Antigone / Edition 1

by Sophocles, Richard Emil Braun

Overview

Based on the conviction that only translators who write poetry themselves can properly recreate the celebrated and timeless tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the Greek Tragedy in New Translations series offers new translations that go beyond the literal meaning of the Greek in order to evoke the poetry of the originals. The series seeks to recover the entire extant corpus of Greek tragedy, quite as though the ancient tragedians wrote in the English of our own time. Under the editorship of Peter Burian and Alan Shapiro, each of these volumes includes a critical introduction, commentary on the text, full stage directions, and a glossary of the mythical and geographical references in the plays.

This finely-tuned translation of Sophocles' Antigone by Richard Emil Braun, both a distinguished poet and a professional scholar-critic, offers, in lean, sinewy verse and lyrics of unusual intensity, an interpretation informed by exemplary scholarship and critical insight. Braun presents an Antigone not marred by excessive sentimentality or pietistic attitudes.

His translation underscores the extraordinary structural symmetry and beauty of Sophocles' design by focusing on the balanced and harmonious view of tragically opposed wills that makes the play so moving. Unlike the traditionally gentle and pious protagonist opposed to a brutal and villainous Creon, Braun's Antigone emerges as a true Sophoclean heroine—with all the harshness and even hubris, as well as pathos and beauty, that Sophoclean heroism requires. Braun also reveals a Creon as stubbornly "principled" as Antigone, instead of simply the arrogant tyrant of conventional interpretations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195061673
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	02/01/1990
Series:	Greek Tragedy in New Translations
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	142,131
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.30(d)
Lexile:	940L (what's this?)

About the Author

About the Translator:
Richard Emil Braun is Professor of Classics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. He has published several volumes of poetry and translations, including Children Passing, The Foreclosure, and Persius' Satires.

Table of Contents

IntroductionOn the TranslationAntigoneNotes on the TextAppendices1. The Date of Antigone2. The Myth of Antigone, to the End of the Fifth CenturyThe Transmission of the TextGlossarySuggestions for Further Reading

Editorial Reviews

A lucid, well-paced translation, natural enough sounding in the dialogue to make a good acting version.

Joseph Russo

These two new additions to Oxford's "Greek Tragedy in New Translations" series only add to the luster of the previous releases. Each is firmly packed with insightful introductions, comprehensive and numbered notes, glossaries, and up-to-date bibliographies (the plays' texts take up about half of each volume). The collaboration of poet and scholar in each volume produces a language that is easy to read and easy to speak (compare, for instance, the Watchman's first lines in Shapiro and Burian's Agamemnon with those in Lattimore's 1947 translation). Each volume's introduction presents the play's action and themes with some detail. The translators' notes describe the linguistic twists and turns involved in rendering the text into a modern poetic language. Both volumes are enthusiastically recommended for academic libraries, theater groups, and theater departments.-Larry Schwartz, Minnesota State Univ., Moorhead Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

"Gibbons's translation is the most faithful to the original Greek I know ... his translation is the truest to Sophocles' language." —The Journal of Classics Teaching

"Gibbons' text remains faithful to the Greek and yet poetic and apt for the stage; and Segal's contributions offer an insightful introduction to the play as a product of its own time. The combination of the two makes this new edition a great tool for college teaching and a rewarding experience of Sophoclean drama outside the classroom." —New England Classical Journal

"These two new additions to Oxford's 'Greek Tragedy in New Translations' series only add to the luster of the previous releases. Each is firmly packed with insightful introductions, comprehensive and numbered notes, glossaries, and up-to-date bibliographies (the plays' texts take up about half of each volume). The collaboration of poet and scholar in each volume produces a language that is easy to read and easy to speak (compare, for instance, the Watchman's first lines in Shapiro and Burian's Agamemnon with those in Lattimore's 1947 translation). Each volume's introduction presents the play's action and themes with some detail. The translators' notes describe the linguistic twists and turns involved in rendering the text into a modern poetic language. Both volumes are enthusiastically recommended for academic libraries, theatre groups, and theatre departments."—Library Journal [starred review of Oresteia and Antigone]

From the Publisher