Abstract
The chapter draws on the psychological as well as everyday notion of ‘attention’ to analyse the experience afforded by tragic messenger speeches. What marks out this experience, it is argued, is that attention shifts dynamically between not just two levels (the world of the play and the performance qua performance) but three: the offstage world of the messenger’s narrative, the messenger and his listeners onstage, and the performance qua performance. An awareness of this dynamic, it is suggested, can be detected in the iconography of messenger scenes on fourth-century pots. Euripides’ Andromache and Medea as well as Sophocles’ Electra serve as case studies for analysing the textual means by which the dramatists prompt ever-shifting patterns of attention, stimulating immersion in the narrative as well as drawing attention to the interactions occurring onstage. The chapter ends by looking to the psychology of attention to ask whether audiences are able to attend simultaneously to different levels or whether different objects of attention are in competition.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Experience, narrative and criticism in ancient Greece |
| Subtitle of host publication | under the spell of stories |
| Editors | Jonas Grethlein, Luuk Huitink, Aldo Tagliabue |
| Place of Publication | Oxford |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| Chapter | 3 |
| Pages | 59-80 |
| Number of pages | 22 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9780198848295 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2019 |
| Externally published | Yes |