Other Electras: Aeschylus and Sophocles

Hello,

I'm Judith Mossman. I'm professor of classics at the University of Nottingham.

And today I'm going to talk about Euripides Electra.

It's very important

when thinking about the

elector of your evidence to bear in mind that there are other versions of this story,

uh, going around as well.

And Europe it is quite clearly knew some of them very well.

We know of an Oresteia being, uh, composed by the Sicilian poet Stacey Chris.

Uh, and we know that that was, in turn, used by Aeschylus, the Athenian dramatist,

to compose his masterpiece, the Oresteia.

Uh, the trilogy, uh, in 458 BC

Now of this trilogy,

the first play, Agamemnon dealt with the murder of Agamemnon by his wife,

Clytemnestra.

The second play.

But the libation bearers, uh,

dealt with the revenge taken on Clytemnestra and against this by arrests.

And that's obviously the most important one for us.

And the third play,

the Humanities dealt with the trial and acquittal of arrests

in the court of the Ari op Agus at Athens.

The Oresteia was immensely popular.

There's some evidence that it was re performed fairly early in its history,

and it may well have been widely read, and people will have learned passages from it,

uh, in order to recite at dinner parties and, uh,

as part of their education from a fairly early date.

And it is very clear that in composing the Electra Europe bodies

was drawing on his knowledge and the audience's knowledge of the Oresteia.

What's much less clear is the relationship of your refugees.

Play to Sophocles Electra.

We don't know the date of Sophocles Electra.

We don't know the date of your body's Electra, either, although it's probably, uh,

at some point, uh, during the teams of the fifth century.

But we can't rule out either, uh, Sophocles

rising his play before Europeans in Europe.

It is responding to Sophocles or the other way around,

and it's important to remember that

both of them are clearly looking back at the middle play

of these Galaxies Trinity

and thinking. Hmm,

Electra.

Now

that character is a bit under used in Aeschylus.

Let's see what I can do with that,

because in in East Earnest, Electra is a little bit under used.

There are good reasons for that.

Uh, she is bringing libations to the grave of her father with the chorus.

Hence the title of the play.

Uh, arrests has, uh,

unbeknownst to her comeback in order to take vengeance on his mother and her lover,

she finds indications of the tomb that he has been there, and she, uh,

literally tracks him across the stage in his by his footprints.

And the two have an emotional reunion.

And then they sing the great Commerce together, the great duet, um,

where they call upon the spirit of our demand

on to help them in taking their vengeance.

And then after that splendid moment, well, a bit more than a moment, actually,

quite long

electoral goes into the house

and isn't heard of or from ever again.

The rest of the play is all about the activities of arrestees.

Um, now, within the context of the Oresteia, that's very important, because it, uh,

we have a male female pairing, which is not transgressive.

Pretty much for the first time.

Uh, Clytemnestra is a tremendously transgressive character.

In the first play, she kills her husband,

and she's clearly getting set to Bossy gives this around, um,

and in the second play, that hasn't really changed.

She's still a very, uh,

dangerous person whose response to hearing that I guess this is dead,

is they bring me an axe.

Um, not somebody you want to cross. Uh,

the fact that arrestees is in charge and Elektra disappears, uh,

shows that this is a veil feeling female pairing,

which is putting to rights some of the transgressions, uh, in the first play.

But clearly both your bodies and Sophocles wanted something different.

Sophocles has an ageing, uh, and frankly deluded Electra,

who is manipulated by her brother when he comes back in disguise,

who's heartbroken, but at the same time

completely unbridled in her sorrow obsessed with

her father that it's Sophocles Electra,

that Freud named the complex after,

uh and, uh, constantly, uh,

and vehemently proclaiming her sorrow and rage and frustration and anger.

She is very much the unwed id Electra because, uh,

Electra the name is sometimes it apologised as a Electra,

the person who doesn't have a bed, uh, the person who is unmarried,

and, uh, this sort of frustrated spinster, um,

stressing about her father and how miserable she is is very much as I say,

what Freud based the complex on

people are constantly contrasting.

Euripides,

Electra with that Sophocleus in Elektra and with the electorate of East Dallas,

and also making contrasts between arrestees

and his appearances in those other two plays.

It's a good approach, but it's not always, I think,

been used as wisely as it might have been.