Narrative on the Greek Tragic Stage
Narrative on the Greek Tragic Stage
The narratives in Greek tragedy reflect the particular challenge of the genre, which seeks to present a given sequence of events within a limited time, in a more-or-less unchanging setting, without loss of complexity. Tragedy uses a variety of ways to evoke off-stage space and to extend its temporal range. The tragedians did not use narrative only because the conventions required it; narrative performance was obviously valued in its own right, and tragedies exploit the possibilities of deceptive narratives and of narrative that provoke very different responses from different audiences. A particularly Greek feature was the multiple role-playing of tragic actors. Especially when the narrator of climatic events off-stage was the same actor who played the protagonist, narrative could achieve special force by evoking earlier speech and action.
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