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In our closing, with our Oresteia, I
thought what I'd do is return to our

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toolbox..
You will recall, we got a set of tools

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that we've been working on.
Structurals and functionalism, myth and

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ritual, and psychoanalysis.
And we've been having those around and

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dipping into them.
When we run into something interesting in

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a myth, grab a tool, tinker with it.
Grab another tool, tinker with the myth

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again.
And see what kind of results you get from

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this toolbox of theoretical tool.
I'm going to pick up two and use them with

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the material that we've been working on in
the Oresteia,

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Functionalism and structuralism.
Now, looking back at the kind of reading

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I've been doing in the most recent couple
of lectures for the class, it's pretty

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clear that I've been doing already a
functionalist kind of reading, haven't I?

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Remember functionalism says that myths are
told, in order to legitimize certain

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social and cultural forms.
So the kind of take I've been giving you

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all of, on the Oresteia is that what
Aeschylus is up to here is telling a myth

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in a certain kind of historical context,
he's telling a myth that is justifying and

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legitimizing a social norm of a new scheme
of justice,

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As iterated in this court of the
Areopagus, a long and deeply held

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traditional court in Athens.
Talking about it as being important along

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these new democratic lines.
That is very much straightforward

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functionalism.
The, the, vision that I'm offering here

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and it's just a reading.
There are many others that are possible of

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what Oresteia is all about.
But the vision that I'm offering here is

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that Aeschylus has a sort of purpose to
this telling of this story and purpose

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what is making it so attractive and
appealing to the audience that's seeing it

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is that it is for them legitimizing a
social cultural norm, this importance of

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their institution of justice, of their
institution of justice in the form of

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these in the form of these courts.
Now, I thought I'd toss in another one, a

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structuralist reading.
This is one that came out of, I've taught

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this course many times here at University
of Pennsylvania.

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And I get e-mails from students all the
time as I'm teaching at them. One of them

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suggested to me, isn't it possible that
what we have when we look at the Oresteia,

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Is a meditation on a binary opposition
between two ways of imagining the most

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important kind of social connections that
are made between human beings.

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On the one hand, we have social connection
based on blood ties and on the other hand,

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we have social connections based on
voluntary associations.

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Those two means of trying to figure out
how humans are supposed to be connected to

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one another, sometimes come into conflict
and when they do, we've got difficulty

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and, and, and, an urgency to try to figure
out what's happening.

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Well, the difference between these two
poles of blood ties on the one hand and

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voluntary associations on the other hand,
provide, as we've talked about when we

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were talking about structuralism,
The voltage that makes this story tick and

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propels it forward.
I actually think that, that's a really

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interesting and good proposal.
And I've been working on it over the years

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to try to clarify and bring some further
insight to it.

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Remember, structuralist are looking for
binaries that are going to be the

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underlying drivers of the stories that
they're talking about.

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And in this particular reading, on the one
side with the blood ties connection,

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We've got the Furies we've got the idea of
Miasma, the chronic deities that have

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blood tie connections.
We've got the relationship between Atreus

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and his offspring and Agamemnon and his
son and all the, and, and, Orestes and his

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mother.
All these connections based on blood ties

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and all the difficulties that rise out of
that.

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On the other side, the thing that
Aeschylus is considering here is the new

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way of understanding how human society's
organized around voluntary associations.

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Here blood ties are not so important.
Remembers, remember Apollo's argument.

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Playing down the connection between, in
his case, the mother and the son, but

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between, otherwise what one would think of
as having,

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Of very strong blood relationship.
Instead the kinds of associations that

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Apollo holds up and venerates are ones.
Excuse me.

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Based on voluntary associations.
In particular here, the, association

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between,
Agamemnon and Clytemnestra.

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So volunteer associations taking on a
stronger role and the back and forth

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between them though is never fully
resolved.

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Aeschylus is working on the, the, the, the
tension between the two to provide the

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energy that propels the story forward.
So a structural's reading could suggest

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that what we have here is, is, is a hidden
binary that's pushing the story forward

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between raising and organizing a human
society on the one hand by blood

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relations,
On the other hand by voluntary