An Oresteia

An Oresteia

Anne Carson

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A Bold, Iconoclastic New Look at One of the Great Works of Greek Tragedy   In this innovative rendition of The Oresteia, the poet, translator, and essayist Anne Carson combines three different visions—Aischylos’ Agamemnon, Sophokles’ Elektra, and Euripides’ Orestes—giving birth to a wholly new experience of the classic Greek triumvirate of vengeance. After the murder of her daughter Iphegenia by her husband Agamemnon, Klytaimestra exacts a mother’s revenge, murdering Agamemnon and his mistress, Kassandra. Displeased with Klytaimestra’s actions, Apollo calls on her son, Orestes, to avenge his father’s death with the help of his sister Elektra. In the end, Orestes, driven mad by the Furies for his bloody betrayal of family, and Elektra are condemned to death by the people of Argos, and must justify their actions—signaling a call to change in society, a shift from the capricious governing of the gods to the rule of manmade law. Carson’s accomplished rendering combines elements of contemporary vernacular with the traditional structures and rhetoric of Greek tragedy, opening up the plays to a modern audience. In addition to its accessibility, the wit and dazzling morbidity of her prose sheds new light on the saga for scholars. Anne Carson’s Oresteia is a watershed translation, a death-dance of vengeance and passion not to be missed.


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  • perhapsrose
    Mar 11, 2025
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  • AnnieShy
    Feb 20, 2025
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    Re-reading in preparation for seeing Elektra on the West End. Carson's ability to modernise the language of these plays to make them accessible but also gorgeous never fails to astound me. I love this collection's use of the three different playwrights, it acknowledges the wonderful place these stories inhabit in that they can have the same cast of characters with different conflicts and conclusions in peaceful coexistence without the need for a true canon. We'll keep telling them in different words, in different forms a thousand ways and they'll still be compelling. I want to see a performance of Carson's Oresetes so badly, it's absolutely unhinged in the best possible way.
    Pouring out libations for Kassandra, my beloved ♥️.

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