Sophocles' Tragic World: Divinity, Nature, Society / Edition 1

by Charles Segal

Overview

Much has been written about the heroic figures of Sophocles’ powerful dramas. Now Charles Segal focuses our attention not on individual heroes and heroines, but on the world that inspired and motivated their actions—a universe of family, city, nature, and the supernatural. He shows how these ancient masterpieces offer insight into the abiding question of tragedy: how one can make sense of a world that involves so much apparently meaningless violence and suffering.

In a series of engagingly written interconnected essays, Segal studies five of Sophocles’ seven extant plays: Ajax, Oedipus Tyrannus, Philoctetes, Antigone, and the often neglected Trachinian Women. He examines the language and structure of the plays from several interpretive perspectives, drawing both on traditional philological analysis and on current literary and cultural theory. He pays particular attention to the mythic and ritual backgrounds of the plays, noting Sophocles’ reinterpretation of the ancient myths. His delineation of the heroes and their tragedies encompasses their relations with city and family, conflicts between men and women, defiance of social institutions, and the interaction of society, nature, and the gods. Segal’s analysis sheds new light on Sophocles’ plays—among the most widely read works of classical literature—and on their implications for Greek views on the gods, moral life, and sexuality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674821019
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	01/13/1998
Edition description:	REPRINT
Pages:	292
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Charles Segal was Walter C. Klein Professor of the Classics at Harvard University.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Drama and Perspective in Ajax

Myth, Poetry, and Heroic Values in the Trachinian Women

Time, Oracles, and Marriage in the Trachinian Women

Philoctetes and the Imperishable Piety

Lament and Closure in Antigone

Time and Knowledge in the Tragedy of Oedipus

Freud, Language, and the Unconscious

The Gods and the Chorus: Zeus in Oedipus Tyrannus

Earth in Oedipus Tyrannus

Abbreviations

Notes

Index

Editorial Reviews

Segal’s strengths as a critic are sensitivity to detail, breadth of cultural reference, and open-mindedness; these qualities make his writing rich… This is a book which could enhance any reader’s understanding of Sophocles.

Greece and Rome

Charles Segal has written a superb critical study of five of the seven extant plays by Sophocles… Segal’s analytical interests go beyond the usual discussion of the nature of heroic greatness of tragic stature. He is principally concerned with the ‘tragic world’ which Sophocles depicts… Segal writes in a lucid, jargon-free prose that is also dramaturgy of the highest order… Segal’s strength as a critic issues directly from a wide-ranging sensitivity to the epic tradition and a nuanced awareness of the dramatic use of temporal shifts and poetic displacements. Segal’s terrific, lucid book should also be required reading for anyone interested in the tragic stature of women in Greek tragedy. His complex thinking on the subject gives justice to the basic intractability of Sophocles’s views on the nature of feminine sensibility.

New York Theatre Wire - Randy Gener

This work includes five previously published essays and four new essays. Once more, Segal brings his considerable scholarship to bear on the plays of Sophocles, addressing five of the seven extant tragedies.

Choice

[Segal] refutes reductionist attempts to derive from a Sophoclean tragedy a unitary moral or message. The dramas, Segal argues, present insoluble dilemmas that require the audience to engage with the situations the characters face, the choices the characters make, and the consequences of those choices… This book will be of interest to anyone who wants a fuller appreciation of Sophocles’ dramatic art.

New England Classical Journal - Andrew Szegedy-Maszak

Sophocles’ Tragic World is an organized collection of nine essays (plus introduction) on five plays, Ajax, Trachiniae, Philoctetes, Antigone, and—especially—OT, to which four of the chapters are devoted. The introduction and three of the essays (one on Ant., two on OT) are new; the others are revisions of published articles, dating originally from 1976 to 1993. For several decades now, [Segal] has been so articulate about Greek tragedy, and so productive in his articulations, that one has acquired an unusually sharp sense…of the changing shape and direction that his readings have taken over the years.

Classical Review - M. S. Silk

Sophocles’ Tragic World is…a lucidly written work of great theoretical sophistication and learning, offering many new insights into the fundamental meaning of the plays.

Bryn Mawr Classical Review - Victor Bers

A fine collection of nine essays… A richly rewarding collection amply illustrated with specific detailed reference to the texts that one always tries to inculcate in one’s pupils: for them, this will be invaluable.

JACT Review - Jim Neville

Sophocles' Tragic World is an organized collection of nine essays (plus introduction) on five plays, Ajax, Trachiniae, Philoctetes, Antigone, and—especially—OT, to which four of the chapters are devoted. The introduction and three of the essays (one on Ant., two on OT) are new; the others are revisions of published articles, dating originally from 1976 to 1993. For several decades now, [Segal] has been so articulate about Greek tragedy, and so productive in his articulations, that one has acquired an unusually sharp sense...of the changing shape and direction that his readings have taken over the years.

Classical Review - M.S. Silk

Segal's strengths as a critic are sensitivity to detail, breadth of cultural reference, and open-mindedness; these qualities make his writing rich...This is a book which could enhance any reader's understanding of Sophocles.

Greece And Rome

A lucidly written work of great theoretical sophistication and learning, offering many new insights into the fundamental meaning of the plays. -- Victor Bers

Victor Bers