Email this article “An attempt to interpret the inner meaning of the Agamemnon of Aeschylus”. Riflessioni introduttive su A Tragic Interior di E.M. Forster
Abstract
This paper wants to discuss the not well-known play by E.M. Forster, A Tragic Interior. This piece of literature, divided in two parts and published in the early 1900s, rewrites one of the most important classical Greek plays: Oresteia. In this short but powerful literary document, the author, in order to explain the crisis of his time, narrates an alternative version of the dreaded monarch Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae. Here, the hero, coming home after ten years, turns out to be an inept, wimpy, without will. In a word, by bringing a corrupted form of Aeschylus’ play to his contemporary readers, Forster, in an era emptied both from ontological value and affection, with this pièce wants to problematise and dramatise the new human conduct, by deconstructing the old and proud image of Agamemnon. Moreover, through a textual analysis, this essay will show how the author’s use of myth inaugurates the new genre of classic rewriting in the modernist age.
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