Recently read: The Oresteia by Aeschylus.

It’s funny that we are reading this in my summer course on tragedy with Dr. Evarts. I discussed Agamemnon in my presentation on intertextual referencing in Mrs. Dalloway last semester.

Aeschylus is one of my favorite Greek writers. The Oresteia is a powerful trilogy that still feels extremely relevant to today’s world. My classmates were very interested in the role Cassandra plays, but I found Athena’s role, and explanation, for breaking the hung jury to be more intriguing.

I forgot to mention in my presentation on Woolf, and this might be a coincidence, but both Aeschylus and Woolf use foreshadowing to offer a lot of “spoiler alerts!” in their work. Seriously, I argued with a friend a few months back that Woolf gives away the ending of Mrs. Dalloway in the second paragraph. Pretty cool nonetheless. Anyhow, the red tapestries and other devices in Agamemnon also foreshadow the ending.

Also: Robert Fagles’ translation is lovely and quite poetic. Whatever the one the class was using, I can’t remember at the moment, was a lot more…let’s say, bland. Fagles, as always, offers a superior translation.

Bookmark and Share

Related posts:

  1. Mrs. Dalloway
  2. The Common Reader (First Series)