At the beginning of the book, the painting “A Tough Story” (1886) (frontispiece) captures Laura Gianvittorio-Ungar’s perspective (see pp. 21–22). John George Brown depicts a boy telling a story with hand gestures to three other boys who are attentive, bored or sceptical; although we know nothing of the story itself, the enunciative context focuses our attention. This is the main focus of the book, which, as the title states, uses a narratological approach to analyse Aeschylean drama. At first, it may surprise readers to combine a narratological concept, which is mainly used for stories told by an external narrator, with drama, in which all the words are delivered by characters. The aim is indeed to “illustrate how several traits of Aeschylus’s drama correlate with narrativity” (p.20), offering theoretical tools with which to understand this kind of “pre-classic” drama, meeting the expectations of audiences before the age of Sophocles and Euripides. Indeed, the plays are filled with discourses, and the actors are led to deliver (and react to) speeches. Gianvittorio-Ungar intends to demonstrate that these narratives do not undermine theatricality, despite challenging the traditional conception of tragedy based on action.
The author focuses on the first four of Aeschylus’s plays, known as “narrative dramas”: Seven Against Thebes, Suppliant Women, Persians and Prometheus Bound. Composed around 470–460 BCE, they are based on long narratives and the reactions of other characters to them. While the author does not extensively discuss the problematic attribution of Prometheus to Aeschylus, she makes it clear that she does not consider it to be genuinely Aeschylean[1]. However, the play features enough similarities with the other three tragedies to be included in the study of Aeschylean stagecraft (its attribution in the 5th and 4th centuries BC was never questioned). The Oresteia cannot occupy such a central position since action plays a larger role in it. To shed light on these plays, Gianvittorio-Ungar adopts concepts inherited from narratological works and performance studies (following, among others, Irene de Jong’s or Oliver Taplin’s lead, p.26).
In the first part, “Frameworks”, Gianvittorio-Ungar methodically develops her critical tools. Chapter 1, “A Novel Take on Tragic Narrativity”, begins with the following statement: “Aeschylean drama defamiliarizes from theatre as we usually conceive it because it is based on narratives rather than plot or action and thus should elude the retrospective projections consisting in comparing them to the later tragedies.” All in all, the ambition is to de-Aristotelize our reading of Greek drama, that is, to abandon the interpretative models set out in the Poetics and reinforced in subsequent poetic traditions. Gianvittorio-Ungar “acknowledge[s] that narrativity is not a by-product, but the essence of the tragic genre in 470–460 BCE” (p.4) and claims that Aeschylean drama cannot be reduced to an experimental phase of tragedy. The metrics, the importance of the chorus and the presence of a third actor do not result from a linear evolution and indeed some elements may exist without being fully exploited. The third actor, even in Agamemnon, is not used to facilitate dialogue between the other actors; rather, they narrate a story to one another while the other remains silent. Gianvittorio-Ungar concludes that this should be interpreted as a sign of the “importance of chorus-to-actor interaction in Attic tragedy as it functioned at the time” (p.35). Therefore, this study deals with transgeneric narratology on a larger scale (drama being a type of narrative) and consists of a detailed analysis of specific narrative passages on a smaller scale. Narrative drama is considered at the level of performance[2], and interest in re-enactment (p.26) invites attention to choral rituals, for example, where dance and song modulate traditional motifs according to the character performing them.
Chapter 2, “Notions of Genre, Ancient and Modern”, provides an invaluable overview of ancient theories on narrative and drama, before considering modern interpretations of ancient texts and the incomplete perspectives of the performance turn. Firstly, the author defines mimesis as the “representation of storyworlds by means of language and other media” (p.41). Unlike plot, the concept of storyworld encompasses both linguistic and corporeal elements. Accordingly, it is considered to be a more accurate representation of mythos, which is defined as “the ensemble of dynamic elements […] as the artist/poet arranges them in his or her mimetic work” (p.42). On this basis, Gianvittorio-Ungar elaborates on the discrepancy between text and performance.
More specifically, she demonstrates how the original performance-based definition of genre boundaries was subsequently interpreted at a textual level. Both Plato and Aristotle categorise poetic forms according to how they are uttered (by a narrator or impersonated by a character), albeit using different terminology (diègèsis/mimèsis or apangelia/praxis). However, she argues that this “speech criterion” was still shaped by “performance rather than text-immanent reflections” (p.43). To support this, Gianvittorio-Ungar challenges the common perception that Aristotle was indifferent to the performative and visual aspects of stagecraft but rather argues that the philosopher simply dismissed opsis since it was specific to tragedy and therefore had little place in a treatise covering poetry in its various forms and functions. In a sense, Gianvittorio-Ungar brings a performative approach to interpreting philosophical texts, accordingly to her ambition to promote the fluid borders between literary genre, in particular between epic and tragedy: if Homer is somehow dramatic, Aeschylus may be narrative as well (p.66). Later theories’ sharp opposition between narrative and drama completely masks the fact that “the boundaries between genres continued to be drawn in remarkably flexible ways at least through the classical period; in particular, the “song and dance culture” in which Aeschylus participated saw no insuperable gap between narrative and drama.” (p.61).
