The Theban Plays of Sophocles (2024)

Review of Ahrensdorf, P., Pangle, T. trans. Sophocles. The Theban Plays: Oedipus the Tyrant, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

Judith Owen 2006 Book review Josh Beer Sophocles and the tragedy

https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2006/2006.03.42/, 2006

This book is part of a series that presents the 'cultural and political context' (p. vii) of selected highpoints of Western drama, and the series is 'primarily aimed at students of the theatre' (p. xii). With this as his brief, Beer (B.) has chosen Sophocles as the classical playwright around which to structure his discussion of the wider context of fifth-century Greek tragedy. And in this he succeeds admirably. His introductory chapters form a comprehensive but readable account of the various components of the production of Greek tragedy and its political, religious etc. context. Although this information can be found in other introductions to Greek tragedy, its comprehensiveness is an advantage for those 'students of the theatre' who may not been aware of the other available introductions. After the three introductory chapters, B. has a chapter per play, in which he summarises the action and shows how the contemporary socio-political context resonates within it. B. achieves what he sets out to do: the book provides a good account of the political context of Sophocles' plays pitched at a level suited to undergraduates.

Syllabus: Sophocles’ Three Theban Plays: Philosophy, Politics and Psychoanalysis: Summer School Courses

Zenodo, 2024

This course explores the three Theban plays (i.e. Oedipus Tyrannus, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone) by Sophocles (c. 497/496-406/405 BC), and the different interpretations that philosophers, psychoanalysts, and literary critics have offered of them. Students will develop adequate critical and analytical skills through the reading of literary works and philosophical and psychoanalytic texts on topics such as catharsis, death and undeadness, desire, ethics, family structures, feminism, funerary rites, kinship, incest, love, pathos, power, sexuality, taboo issues, the distinction between nature and culture, the distinction between written and unwritten laws, the essence of the human being, and violence. Furthermore, students will learn to navigate philosophical and psychoanalytic thinking by addressing the following questions: What can we learn from the three Theban plays? In what sense is the figure of Antigone still relevant? How can we bring philosophy, politics, and psychoanalysis into dialogue? And what can we learn from that dialogue? This course addresses these and other questions by focusing on the works of one of the foremost poets and tragedians of ancient Greece, Sophocles.

Re-reading Sophocles’s Oedipus Plays

Journal of Jungian Scholarly Studies

Sophocles’s Oedipus plays depict failed integration of self-knowledge as worthy of divinization. Acting out vengeance is the evidence of Oedipus’s failed integration. Oedipus’s task of integration pivots on grasping in what sense he can be understood as guilty. His plight demonstrates that ignorance is part of unconsciousness and, contrary to Jung’s attitude toward ignorance, requires some kind of coping with responsibility. Vengeance was a conscious value among the ancient Greeks. In Sophocles’s last play, Oedipus at Colonus, Oedipus acts out vengeance against his sons, and Sophocles divinizes this acting out through having Oedipus join the goddesses, the Furies. This divinization suggests that vengeance is archetypal, depending on culture only for images of manifestation. I argue that Oedipus’s acting out of vengeance can be read as symptomatic of a cultural complex. I identify the situation leading to his acting out as his failure to imagine how creatively to take responsibility ...

ANALYSIS OF SOPHOCLES' OEDIPUS THE KING AS AN ARISTOTELIAN TRAGEDY Sinde KURT

ABSTRACT Aristotle built the system of tragedy in his Poetics and gave examples from Sophocles’ play ‘Oedipus the King’ while describing the basic elements of tragedy. Based on this, it is possible to say that Sophocles' Oedipus the King is one of the ideal examples of the tragedy. Why does Aristotle, particularly, gives examples from Oedipus the King in Poetics while explaining the tragedy, what is the reason behind this situation and how did the basic tragedy elements of Aristotle take place in the text of Oedipus the King? The objective of this article is to analyze the structure and features of Sophocles’ tragedy, Oedipus the King, and to interpret why Aristotle particularly referred to this play while giving significant information about tragedy in Poetics. Accordingly, it is aimed to explain the tragedy elements in Aristotle’s Poetics, and to explain such elements within the structure of the play, Oedipus the King. Building a deeper understanding following topics will be examined as a result of this article; the general characteristics of Ancient Greek Theater, the emergence of tragedy, Aristotle’ basic elements of tragedy in Poetics, different views of Aristotle and Plato on tragedy, short biography of Sophocles, and his characteristics made him shine as a tragedy writer, the basic structure and characteristics of Oedipus the King. Key Words: Catharsis, Drama, Mythos, Mimesis, Tragedy, Theater

Review of Sophocles and the Greek Tragic Tradition, Simon Goldhill and Edith Hall (eds.), Cambridge University Press, 2009

Introduction: Sophocles and his Critics

Sophocles And Shakespeare: A Comparative Study Of Classical And Elizabethan Tragedies

2012

Oedipus at Colonus as a Reflection of the Oresteia : The Abomination from Thebes as an Athenian Hero in the Making, in: S. Bigliazzi (ed.), Oedipus at Colonus and King Lear: Classical and Early Modern Intersections (Skenè Studies I - 2) , Verona 2019, 165-199

Skenè Studies I - 2, 2019

open access under: https://textsandstudies.skeneproject.it/index.php/TS/catalog/series/Studies-1 chapter 7 https://textsandstudies.skeneproject.it/index.php/TS/catalog/view/67/13/424-1 ABSTRACT Sophocles bases his posthumous Oedipus at Colonus on the famous treatment of the transformation of the Furies to the Kindly Ones in Eumenides, the last play of Aeschylus’ Oresteia that has gained the status of a master-play. Accordingly Sophocles shapes the plot and its main character on a cultic reality and on the ritual concept of chthonic heroes and gods. The Erinyes/Eumenides, to whose grove Oedipus arrives, function as the model for Sophocles’ most questionable hero. Their quintessential polarity between the dreadful dimension of death and euphemistic names to veil it, between mythic scenarios of anger, curse, hate as well as cultic blessing and plenty is the basic pattern of a play that stages Oedipus as a chthonic hero in the making. He acts right from the beginning as the hero he is going to become. Sophocles makes Oedipus oscillate between staging a real mystic miracle and a problematic manipulation of religious facts in order to take revenge on his Theban homeland by finding support from his new city of Athens. This open perspective involves the audience in thinking about what really happened and reflecting about the relation between ritual, religion, politics, and their manipulations by men for their own purposes. In this way it comes quite close to Euripides’ Bacchae written about the same time. OC is thus in many respects like a metatheatrical exploration of the constitutive gap of signifier and signified to be gradually closed by the blind director who gathers, like the blind and unwitting audience, the piecemeal information divulged as the play progresses. KEYWORDS: Oedipus; Sophocles; Erinyes; Eumenides; Oresteia; chthonic polarity; heroization; cultic hero in the making; Kolonos as tumulus; metatheatre; oracles; manipulation; curse; blessing; military support; indeterminacy; narratological strategy; mimesis; politics; mystery; religious and metatheatrical exploration

K. Ormand (ed.), A companion to Sophocles (Wiley-Blackwell 2012), Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2013.01.24

Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2013.01.24, 2013