Tragedy and Ritual - article ; n°1 ; vol.3, pg 87-109

Patricia E.Easterling

Description

Mètis. Anthropologie des mondes grecs anciens - Année 1988 - Volume 3 - Numéro 1 - Pages 87-109
Tragedy and Ritual (pp. 87-109)
Ce travail envisage la possibilité que l'action scénique impliquée par les textes tragiques grecs fournisse des indices importants sur les relations entre tragédie et rituel. On examine de façon assez détaillée des exemples pris dans trois pièces (Ajax, LesEuménides, l'Electre d'Euripide); ils suggèrent que, par l'évocation de l'action rituelle, ce qui est dit et montré sur scène reçoit un sens plus profond. L'idée couramment partagée que l'usage tragique d'un rituel est toujours de quelque façon anormal ou subversif est beaucoup trop restrictive; on envisage ensuite quelques perspectives plus larges de recherche.
23 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.

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• Publié par: DIALOGUES_D-HISTOIRE_ANCIENNE
• Publié le: 01 janvier 1988
• Nombre de lectures: 31
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

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Patricia E. Easterling
Tragedy and Ritual
In: Mètis. Anthropologie des mondes grecs anciens. Volume 3, n°1-2, 1988. pp. 87-109.
Résumé
Tragedy and Ritual (pp. 87-109)
Ce travail envisage la possibilité que l'action scénique impliquée par les textes tragiques grecs fournisse des indices importants
sur les relations entre tragédie et rituel. On examine de façon assez détaillée des exemples pris dans trois pièces (Ajax,
LesEuménides, l'Electre d'Euripide); ils suggèrent que, par l'évocation de l'action rituelle, ce qui est dit et montré sur scène reçoit
un sens plus profond. L'idée couramment partagée que l'usage tragique d'un rituel est toujours de quelque façon anormal ou
subversif est beaucoup trop restrictive; on envisage ensuite quelques perspectives plus larges de recherche.
Citer ce document / Cite this document :
Easterling Patricia E. Tragedy and Ritual. In: Mètis. Anthropologie des mondes grecs anciens. Volume 3, n°1-2, 1988. pp. 87-
109.
doi : 10.3406/metis.1988.907
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/metis_1105-2201_1988_num_3_1_907AND RITUAL TRAGEDY
«Cry 'Woe, woe', but may the good prevail!»
Récent work on ritual has had a stimulating effect on the interprétation of
Greek tragedy. Critics hâve at last felt free to set aside the old question of
origins and the search for archetypal patterns, and to focus attention in-
stead on the ritual language used in tragic texts. The impetus has corne
f rom outside -from structuralist anthropology and the work of such writers
as Karl Meuli, René Girard and Victor Turner- but the application of
thèse théories to ancient drama has only been possible because the
groundwork had been laid by générations of scholars active in the field of
Greek religion, with their studies of sacrifice, mysteries, festivals, cuit
songs, funerary practices and the rest1. Yet despite ail this interest and ac-
tivity, reflected in the publications of the last twenty years in particular,
there has been a curious lack of attention to one potentially fruitful sub-
ject, the connexion between ritual action and action in the théâtre (Walter
Burkert's récent study «Opferritual bei Sophokles. Pragmatik-Symbolik-
Theater» is an important exception)2. Hère, it seems, is a gênerai area
1. Extensively documentée! in Walter Burkert, Greek Religion , trans. J. Raffan, Ox
ford 1985. See also Robert Parker, Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek
Religion, Oxford 1983.
2. Altsprachliche Unterricht, 28, 2, 1985, pp. 5-20. Cf. also Peter Burian, «Supplicat
ion and Hero Cuit in Sophocles Ajax» , Greek, Rom. &Byz, Studies, 13, 1972, pp. 151-
6; Hélène Foley, «The Masque of Dionysus», Trans. & Proceed. Amer. Philol. Assoc,
110, 1980, pp. 107-33; Richard Seaford, «Dionysiac drama and the Dionysiac myst
eries», Classical Quarterly, 31, 1981, pp. 252-75; J.-P. Vernant, «Le Dionysos masqué
des Bacchantes d' Euripide», in J.-P. Vernant and P. Vidal-Naquet, Mythe et tragédie
, Paris, 1986, pp. 237-70. PATRICIA E. EASTERLING
which deserves to be more fully investigated3; this paper attempts to
sketch some Unes of approach.
The first thing that strikes one is the sheer extent of the évidence offered
by our surviving plays, which is not adequately explained by the fact that
tragedy mimicked the patterns of Greek social life and was therefore
bound to écho some of its ritual activities. Much has been written recently4
about the rite of sacrifice and its central importance in tragedy -Agamem-
non, Women ofTrachis, Héraclès, the Iphigenia plays, are obvious examp
les- but we should not overlook ail the other rituals that are performed or
described or referred to in tragedy; those surrounding birth as in
Euripides' Electra, marriage as in Alcestis or LA. , death, as in the funerals
