A Companion to Sophocles

by Kirk Ormand (Editor)

Overview

A Companion to Sophocles presents the first comprehensive collection of essays in decades to address all aspects of the life, works, and critical reception of Sophocles.

• First collection of its kind to provide introductory essays to the fragments of his lost plays and to the remaining fragments of one satyr-play, the Ichneutae, in addition to each of his extant tragedies
• Features new essays on Sophoclean drama that go well beyond the current state of scholarship on Sophocles
• Presents readings that historicize Sophocles in relation to the social, cultural, and intellectual world of fifth century Athens
• Seeks to place later interpretations and adaptations of Sophocles in their historical context
• Includes essays dedicated to issues of gender and sexuality; significant moments in the history of interpreting Sophocles; and reception of Sophocles by both ancient and modern playwrights

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781119025535
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	06/02/2015
Series:	Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	624
Product dimensions:	9.50(w) x 6.70(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Kirk Ormand is Professor of Classics at Oberlin. He is author of Exchange and the Maiden: Marriage in Sophoclean Tragedy (1999), Controlling Desires: Sexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome (2009), and The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women and Archaic Greece (2014).

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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations x

List of Abbreviations xi

Notes on Contributors xv

Acknowledgments xx

1 Introduction 1
Kirk Ormand

PART I Text and Author 7

2 The Textual Transmission of Sophocles’ Dramas 9
P. J. Finglass

3 Sophocles’ Biography 25
Ruth Scodel

4 Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides 38
John Davidson

Part II The Plays and the Fragments 53

5 Antigone 55
André Lardinois

6 Polyphonic Ajax 69
Peter Burian

7 Oedipus Tyrannus 84
Vayos Liapis

8 Electra 98
Francis Dunn

9 The Divided Worlds of Sophocles’ Women of Trachis 111
Margaret Rachel Kitzinger

10 The Philoctetes of Sophocles 126
Paul Woodruff

11 Last Things: Oedipus at Colonus and the End of Tragedy 141
Thomas Van Nortwick

12 Sophocles’ Ichneutae or How to Write a Satyr Play 155
Willeon Slenders

13 Sophoclean Fragments 169
Carolin Hahnemann

Part III Sophoclean Techniques 185

14 Sophocles Didaskalos 187
C. W. Marshall

15 Poetic Speakers in Sophocles 204
Sarah H. Nooter

16 Sophocles’ Choruses 220
Sheila Murnaghan

17 Lament as Speech Act in Sophocles 236
Casey Dué

Part IV Sophocles and Fifth-Century Political, Religious, and Intellectual Thought 251

18 Sophocles and Class 253
Peter W. Rose

19 Sophocles and Contemporary Politics 270
Robin Osborne

20 Sophocles and Athenian Law 287
Edward M. Harris

21 The Necessity and Limits of Deliberation in Sophocles’ Theban Plays 301
Edith Hall

22 Heroic Pharmacology: Sophocles and the Metaphors of Greek Medical Thought 316
Robin Mitchell-Boyask

23 Sophocles and Hero Cult 331
Bruno Currie

Part V Gender and Sexuality 349

24 Cutting to the Bone: Recalcitrant Bodies in Sophocles 351
Nancy Worman

25 Staging Mothers in Sophocles’ Electra and Oedipus the King 367
Laura McClure

26 Marriage in Sophocles: A Problem for Social History 381
Cynthia Patterson

27 Masculinity and Freedom in Sophocles 395
Bruce M. King

Part VI Historical Interpretations 409

28 Aristotle on Sophocles 411
John T. Kirby

29 Sophocles and Homer 424
Seth L. Schein

30 Facing Up to Tragedy: Toward an Intellectual History of Sophocles in Europe from Camerarius to Nietzsche 440
Michael Lurie

31 Virginia Woolf, Richard Jebb, and Sophocles’ Antigone 462
Denise Eileen McCoskey and Mary Jean Corbett

32 Freud and the Drama of Oedipal Truth 477
Richard H. Armstrong

33 Sophocles with Lacan 492
Mark Buchan

Part VII Influence and Imitation 505

34 Oedipus on Oedipus: Sophocles, Seneca, Politics, and Therapy 507
Alex Dressler

35 Jean Anouilh’s Antigone 523
Jed Deppman

36 Enter Antigone, Let the Agones Begin: Sophocles’ Antigone in Nineteenth-Century Greece 538
Gonda Van Steen

37 Tony Harrison’s The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus 557
Hallie Rebecca Marshall

38 Black Oedipus 572
Emily Wilson

Index Locorum 586

Index 590

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“This future work might be conducted in areas that this Companion, for all its admirable breadth, does not treat thoroughly — a chapter on the metrical features and effects of his verse, for example, would have been valuable — but this volume will indeed serve as an indispensable reference point for the future study of Sophocles.” (Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 1 January 2013)

“Although the book is scholarly and packed with information, it is accessible to nonspecialists. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.” (Choice, 1 November 2012)

Editorial Reviews

This volume will indeed serve as an indispensable reference point for the future study of Sophocles.”  (Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 1 January 2013)

“Although the book is scholarly and packed with information, it is accessible to nonspecialists.  Summing Up: Highly recommended.  Upper-division undergraduates and above.”  (Choice, 1 November 2012)

From the Publisher