About narration and messenger scene in Aeschylus' Agamemnon

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María del Carmen Encinas Reguero

Abstract

Despite being one of the oldest surviving tragedies, Aeschylus’ Agamemnon shows great originality and compositional mastery. In this paper, attention is focused, on the one hand, on the narration, which is delayed at the end of the tragedy and in which the chronological order is reversed, and, on the other hand, on the messenger scene, which is anticipated by the torch scene, where the main character is Clytemnestra. The comparison of both scenes shows how Aeschylus opposes different forms of communication, drawing attention to the imperfection of any communicative act and producing a meta-theatrical reflection on the authority of the narrative voice.

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Encinas Reguero, M. del C. (2022). About narration and messenger scene in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. Synthesis, 29(2), e120. https://doi.org/10.24215/1851779Xe120
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