Electra (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Hugo von Hofmannsthal
- First Published: 1904
- Type of Work: Play
- Type of Plot: Tragedy
- Time of Work: Antiquity
- Setting: The inner courtyard of the palace at Mycenae, Greece
- Genres: Drama, Tragedy
- Subjects: Mothers, Parents and children, Murder or homicide, Mistaken or secret identity, Obsession, Women, Revenge, Kings, queens, or royalty, Gods or goddesses, Fratricide, parricide, or filicide, Rites or ceremonies, Prophecy or prophets, Greek or Roman times, Greece or Greek people, Trojan War
- Locales: Greece, ancient, Mycenae, Greece
Characters Discussed
Electra (ee-LEHK-truh), the daughter of Clytemnestra and the murdered king Agamemnon. Consumed by grief for her dead father, Electra has dedicated herself to perpetuating his memory by observing daily the appropriate rites for the dead, hoping that eventfully, when her brother Orestes returns, she can assist him in exacting rightful revenge. In the meantime, humiliated and abused by her mother and Aegisthus, she has lived abjectly in the palace like the lowest of servants. She is sustained through her suffering by wrathful hatred and graphic fantasies of...
[The entire page is 928 words long]
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