Snape and other details of DH

[nrenka]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)"
<catlady at ...> wrote:

> Synthetic? Tell me about what they argue about the Oresteia.

In short, it's synthetic because Athena makes that statement you cited
as a gesture towards Apollo, but the Furies are also incorporated into
the city-structure instead of being totally cast out as Apollo and
Orestes would like to see them.  They become Eumenides 'Kindly Ones',
and have their cult respected properly.  Athena's pretty
gender-ambiguous, too; female but born from the male.  By being female
(and thus belonging to the oikos, the house) but being the patron
goddess of the city (polis), things get folded together.  Greek
tragedy (which was a remarkably short-lived genre) and the logic of
exclusivity (Is something A, or is it not A?) that you get later with
Plato and Aristotle do not work well together.

I'm really rusty on this so I can't pull out the more modern
interpretations off the top of my head, but one of my cohorts did his
bachelor's on this topic.  I wrote on Vergil instead.

> Nora, I didn't tell you how I cried out in joy at seeing that there
> was a post from you after so long a time. 

Awww. :)

I've been busy, dissertating away, but the last surge of canon was too
interesting not to come and chat and see what I got right and lol over
what I got wrong.

> Actually, yes. There was a coterie who believed that he had decided 
> by pure logic, and not at all by personal inclination, to believe 
> that there really is a difference between good and evil that makes 
> it worthwhile to serve good and oppose evil, even in a losing fight. 

Pre-OotP, and even a little post-OotP, I was inclined to see it that
way, more in moral terms (George and Diana).  I think it may have
become more of a moral thing later in his life, judging by the
comments to Dumbledore, but it wasn't initially, not at all!

-Nora gets back to cataloging performance dates on a muggy morning