Meditations on Electra

Title/Subject: Meditations on Electras

This is a reminder that this week's meditations are not due to be posted until Wednesday at noon. You should have read both Sophocles' Electra and Euripides' Electra before writing your post.

Consider the following as a subject for your meditation:

You've now read three versions of the same segment of the same myth. There are many elements of the story that are consistent to all three - consider the characters, their characteristics, their basic actions and the order in which they take place. Some are consistent to two versions but not all three. Some parts of the story are dramatically different from one playwright's version to another.

While it would be wise to begin from individual moments and specific points of contrast, consider also how these differences (or perhaps the moments of consistency!) affect the myth as a whole. What story is Euripides telling, and how is it different from Aeschylus' story? How does Sophocles differ from them both?

It may help to concentrate on (a) how is the story as a whole different in each telling, and what purpose might that serve, or (b) if you're familiar with other works by any of these playwrights (such as Sophocles' Oedipos Tyrannos or Euripides' Medea), what do these differences tell us about how each playwright's style and approach is different? How are Greek tragedies different from one another, even when they're dramatizing the very same myth? What is the nature and purpose of mythic variation, using the Electra narrative as a specific point of focus?