Performed Outrage: Frank and Emotional Mortal Criticism at the Gods in Athenian Tragedy and its Religious and Theatrical Impacts.

This dissertation examines heated and aggrieved comments about the gods in Athenian tragedy, and analyses them as a component of the theatrical and religious experience of drama. Focusing on plays by Sophocles and Euripides, it analyses the affective content of these criticisms, and how these denunciations are contextualised within dramatic narrative, with attention paid to how the mimetic form of the drama engendered frank criticisms and accusations against the gods. This thesis begins with a brief chapter outlining the precise details of what makes these utterances stand out in terms of their emotionality and frankness. This is followed by a chapter providing background tragedy’s original socio-religious context as a feature of the Dionysia Festival of Athens, after which the use of emotion in a mimetic performance using cross-cultural comparisons is discussed. This dissertation then considers precursor examples of embittered responses to the gods found in Archaic poetry and early tragedy, providing context and comparison to the frank and emphatic examples selected for deeper analysis. The plays in which the denunciations take place are then studied in tandem, with Sophoclean and Euripidean examples paired in relation to the identity of the speakers and the impacts of the statements. In Sophocles’ Ajax and Euripides’ Hippolytus, overconfident male protagonists suffer as a result of their improper and overfamiliar attitudes to the gods, resulting in a corresponding bitterness against their formerly beloved deities. Sophocles’ Antigone and Euripides’ Trojan Women feature female individuals who hit out against the gods as a response to tumultuous circumstances, with two characters in particular, namely Antigone and Cassandra, speaking from a position of greater awareness of the gods’ mechanisms. Finally, an examination on the content of Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus and Euripides’ Ion shall consider examples where the mortals’ denunciations against the gods are foundational to their eventual reconciliation. This arrangement will demonstrate the shared qualities of such utterances and demonstrate the emotional force these mortals’ condemnations of the gods bring to the drama, as they respond coherently to extreme circumstances. Throughout these case studies, particular attention is paid to the mimetic nature of tragic performance, with relevant scenes analysed in terms of visual and physical composition, as well as the language used in the mortals’ denunciations. This dissertation will demonstrate how these impious outbursts create greater impact in the tragedies’ theatrical storytelling, as well as the elucidation of the thematic content of the plays, with the mimetic features of tragedy engendering new and provocative thought on the gods through emotionalised expression