at the end of Seven against Thebes, or Aj'ax; rites that establish contact
with the dead, such as the necromancy of the Persae or the offerings given
to the dead Agamemnon in plays on the Electra story; purification rituals
as in the water-and-honey libations to be offered to the Eumenides in
Oedipus Coloneus; oath-taking as in Medea; supplication, as in a wide
range of plays from Aeschylus' Suppliants and Eumenides onwards5.
Some of thèse rituals are enacted on stage, like évocation of
the dead and oath-taking; some are prepared for, as when processions
3. Particularly in the light of the interest shown in ritual by modem dramatists and di-
rectors; cf. Christopher Innés, Holy Théâtre, Cambridge, 1981; Richard Schechner,
Between Théâtre and Anthropology , Philadelphia, 1985.
4. See especially Froma I. Zeitlin, «The Motif of the Corrupted Sacrifice in Aesc
hylus' Oresteia», Trans. & Proceed Amer. Philol. Assoc. , 96, 1965, pp. 463-508; Walter
Burkert, «Greek Tragedy and Sacrificial Ritual», Greek, Rom. &Byz. Studies, 7, 1966,
pp. 87-121 and Homo necans, Berlin and New York, 1972; Pierre Vidal-Naquet,
«Chasse et sacrifice dans YOrestie d' Eschyle», Mythe et tragédie en Grèce ancienne,
Paris, 1977, pp. 135-58; Bernd Seidensticker, «Sacrificial Ritual in the Bacchae», in
G.W. Bowersock et alledd. , Arktouros, Berlin and New York, 1979, pp. 181-90; Hélène
Foley, Ritual Irony, Ithaca and London, 1985.
5. On Electra, see Michael J. O' Brien, «Orestes and the Gorgon: Euripides'
Electra», Amer. Journal of Philol., 85, 1964, pp. 13-39 and Froma I. Zeitlin, «The Ar-
give Festival of Hera and Euripides' Electra», Trans. & Proceed. Amer. Philol. Assoc. ,
«Euripides' Alkestis: Five Aspects 101, 1970, pp. 645-69; on Alcestis, Richard Buxton,
of an Interprétation» , in Lyn Rodley (ed . ) , Papers Given at a Colloquium in Honour of
R.P. Winnington -Ingram — Journal ofHell. Studies, Supplementary Papers, 15, 1987,
pp. 17-29; on Iphigenia in Aulide Foley, supra (n. 4), ch. 2; on Septem, G.O. Hutchin-
son's édition (Oxford, 1985) on 822-1004, and in gênerai Margaret Alexiou, The Ritual
Lamentin Greek Tradition, Cambridge, 1974; on Oedipus Coloneus, W. Burkert, supra
(n. 2); on suppliant plays P. Burian, supra (n. 2) and «Suppliant and Saviour: Oedipus at
Colonus», Phoenix, 28, 1974, pp. 408-29. TRAGEDY AND RlTUAL
leave the stage accompanying corpses for burial; some are narrated and
their after-effects displayed, as in Bacchae, when the remains of Pentheus,
torn apart in the sparagmos, are brought on stage.
The range of possibilities is enormously widened by the fact that the
chorus is always there, and it is never simply a group of sympathetic by-
standers or witnesses -elders, local women, attendants- whose function is
to offer reaction and commentary. It is always also a choros ready to per-
form lyrics patterned on ritual song and dance and accompanied by ap-
propriate music: a paean giving thanks for victory, as in the parodos of An-
tigone, or asking for deliverance from plague as in Oedipus Tyrannus, a
funeral lament, a maenadic cuit song, and so on. There is hardly any choral
lyric that is entirely without such associations.
Many of the ritual moments are also high points in the dramatic action,
like the summoning up of Darius in the Persae, the great «Panathenaic»
procession at the end of Eumenides, Oedipus pronouncing his solemn
curse on the unknown murderer of Laius, or Creusa taking refuge at the
altar in the Ion6. Related to this is the fact that the ritual forms and ritual
language are very fully integrated and used with great intensity in our sur-
viving plays. The familiar form of the threnos, for example, could hâve
been used merely to create an émotive but relatively empty atmosphère of
grief as a backing to the utterances of the leading characters, but the
threnoi that we actually find are adapted in more subtle ways to their
dramatic contexts. So in the Persae the final lament picks up and élabo
râtes thèmes that were important earlier in the play. Whereas in the
parodos the setting out of the Persian army and Xerxes' yoking of the Hel-
lespont were described in comparatively neutral terms, now the connexion
between the king's actions and the disasters suffered by his troops is finally
understood and expounded, and the ritual context seems to add power to
this tragic illumination7.
Any attempt to account for this very rich and varied use of ritual él
éments must take note of the gênerai truth that ritual and drama hâve a
great deal in common. To begin with the most obvious point, they work
through similar forms, as Hélène Foley notes: «Ritual, like tragic theater,
involves staging, symbolic gestures, dressing up, and role-playing. Both
6. Persae, 598-680; Eumenides, 1003-47 (discussed below); Oedipus Tyrannus, 222-
75; /on, 1250-1319.
7. Gerald F. Else, «Ritual and Drama in Aischyleian Tragedy», Illinois Class.