San Diego State University The Oresteia of Aeschylus Agamemnon Report

In addition to reading the play for this week, you will be asked to write a literary commentary in which you integrate one of the literary theories discussed. Your goal here is to construct a narrative where you use the literary theory as a lens to enhance your own, and the reader’s, interpretation of the story. You are free to choose a character in the play, a specific scene, or a running theme throughout the play. Please ensure you are not attempting to analyze too much. The purpose of this assignment is to find a nuanced approach to single component of the play and write about in such a way that after reading your commentary, the reader’s understanding of that particular character, scene, theme, etc. has been enhanced by your discussion.

For this commentary please write on the following:

Commentary Table

Literary Work

Literary Theory

Agamemnon

Actions

Reader-Response

Please review the Reader Response Literary Theory Example

Actions

to see how the theory is used in discussing the text.

Please note, a commentary treats the play as an evolving interaction between performance and spectator, not as a completed object, and the spectator must be imagined as knowing the play only up to the point where you begin your commentary. This also means your commentary should not jump ahead to later events. Only focus on the particular part of the work you are discussing.

The commentary has four distinct parts:

1Fact: the quoted segment of the work.

2Introduction: the context-setting opening sentence(s) with which you begin.

3Analysis: your examination of that segment, also a way to point out specific features.

4Conclusion: your articulation of what is revealed to the reader at that particular moment.

Format

Heading including name, professor’s name, class, and due date (all single spaced)

Unique title

Thesis statement (including literary theory and “I argue”)

Quoted passage from literary work (single spaced)

Commentary analysis (double spaced)

Commentary analysis reaching end of the page

There are some temptations and pitfalls you want to avoid:

1Attempting to analyze, discuss, the entire work. Remember that you are being asked to focus critically on one particular piece of the work. Do not attempt to discuss how the section you are analyzing enhances the entire work; you only have 250 words max.

2Use the moment as a springboard for discussing the theme. Although themes are very important in critical thinking, you cannot discuss several theme of the work in only two pages words.

3Summarize. Do not waste your time summarizing the work. Summary tells us what happened. Analysis tells us why and how something happened.

4Commenting on stage direction. Although we are reading performance literature, we are concerned with the words and not, necessarily, the stage directions.

5Doing it at the last minute. Although it may be tempting to complete the assignment at the last moment, this could be arguably the worst thing for you to do. In order to do well on the commentaries, you must give yourself enough time to analyze the passage you are writing about.