In our closing, with our Oresteia, I
thought what I'd do is return to our toolbox..
You will recall, we got a set of tools that we've been working on.
Structurals and functionalism, myth and ritual, and psychoanalysis.
And we've been having those around and dipping into them.
When we run into something interesting in a myth, grab a tool, tinker with it.
Grab another tool, tinker with the myth again.
And see what kind of results you get from this toolbox of theoretical tool.
I'm going to pick up two and use them with the material that we've been working on in
the Oresteia, Functionalism and structuralism.
Now, looking back at the kind of reading I've been doing in the most recent couple
of lectures for the class, it's pretty clear that I've been doing already a
functionalist kind of reading, haven't I? Remember functionalism says that myths are
told, in order to legitimize certain social and cultural forms.
So the kind of take I've been giving you all of, on the Oresteia is that what
Aeschylus is up to here is telling a myth in a certain kind of historical context,
he's telling a myth that is justifying and legitimizing a social norm of a new scheme
of justice, As iterated in this court of the
Areopagus, a long and deeply held traditional court in Athens.
Talking about it as being important along these new democratic lines.
That is very much straightforward functionalism.
The, the, vision that I'm offering here and it's just a reading.
There are many others that are possible of what Oresteia is all about.
But the vision that I'm offering here is that Aeschylus has a sort of purpose to
this telling of this story and purpose what is making it so attractive and
appealing to the audience that's seeing it is that it is for them legitimizing a
social cultural norm, this importance of their institution of justice, of their
institution of justice in the form of these in the form of these courts.
Now, I thought I'd toss in another one, a structuralist reading.
This is one that came out of, I've taught this course many times here at University
of Pennsylvania. And I get e-mails from students all the
time as I'm teaching at them. One of them suggested to me, isn't it possible that
what we have when we look at the Oresteia, Is a meditation on a binary opposition
between two ways of imagining the most important kind of social connections that
are made between human beings. On the one hand, we have social connection
based on blood ties and on the other hand, we have social connections based on
voluntary associations. Those two means of trying to figure out
how humans are supposed to be connected to one another, sometimes come into conflict
and when they do, we've got difficulty and, and, and, an urgency to try to figure
out what's happening. Well, the difference between these two
poles of blood ties on the one hand and voluntary associations on the other hand,
provide, as we've talked about when we were talking about structuralism,
The voltage that makes this story tick and propels it forward.
I actually think that, that's a really interesting and good proposal.
And I've been working on it over the years to try to clarify and bring some further
insight to it. Remember, structuralist are looking for
binaries that are going to be the underlying drivers of the stories that
they're talking about. And in this particular reading, on the one
side with the blood ties connection, We've got the Furies we've got the idea of
Miasma, the chronic deities that have blood tie connections.
We've got the relationship between Atreus and his offspring and Agamemnon and his
son and all the, and, and, Orestes and his mother.
All these connections based on blood ties and all the difficulties that rise out of
that. On the other side, the thing that
Aeschylus is considering here is the new way of understanding how human society's
organized around voluntary associations. Here blood ties are not so important.
Remembers, remember Apollo's argument. Playing down the connection between, in
his case, the mother and the son, but between, otherwise what one would think of
as having, Of very strong blood relationship.
Instead the kinds of associations that Apollo holds up and venerates are ones.
Excuse me. Based on voluntary associations.
In particular here, the, association between,
Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. So volunteer associations taking on a
stronger role and the back and forth between them though is never fully
resolved. Aeschylus is working on the, the, the, the
tension between the two to provide the energy that propels the story forward.
So a structural's reading could suggest that what we have here is, is, is a hidden
binary that's pushing the story forward between raising and organizing a human
society on the one hand by blood relations,
On the other hand by voluntary