What was the primary function of the chorus in classical Attic tragedy (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides)?
Answer and explanation
Correct answer: A. reflecting on moral and civic themes
- Step 1: The tragic chorus represented the voice of the community or collective conscience, singing choral odes (stasima). They mediated between actors and audience, framing dramatic events within overarching moral, civic, and theological inquiries. Answer: reflecting on moral and civic themes. Why not the others: "providing comic relief between acts" characterizes Elizabethan theater (Shakespearean clowns) rather than formal Attic tragedy; "staging athletic gymnastics and acrobatic circus games" misidentifies solemn ritual tragic dance and poetry as vulgar physical circus performance; "advertising theatrical sponsors" is anachronistic; theatrical choregoi financed productions for civic honor, not overt commercial ads.
Practise more Socio-Economic Systems, Philosophy and Historical Analysis.
Free questions with an explanation for every one, and full timed State Certificate of Language Proficiency (KPG) English mock tests.
More Socio-Economic Systems, Philosophy and Historical Analysis questions
- What constitutes the fundamental distinction between 'direct democracy' in ancient Athens and modern 'representative democracy'?
- What was the primary economic objective of the 1947 Marshall Plan (European Recovery Program) in post-war Europe?
- In political philosophy, how does Thomas Hobbes's 'Leviathan' conceptualize the pre-political 'state of nature'?
- What is the central ethical principle of Immanuel Kant's 'Categorical Imperative' in moral philosophy?
- In epistemology, what core tenet divides classical rationalism (Descartes, Spinoza) from British empiricism (Locke, Hume)?
- What sociological concept, coined by Max Weber, explains the emergence of modern bureaucratic administration?