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Modern Poetics
Starring Eric de la Fe and Gabriela Rodríguez |
The Greek
Tragedy is one of the most controversial topics in literary criticism, and, as
expected, Aristotle’s classic Poetics,
a treatise that constitutes the first theoretical method for understanding the
Greek Tragedy, has been supported or (most likely) confronted by modern and
contemporary scholars.
Page Dubois
affirms that Aristotle’s work corresponds to “a different regime of truth than
that of the theater of Dionysus in the fifth century, and the intense
engagement of the city in its invention of itself as a radical democracy”
(132). The writer calls our attention to the fact that Aristotle’s alien status
in Athens might
have been connected to his uninterested position towards more challenging
political repercussions of tragedy. Dubois criticizes Aristotle’s idea of tragedy
as a prescriptive formula that has to have an appropriate dose of catharsis to
make each member of the audience experience pity and fear. The exaltation of
the cathartic element leads the reader toward the importance of individual
attitudes and reactions in preference to collective ones, becoming a system
that subtly refers to a disciplining of the social body. Aristotle’s reading of
tragedy intentionally avoids any allusion to the citizens’ participation in the
festivals of Dionysus, an active ingredient of the tragic performance.
Dubois herself
explores how the tragic work is defined by other forms of communal
representation. According to the author, the Greek Tragedy surpasses
Aristotle’s focus on the individual in “its haunting by the slaves of ancient
Greek society; its access to mourning, and its presentation of choral song that
is necessarily collective, diverse, and heterogeneous” (136). References to the
issue of slavery exist in many tragic plays through dialogue remarks or
dramatic situations that make us think of “social death, anonymity and ethnic
difference.” Mourning can be seen in the moments of lamentation and grief which
tragedy “extends to eternity,” allowing the spectators to acknowledge their
place in the world. Choruses in tragedy assimilate both citizens and the rest
of the population with debatable social status. These features should be taken
as indicators of people’s great involvement in the democratic processions and
activities carried out during the drama festivals, promoting tragedy as a
“political spectacle with political consequences.”
Dubois’s
approach to tragedy certainly opens up a more “heterogeneous, unstable, and
polymorphous” understanding that speaks to the postmodern world of
“increasingly polarized power and powerlessness.” The portraits of despotic,
presupposed democratic governments and drastic state laws that demolish even
the most genuine family values are seen in the Greek Tragedy as serious causes
of deaths, devastation and catastrophes. In Antigone,
Creon, ruler of Thebes,
demands that the dead body of Polynices should be kept without receiving proper
burial. He informs the Elders about his decree “in honor of the city,” but he
does not allow any further discussion or leave room for different opinions. The
Theban Elders are not portrayed as a significant source of power, nor do they
seem very useful as a counseling group or in counteracting Creon’s laws. From a
postmodern perspective, the play can be seen as referring to gender struggle
and the condition of being mentally and psychologically dominated (enslaved) by
other people, the State, society.
Dubois mentions
the O.J. Simpson case in her study, comparing it to the Greek Tragedy. She
says, “The trial did indeed resemble a Greek Tragedy; it was a political spectacle
with political consequences” (127). The sentence “it was a political spectacle
with political consequences,” though, seems to purposely deny the artistic
character of the Greek Tragedy. Was the Greek Tragedy a political spectacle, or,
rather, a creative portrayal of it? One essential characteristic of the Greek
Tragedy that sets it apart from the “regime of truth” of the celebrations of
Dionysus consists of the presence of actors and the role-playing situation in
which they were involved. Only three actors performed on stage in the time of
Sophocles, and they wore masks and costumes to play the characters. Secondly,
all actors were male, and they had to take up the female parts. Thirdly, none
of the actions in which the actors were involved must have really happened in the space of representation. No actual documentation recording plagues, suicides, or murders of Greek actors playing tragic roles has been found to date.
The features
mentioned above made the Greek Tragedy’s regime of truth an artistic, mimetic* product in its very essence.
Aristotle succeeded in recognizing that the Greek Tragedy was created to be a
mimetic construction, having a nature different from any other sorts of
(political?) events taking place in the ancient Athens. Although the Greek Tragedy happened
to be part of the large processions celebrated in the fifth century, with an
active involvement of citizens that seemed profitable to the city’s invention
of itself as a radical democracy, it was conceived as an essentially creative
piece. The Greek Tragedy might have offered some resemblance to –yet, it was
not in itself- a political set of affairs.
Dubois’s text on
the Greek Tragedy makes us think of what David H. Richter calls a “discursive
practice, a mode of power/knowledge that needs to be analyzed using the rules
of New Historicism and cultural studies.” While Aristotle emphasizes the
mimetic properties of the Greek Tragedy, Dubois underlines the cultural,
historical, and political features of it. By reading Sophocles’s play Antigone from Aristotle’s standpoint,
one notices that the idea of the “collective, diverse and heterogeneous”
becomes somewhat inapplicable, for the Theban Elders behave as an individual -rather
than a group of people with different points of view- during the whole
development of the action. Even the city is personalized as a fragile individual
(a woman?). Surprisingly, Dubois’s thesis of the “unruly, diverse, and
disturbing” tragic elements may be found, not in the presence of the members of
the chorus but the actions of very specific characters in the play; characters like
Haemon and Antigone, who reveal against the extreme laws issued by the state.
*mimetic: As
understood by Aristotle, it refers to the condition or process of imitating and
consciously observing how one state of affairs metamorphoses into another,
capturing the general principles of human action and involving the translation
of reality into another medium.
References:
Aristotle. Poetics. Trans. S. H. Butcher. New York: Hill and Wang,
1961.
Dubois, Page. “Toppling
the Hero: Polyphony in the Tragic City.” Rethinking
Tragedy. Rita Felski (ed.) The Johns
Hopkins University
Press, 2008. 127-147.
Sophocles. Antigone. Trans. Nicholas Rudall, Ivan
R. Dee, Publishers, 1998.
