Greek Influence on Western Literature Essay

Slide One The plays performed at the fiesta of Dionysus represented a completely refreshful performance genre drama. Plays equal Oedipus Rex, Medea, and Antigone laid the groundwork for the great plays to make up the western canon, from Shakespeares Hamlet to Arthur Millers Death of a Salesman. Slide ii This era also saw the birth and development of a new literary genre tragedy. In plays like Oedipus Rex, the basic tragical construction in which a character experiences a change from happiness to hurt was codified and refined. In the hands of writers like Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, it became a vehicle for the exploration of some of humanitys fundamental fears and questions about existence. You can memorize the same questions being explored in works by Shakespeare, for example, hundreds of years later.Today, to a greater extent than 2,000 years later, these plays are still studied by modern tragic playwrights. Slide Three Finally, the Athenian tragedies were important because they put humans at the center of the story. In the Iliad, for example, the gods are closely involved in the sue they puddle sides, they intervene on behalf of their heroes, and so on. While gods do step up in these plays, it is the very human protagonists such as Oedipus or Medea who take center stage, and whose actions determine the plot. This change signaled a shift in centralise from the supernatural to the human in literature, which would have a profound allure on the Western tradition, particularly after the Middle Ages.