Bacchae is the main text of this unit. Dionysus is the main character of the play, and is an Ancient Greek god. He is the son of Zeus and Semele, a mortal. He is the god of vegetation, just as Demeter is the female vegetation goddess. He represents ecstasy and madness and is associated with theater. Ecstasy means literally beyond stability, or transcending a static or normal state. In other words, he is the god of being outside of one's self. Every spring, there was a theater festival in Athens to celebrate Dionysus.
Characteristics of the religion of Dionysus include spiritual release through music and dance, possession of the god by his followers (entheos). The wine is meant to help followers to be possessed. Sporagmos ripping apart a sacrificial animal. Omophagy is when you eat the sacrificed animal raw. The title of our text, Bacchae, means the female followers of Bacchus (which is the Latin name for Dionysus). Maenads is another term for the exclusively female followers of Dionysus.
Dionysus represents hte dissolution of boundaries. Psychologically, he represents a free emotional life without the traditional constraints of other people, society, morality, etc. Culturally, he blurs boundaries between civilization and the wild, moral and immortal, humanity and beasts and male and female. In theater, an actor is thought to fuse with his character and the viewer is meant to identify with the actors, thus breaking the boundary between self and her.
Dionysis is both a god and a beast. As a beast, we mean that he is unintelligible or unhuman. As a god, he is at the center of a civic religion, but is he worshiped in the mountains. He is male, but appears feminine. He is Greek but comes from Asia. He is neither child nor man, but a perpetual adolescent. He brings wine to men and madness to women. His Thyrsus is meant to open channels of fluid from the ground (wine, milk, water), but this can also be a dangerous weapon--a shaft or missile.
Euripides is the author of Bacchae. The text was chosen because it shows many themes relevant to the year-long Humcore course. This text was chosen because it features humans being punished for refusing to worship a god. God is portrayed as an enemy to society, and nature upsets social norms. We might also consider why god is worshiped in nature. Other themes include rationality impedes understanding divinity and divine wrath is excessive and unable to be appeased.
Another important theme is doubling. There are two opposing worldviews: the rational civic world of Pentheus and the irrational world of Dionysus. There are two sets of maenads: one group of Asia and another from Thebes. There are two Dionysuses: the god himself in the prologue and exodus and the god in disguise. When in his own form, he is presented as a deus ex machina, meaning he arrives in his god form from a machine on stage as if from the heavens. There are also two scenes of constrained maenads: one peaceful, the other murderous. When the women are left alone, they are peaceful, but they become murderous when bothered.
The structure of the work is a prologue at the beginning and an exodus at the end with a series of episodes followed by choral odes. At the beginning of the play, we are near a path to Citchaeron, a mountain. Dionysus is literally standing between nature (the mountain) and the city. The scene opens on the tomb of Dionysus' mother. Dionysus enters and stage directions describe him as looking like a woman: beardless, long hair, ivy wreath, etc. He addresses the audience and tells them that he has come back to Thebes. He says he is a god and the son of Zeus, which is exactly the question at issue in the play. At the end of the play, after he punishes the city, he reminds the audience that he is god. Dionysus indicates that Hera has had something to do with Semele's death. He tells of the spread of his religion, and tells how he has forced the women in Thebes to follow him as madwomen. As a result, they have abandoned their "womanly" duties at home.
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