Antigone

by Sophocles

Overview

Oedipus, the former ruler of Thebes, has died. Now, when his young daughter Antigone defies her uncle, Kreon, the new ruler, because he has prohibited the burial of her dead brother, she and he enact a primal conflict between young and old, woman and man, individual and ruler, family and state, courageous and self-sacrificing reverence for the gods of the earth and perhaps self-serving allegiance to the gods of the sky. Echoing through western culture for more than two millennia, Sophocles' Antigone has been a touchstone of thinking about human conflict and human tragedy, the role of the divine in human life, and the degree to which men and women are the creators of their own destiny. This exciting translation of the play is extremely faithful to the Greek, eminently playable, and poetically powerful. For readers, actors, students, teachers, and theatrical directors, this affordable paperback edition of one of the greatest plays in the history of the western world provides the best combination of contemporary, powerful language, along with superb background and notes on meaning, interpretation, and ancient beliefs, attitudes, and contexts. "Sophocles' text is inexhaustibly actual. It is also, at many points, challenging and remote from us. The Gibbons-Segal translation, with its rich annotations, conveys both the difficulties and the formidable immediacy. The choral odes, so vital to Sophocles' purpose, have never been rendered with finer energy and insight. Across more than two thousand years, a great dark music sounds for us." --George Steiner, Churchill College, Cambridge "Produces a language that is easy to read and easy to speak.... Enthusiastically recommended."--Library Journal [Starred Review]

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199840205
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	06/05/2003
Series:	Greek Tragedy in New Translations
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Reginald Gibbons is the author of nine volumes of poems, including Sparrow: New and Selected Poems, It's Time and Fern-Texts. With Charles Segal he has also translated Euripides' Bakkhai. He teaches at Northwestern University. The late Charles Segal was Walter C. Klein Professor of the Classics at Harvard University. His many books include Sophocles' Tragic World, Tragedy and Civilization: An Interpretation of Sophocles, and Oedipus Tyrannus: Tragic Heroism and the Limits of Knowledge.

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