Following her considerations of ancient philosophical texts, the author turns to modern theoretical considerations, especially in German studies, but notes that, as reflections on (Western) modern drama, they cannot account for medieval and ancient plays. For example, the centrality of dialogue in modern definitions hinders an understanding of Greek tragedy, in which dialogue between actors is neither exclusive nor central to interactions (unlike interaction between actors and the chorus). Once again, Gianvittorio-Ungar selects precise and pertinent examples to support her argument, demonstrating how the classification of an ancient poem can vary depending on modern textual or ancient performance criteria: genres were in fact defined primarily by their functions and performance context (e.g.: was the dialogue performed during a theatrical event?) rather than by stable features. The risk of critical retro-projections (pp.80–86) may also persist because the illusory survival of a label such as “tragedy” obscures the actual transformations of poetic forms.
In Part 2, “Applications”, Gianvittorio-Ungar invites the reader to read the plays through the lens of the critical tools elaborated upon previously. The “Functional Analysis” presented in Chapter 3 divides the text[3] into units ascribed to one of three functions (defined on p.92): “action” (where the character’s utterance equals an event in the hic et nunc of the play); “narration” (where the character’s utterance refers to events in a different spatiotemporality); and “response” (where the character’s utterance emotionally reacts to previous events)[4]. Since the main criterion for attributing a unit to a function is pragmatic, the units span dozens of verses rather than individual lines, rendering the formal features irrelevant. Thus, a single metrical pattern may serve different purposes, and a description will be labelled as narration if it relates to past events (Prometheus, 160–283) or as response if it fuels a lament (Persians, 517–597). Nevertheless, the pragmatic approach does not coincide with a plot-centred analysis, as it includes not only events, but also vain attempts to change them and choral songs, which are crucial to “cataly[se] tragedy” (p.110). Overall, these pages tend to be more descriptive, but the incidental observations of Aeschylean dramaturgy and its common features (dialogic narratives, p.134) or exceptions (e.g. the fact that narrative and response may be delivered by a single speaker, p.131) are valuable, as are the discussions on how to label a section (e.g. the Io scene, p.145).
Chapter 4, “Narrative Drama: Features and Functioning”, defends the general thesis that narrative depends on aesthetic choices and cannot be limited to necessity by default. This is evident from the fact that similar situations are represented in different ways, either narrative or enactive. In synoptic tables, the author quantifies narrative, which is pervasive in Persians and Prometheus, balanced with response and action in Seven, and reduced in Suppliant Women. However, the quantitative analysis cannot be considered conclusive in regard to fragmentary plays (pp.157–159). Narratives function as the motor of drama since they relate to each other (through repetition or completion) and may elicit a response, especially in choral songs, or, more rarely, an action[5]: in Persians, the few actions always derive from narratives and in Seven, any decision is taken by Eteocles after the scout’s reports; in Suppliant Women, their limited extent and enunciative context (without internal narratees) renders them inefficient; in Prometheus, they prove to be self-sufficient despite their significant presence. The frustrated events in Persians, the juxtaposition rather than concatenation of events in Seven, and the secondary story of Io, which is loosely linked to the main story through thematic echoes rather than causality, in Prometheus and Suppliant Women: all of these specificities elude plot-centred judgements. “What emerges is the trend towards a triangulation between dislocated spatiotemporalities, narrative representation thereof, and the enhancement of plot multi-directionality and disunity” (p.211). Aeschylus is careful not to make the narratives too long, instead dramatising them and adding dynamism through different means. As Seven showcases, these can be delivered alongside dialogue, which is particularly noticeable given that actor-to-actor interactions are not the dominant feature of the scenes. They can also take the form of catalogues—there are no fewer than five in Persians, which contribute to the climax until the “high-impact commatic finale” (p.219)—or be repeated with different focalisations (the multiple accounts of Salamis play on the variations in the characters’ knowledge and expectations).
All in all, in her study Narratives at Play in Aeschylus, Gianvittorio-Ungar crowns her recent studies on Aeschylean stagecraft. What is especially valuable is that she patiently elaborates her methodology and strives to construct concepts inherited from antiquity that are informed by modern theories, through a cautious and efficient combination of emic and etic perspectives. The notes often invite invites readers to supplement this book with other case studies she has already developed.
Theory and text analysis work together to shed new light on ancient texts and this book is sure to be a valuable addition to the study of Aeschylus and tragedy. The reappraisal of Aeschylean drama calls for further studies of pre-classical drama and its interactions with contemporary musical and poetic forms (as she alludes to regarding Bacchylides). On the other hand, its theoretical pages offer highly stimulating tools that will enable it to reach a wider audience, especially chapter two, which surveys a broader poetic corpus and philosophical questions. Beyond Aeschylus, the book also encourages further enquiries into “a hybridising perspective on genres” (p.66) through its reflections on definitions of tragedy, poetics and generic hybridity: ultimately, it serves as a constant reminder to accept and explore Antiquity as an unfamiliar world.
Notes
[1] See p.182, where she notes similarities in the choral songs, such as their scarcity and relative independence from the plot, with those of later dramas.
[2] Nick Lowe, The Classical Plot and the Invention of Western Narrative, Cambridge, University Press, 2000, quoted p.19.
[3] Fortunately, this only surviving part of the performance echoes the others (body language, music, spectacle, dance).
[4] This method as well as the close attention to the speech acts (p.97) may find fruitful echoes in Matteo Capponi, Parole et geste dans la tragédie grecque: à la lumière des trois “Électre”, Neuchâtel: Éditions Alphil-presses universitaires suisses, 2021.
[5] In later tragedies, action tend to systematically follow, and somehow justify, the narratives.