DOLOS AND DIKE IN SOPHOKLES'' ELEKTRA pot

[...]... association with dike This, together with the ethical arguments of Elektra, will allow us to recognize the significance of Elektra' s behaviour during the matricide and Orestes' handling of the vengeance at the end of the play As we shall see, the tension between dolos and dike in the oracle and the messenger rhesis and that between the dikaion and the aischron in Elektra' s conduct are sustained throughout... crucial turning points in the later dramatic action: the messenger speech which brings the theme of dolos into effect, and the reunion between brother and sister in which the dolos is revealed to Elektra Orestes' appearance in the prologos thus looks ahead to the second half of the play when the dolos comes into operation Elektra' s monody serves as an introduction to the first half of the play and operates... Kell's extremist versions of the ironic reading of Elektra, into what Fraenkel has aptly called "the magic wand of irony":38 it discovers irony behind every bush and under every stone and has us read ironic undertones and sinister foreboding into lines which are at most ambiguous, often bidding us ignore the obvious meaning of a passage in favour of hidden innuendoes so subtle that they would escape... ever explained why Apollo specifically enjoins the use of dolos. * The association of dolos with dike in the 3 See Introduction n 11 above See Introduction n 24 above For views of Apollo in the play, see Case 1902: 195-200; Horsley 1980: 18-29 and Hester 1981: 15-25 and Minadeo 1994 Generally the discussion of Apollo's role is restricted to his oracle at the beginning, but see both Horsley and Minadeo... satisfying." Alexanderson 1966: 98 also warns against giving in "to the temptation of viewing the drama in the light of our own ideas about a deed as horrible as matricide and of forcibly remodelling the play in order to make it fit with more modern ideas of psychology, morals and justice." Hester 1981: 24 also speaks of the Christian ethos whose code is certainly far from helping one's friends and harming... correspondence between Elektra and her mother include Johansen 1964: 17; North 1966: 65; Segal 1966: 525-526; Winnington-Ingram 1980: 246; Seaford 1985: 315-323 31 Others have similarly seen the play in terms of a shift between positive and negative action, reality and illusion, truth and lies, life and death and so on Woodard 1964: 163-205 and 1965: 195-233 suggests that Elektra and Orestes represent... behind many current readings, which, despite their diversity in perspectives, reach remarkably similar conclusions Blundell, for instance, reads the play in terms of the ethical code of 'helping friends and harming enemies', in order to explore the moral questions raised by character and conduct of the offspring Both mother and daughter are guilty of using the same contradictory arguments, possessing... Orestes and Elektra, they become guilty of the same error as those they argue against: overemphasizing certain aspects of the play to the exclusion of others The concentration on the exposure of the similarities between mother and offspring means that they fail to note the ways in which Sophokles distinguishes Elektra and Orestes from Klytaimnestra and Aigisthos Johansen and Segal on the other hand come... friends/harming enemies" Of the more recent treatments, Gardiner in her study of the Sophoclean Chorus is critical of the psychological reading of the play, in particular, of Elektra' s character For her, Sophokles is concerned to show, contrary to conventional belief, that a female could take part in such an act and not be a monster According to this view, Elektra remains in the end innocent of any wrongdoing,... feverishly imagining herself as a tyrant-slayer first and then, in her delirium, seeing her dead father rise from the grave In the end, she succumbs to her vengefulness becoming a fury that drives Orestes on to the killing of their mother In an act of cold-blooded murder, he brutally slays his grief-stricken mother Kell's interpretation turns the whole play into "a continuous exercise in dramatic irony" . Mnemosyne 219. MacLeod, Leona : Dolos and Dike in Sophokles ' Elektra Dolos and Dike in Sophokles ' Elektra / by Leona MacLeod. . SEMINARIUM, OUDE TURFMARKT 129, AMSTERDAM SUPPLEMENTUM DUCENTESIMUM DECIMUM NONUM LEONA MACLEOD DOLOS AND DIKE IN SOPHOKLES' ELEKTRA DOLOS AND