Seeing Together

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores how the ‘big three’ Athenian tragedians, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, used the social cognitive process of joint attention to focus spectators’ attention upon a significant part of a busy stage. It argues that, by using certain verbal phrases (to which this chapter gives the name ‘sight invitations’) playwrights directed theatre-goers to employ a focused and self-conscious form of joint attention at moments of special dramatic importance. In addition to reducing spectators’ ‘attentional load’ at such times, the act of ‘seeing together’ also blurred distinctions between the internal (i.e. ‘fictional’) and external (‘real-life’) audiences, involving theatre-goers further within the epistemic, emotional, and thematic issues of the plays. Close readings of scenes featuring sight invitations from Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers, Sophocles’ Women of Trachis, and Euripides’ Bacchae explore several ways that ancient playwrights enriched their theatre-goers’ experience by verbally eliciting cognitive processes of joint attention.

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