| dc.contributor.author | MacLeod, Leona. | en_US |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2014-10-21T12:35:33Z | |
| dc.date.available | 1999 | |
| dc.date.issued | 1999 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.other | AAINQ50088 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10222/55688 | |
| dc.description | Sophokles' Elektra has always been considered one of the poet's most challenging and difficult plays. Roughly speaking, two schools of thought have emerged from the mass of critical literature devoted to its study: an affirmative approach which understands the vengeance as just retribution and a darker or ironic approach which sees the play designed to cast the deed and those who carry it out in a morally dubious light. This thesis is an attempt to go beyond this division. | en_US |
| dc.description | The key to the interpretation of this play is an understanding of the role of the dolos which Apollo's oracle prescribes to Orestes in advising dike; and of the way in which Elektra's lamentation as resistance combines the dikaion with the aischron. The seemingly paradoxical union of the opposed elements of dolos and dike found in the oracle and dramatically expressed in the messenger rhesis, and the aischron and the dikaion of Elektra's lamentation reflect the problematical nature of an act which although just is still inherently aischron. The dolos, sanctioned by the oracle, shows the operation of divine justice carried but by the agents of Apollo; while Elektra's conduct, although aischron, is at the same time an expression of aidos informed by the civic ethics of the polis. These two themes, the dolos and the aischron, represent the parallel movement of a divine and human justice, the agents of which are finally reunited in the recognition scene. The moral framework for the vengeance is established by these two themes; in the end, we are brought to understand it as an act which for all its dike is still aischron. | en_US |
| dc.description | This thesis is thus essentially an affirmative reading of the play made complete by integrating the insights and results of the ironic reading. The aischron and dikaion and the dolos and dike conspire to restore order and freedom to the family and polity. The originality of Sophokles' dramatisation of the Orestes legend lies in his ability to sustain the dramatic tension between the dikaion and the aischron in the presentation of the vengeance, a deed which itself reflects the difficulties of a justice which has to balance the conflicting claims of polis and oikos and the conflicting loyalties of the individual which stem from their obligations as family-members and citizens. | en_US |
| dc.description | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Dalhousie University (Canada), 1999. | en_US |
| dc.language | eng | en_US |
| dc.publisher | Dalhousie University | en_US |
| dc.publisher | | en_US |
| dc.subject | Literature, Classical. | en_US |
| dc.subject | Theater. | en_US |
| dc.title | Dolos and dike in Sophokles' "Elektra". | en_US |
| dc.type | text | en_US |
| dc.contributor.degree | Ph.D. | en_US |
