Chapter 2 - The Language of Appropriation

Summary

In the first chapter, at several points I referred to the difficulties of the term dikē in the Oresteia. In this chapter, I intend to consider in more depth the notions surrounding this word and its cognates in the trilogy. This discussion is important for several reasons. First, after my investigation of the exchange of language with its focus on the process of interpretation and understanding, it is interesting to attempt to follow through the shifts and plays of meaning through which a word passes in the clashes of persuasive rhetoric and deceitful manipulation. I discussed language’s role in the ordering of social relations and language as the means and matter of social transgression. How does a prime term of social order, dikē, relate to this discussion? Secondly, the concept of dikē, few would disagree, is a major concern in the Oresteia. This concern has formed the basis for many literary critics’ readings of the trilogy. As well as investigating the various influential views put forward on this topic, it is important to see in what ways the focus on language changes our appreciation of this debate. This leads to my third reason: the different critics’ attempts at interpreting the Oresteia in the light of this set of terms will offer an important insight into a major problem of reading Greek tragedy. For, as I argued in the concluding paragraphs of Chapter 1, the Oresteia’s tragic critique of the exchange of language as social process is highly relevant to the institutions and attitudes of literary criticism; and the history of the interpretation of the notion of dikē will offer an understanding of the way the play’s problematic view of interpretation and comprehension is all too applicable to the reading of the play itself.