Iphigenia: The Mythical Character With Many Dimensions

Abstract

The study titled “Iphigenia: The Mythical Character with Many Dimensions” uses the ‘Reader Response Theory’ to critically analyze the texts such as Aeschylus’ (c. 525 – c. 456) The Oresteia (458 BCE) and Euripides’ (c. 480 – c. 406 BC) Iphigenia in Tauris (414 BC – 412 BC) and Iphigenia in Aulis (408 – 406 BC). The multiple interpretations of the legend of Iphigenia and the projection of the character of Iphigenia in multifaceted ways is the focus of the study. The study analyzes the reception of the texts from the points of view of the readers who visit the texts in different periods across a spatial dimension. The study analyzes the role of the readers in terms of continuing signification by generating multiple meanings of the texts. The study shows that the texts are written for the theoretical 'implied reader' and they engage in a dialogue with the actual readers. The actual readers respond to the texts by making meaning/s out of the texts. The readers’ subject positions or critical positions are analyzed in the study as they are shown to bestow their ideological frameworks on the texts. The readers’ ideological frameworks are a result of the unconscious archives of ideas that psychologically condition them thereby changing the politics of reception across a temporal dimension and a spatial dimension. The readers are shown to capitalize on the loopholes in the texts to generate meanings. The study highlights the critics’ own subjective and affective reaction/s to a text to understand it. The study exhibits that each reader belongs to an interpretive community conditioned by time and space. The study displays that the readers rewrite different texts by interacting with the texts, influencing texts by their own identities, focusing on the meaning/s of the texts, and imposing their subjectivity on the texts. The study displays that Iphigenia is a mythical character with many dimensions because of the visitations of several readers to the literary texts and the subsequent derivations of meanings that have made the character of Iphigenia more nuanced.