The Image of Suffering

2015

This thesis is an examination of physical pain in ancient tragedy, with the focus on three plays: Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound and Sophocles’ Philoctetes and Trachiniae. The study unfolds the layers of several conceptual systems in order to get closer to the core—pain and its limits in tragedy. The first chapter aims to show that Aristotle’s model for the analysis of tragedy in his classificatory tract, the Poetics, centered on the ill-defined concept of mimesis, is an attempt to tame pain and clean tragedy of its inherent viscerality. The second chapter looks at the dualist solution advanced by Plato and Descartes, while showing that a discourse rooted in dualism alienates pain from tragedy. The third chapter provides axes of analysis for three tragedies where pain plays a central role by using the idea of pain as an experience of the limit and looking at the different ways in which pain splits the subject. The thesis also advances the idea that, for the most part, conceptual frames act as analgesic systems that obstruct the exposure to the experience of intensity in ancient tragedy.

Matthew Ludwig PhD Dissertation , 2024

The theoretical analysis of tragedy is generally thought to begin with Aristotle's Poetics. In my dissertation I argue that a century before Aristotle, Sophocles offered a sophisticated, selfconscious theory of tragedy. I contend that he presented this theory in and through his dramaturgy. Through close readings of three Sophoclean dramas-Trachiniae, Ajax, and Philoctetes-I show that this playwright not only staged plot (mythos), character (êthos), and thought (dianoia) but, in doing so, offered his audience a nuanced meditation on these aspects of drama. In sum, Sophocles theorizes: 1) Tragic plots (mythoi) as representations of the resistance of myth to delimitation. 2) Tragic characters (êthê) as representations which compel moral assessment from two mutually complicating temporal perspectives at once. 3) Tragic characters' thoughts (dianoiai) as represented not only in speech but also in subtext, gestures, silences, and other semiotic means. These conceptions not only anticipate Aristotle's analysis of tragedy in the Poetics but also oppose it. The alternative view of tragedy they offer enriches our understanding both of Attic drama in its fifth-century performative context and of ancient Greek aesthetic theory more broadly. iii Additionally, Sophocles' theory of tragedy has distinctive philosophical implications. Tragic plot and characters, as he theorizes them, share an inscrutability with their analogues in the real world. That is, tragedy in the Sophoclean mould exposes the epistemological limitations of its audience for interpreting certain components of experience shared between theatre and life: how actions relate, who others are in moral terms, and what others are thinking. At the same time, Sophoclean theatre presents an ethic for dealing with such limitations. Both the characters onstage and the audience in the theatre of Dionysus are challenged by the interpretive difficulty of Sophocles' plots and characters. But various characters in the plays learn to confront this challenge by humbly tempering their judgments and embracing a disposition of compassion (οἶκτος). The recognition by such characters that οἶκτος is the best response to the opacity of their 'world' translates into an ethical lesson for the spectator as to how best to respond to the similar opacity of their own world. tremendous amount of thanks to many people, not least those who helped me find my way through the weeds of the tragedian's dense language and ideas. Pride of place goes to the indefatigable Victoria Wohl. Thanks for your unflagging interest in this project, your patience with me, and your investment in my growth as a thinker and writer. It was a pleasure working under your thoughtful, generous guidance these past several years. I will never forget your example as both a scholar and a mentor. Thanks also to my internal readers, Peter Bing and Kenneth Yu. I have profited hugely from your questions, critiques, and advice, both while working on this study and under your tutelage in the classroom. I hope we will have plenty more chances to discuss Greek literature together in the future. I also appreciate the interest of my other readers, Jonathan Burgess and Joshua Billings, and deeply value your input, even in the final stages of this project. Then there are the many whose impact on this study has been more indirect but no less crucial. The generous support of the Crake Doctoral Fellowship and the Classics department at Mount Allison University, students and professors alike, have made the final year of writing a pleasure. Commentary on different portions of my argument from perceptive audiences in Toronto, London ON, Sackville NB, and St. Louis has helped me to bring my ideas into focus. Many professors during my graduate studies have impacted my thinking in profound ways, but I owe a special debt of gratitude to Martin Revermann for opening my eyes to how good tragic literature is to think with and for being a champion of my scholarly development throughout my time at UofT. I have also been spoiled by the company and support network of a delightful community of fellow graduate students. I wish the best to all of you! And I am happy for an opportunity to officially thank all those teachers from earlier in my academic life who particularly helped me get where I am today. William Helder, Richard Parker, and Roberto Nickel, if you ever read this, thank you for illuminating for me the beauty of ancient languages and guiding me into the field of Classics in the first place. v I would not, of course, have been able to accomplish any of this without the support of my friends and family. Despite not really understanding what I do or why, I appreciate all of your willingness to feign interest and to humour me whenever I wax etymological. Thanks to my parents for never balking at the financially irresponsible decision to study Classics for twelve years, for your consistent excitement at my progress, and for letting me take over the family cottage for writing binges.

D. Tziovas (ed.), Re-imagining the Past: Greek Antiquity and Modern Greek Culture (Oxford University Press 2014).

In: The Spirit of Aristophanes: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey Henderson, eds. D. Dixon and M. English, 2024

*manuscript version. Please contact me if you do not have institutional access.* The Sophoclean Philoctetes articulates a unique and personal type of heroism. As a person without a community, he cannot be a Homeric hero. The heroic activities of sacking Troy and winning kleos, or glory, are unavailable to him. Further, many conditions are thrust upon him against his will: isolation, sickness, desertion on an island. To sack Troy and win kleos is a form of active heroism and is out of Philoctetes' reach. The second set of conditions is passive: Philoctetes suffers things that are done to him, against his will, and he can do nothing that would remedy these horrendous conditions. But in the course of Sophocles' play it becomes clear that Philoctetes, despite his enormous sufferings and inhibited actions, is not simply a sufferer. When Neoptolemus comes to him, Philoctetes' desperate need for an alleviation of sufferings is complemented by pride in his own achievement. In order to better articulate this hero's sense of heroism, I will employ in this essay the framework of the Greek middle voice. In doing so, I am not suggesting that the grammatical category of the middle voice is identical to Philoctetes' personal view of his heroism. But using these grammatical categories gives us a way of thinking how Philoctetes both is and is not a passive sufferer; and both is and is not an Iliadic hero capable of action. What I call 'heroism in the middle', in the story of Philoctetes, is a third way between suffering and action.

This chapter explores classical Mediterranean thought on suffering through a detailed examination of one Greek tragedy, Sophocles' Philoctetes, in which both moral philosophy and medicine also feature. Suffering in this play has no inherent metaphysical or ethical status, but it does raise the rather practical as well as ethical question of how other human beings can and should respond to the sufferer-examining in close detail how an individual's acute suffering deforms his everyday life and his relationships with his or her community and showing how very differently individuals respond to the suffering of others. It even asks the proto-Utilitarian question of whether the suffering of a single individual should be allowed to outweigh the interests of the whole community. There is perhaps no other artwork that explores so intensely the problem which incurable suffering presents to the community to which the sufferer belongs.

Stanford, MLA thesis, 2006

An 'end', by contrast, is something which naturally occurs after a preceding event, whether by necessity or as a general rule, but need not be followed by anything else. . . It is evident that the dénouements of plot-structures should arise from the plot itself, and not, as in the Medea, from a deus ex machina, or in the episode of the departure in the Iliad.

Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 1991

Sophocles puts the moral of our story best, and what he says reveals the essence of Aristotelian tragedy.

2019