girl being unattainable and ends with the guy getting the girl. Greek New Comedy became a form of political escapism. It re-stabilizes the social order after the import of Hellenistic values as its main point. Very realistic characteristics and actions, well-drawn psychologically well-rounded, no farce- it is a comedy of manner.

Oral composition

composition of poetry without aid of writing for oral delivery; the work is in effect recomposed each time it is performed; Homer's poems are thought to be this type of composition. Milman Parry (1902-35), Discovered dactylic hexameter in Homer. Speculated that nonliterate poets used formulas to compose without writing Ex: "swift-footed Achilles" or "godlike"
Traveled to Serbia, NW of Greece, to study oral singers (gulsari) and learned that they did not think in terms of separate words as they sang, but phrases or lines.
Discovered no such thing as a "fixed text" the oral poet would know fixed lines and and remember the plot and themes, then improvise as he sings. This (or something similar) is probably how Homeric epic was performed.

Parabasis

= "stepping forth"
Term used in old comedy - disapears in middle comedy
Parabasis= chorus addresses the audience
Aristophanes is the best example
"Semos of Delos (quoted by Ath. 622c) speaks of 'phallus-bearers' or φαλλοφόροι (at Sicyon ?) who ridiculed members of their audience, and it is possible that the germ of the parabasis of Old Comedy lay in words or verses uttered in mockery of the public by men who accompanied the phallus in the procession in Dionysiac festivals at Athens." (OCD)

Peripeteia

= "turning around"
In tragedy, the overturning of fortune (accompanied by "recognition") of the tragic character that occurs at the turning point of the tragedy

Satyr Play

The fourth play performed at the City Dionysia festival in Athens
Usually some sort of parody of the previous three plays written by the same tragic author
Chorus is composed of Satyrs
Speech is metrically and stylistically identical to tragic speech
"There is a set of typical motifs, notably the captivity (explaining their presence in various myths) and eventual liberation of the satyrs, marvellous inventions and creations (of wine, the lyre, fire, etc.), riddles, emergence from the underworld, the care of divine or heroic infants, and athletics"(OCD)

Septuagint

The Christian sacred scriptures in Greek
Some translated, others originally in Greek
The earliest extant Koine Greek translation of books from the Hebrew bible, various biblical apocrypha, deuterocanonical books

Skene

Greek word for "tent," since early plays were performed in front of tents
As time progressed, the performance spaces became more permanent, the skene came to mean the stage

Stichomythia

A dialogue in which the endings and beginnings of each line echo each other, taking on a new meaning with each new line. In drama, describes the "one-line-per-character" format which occurs in the debate portion of a tragedy often found at the center of the play
Sophocles loves this style of writing - appears often
Creates a powerful / rhythmic dialogue.