Sophocles: Ajax

by Sophocles, W. Stanford

Overview

Sophocles' Ajax is one of the most disturbing and powerful surviving ancient tragedies. But it is also difficult to understand and interpret. What are we to make of its protagonist's extremism? Does Ajax deserve the isolation and divine punishment he experiences? Why is his state of mind so difficult to determine? Dr Hesk offers answers to these and many other questions by drawing together the very latest critical work on the play and introducing the reader to key frames for its interpretation, including Sophoclean heroism, language and form; Homeric intertextuality and Athens' 'masculinist' culture, and the twentieth-century reception of Ajax.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780862920098
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	06/01/1991
Series:	Greek Texts
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	375
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.78(d)

About the Author

Richard Clavarhouse Jebb, Regius Professor of Greek and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, was one of the foremost classicists of the Victorian era. His editions of Sophocles' plays appeared in the last fifteen years of the 19th century. They are distinguished by the sensitivity of Jebb's literary and dramatic interpretations, and the neat translation facing the Greek text. They have had a profound influence on subsequent Sophoclean scholarship. P.E. Easterling, editor of this series and author of the new Foreword to each volume, is Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Newnham College. She is general editor of the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series. Peter Wilson is University Lecturer at Oxford and Classics Tutor at New College, Oxford. He has published The Athenian Institution of the Khoregia: The Chorus, the City and the Stage (2000) and articles on ancient actors, Euripides, the sociology and epigraphy of Greek theatre. He is currently translating four of Sohocles plays for the OUP World's Classics Series.

Table of Contents

Preface; Background to the Story; Ajax: Translation and commentary; Guide to Pronunciation of Names; Synopsis of the Play; Introduction to the Greek Theatre; Index.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

'This is a wonderful resource for the study of Ajax, and its author [is] clearly a force to be reckoned with in the high-level explication of Greek texts. The book has been produced with the great care we associate with the series and its editors.' Donald Mastronarde, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

'Patrick Finglass has produced a second heavyweight Sophoclean commentary with amazing rapidity, but without diminution of scholarly excellence … There are many incisive analyses in the commentary.' Malcolm Heath, Greece and Rome

Editorial Reviews

"This admirable edition of Sophocles’ Ajax includes detailed and balanced consideration of most aspects of the play . . . This is a valuable and enjoyable new edition of an important play". —Mnemosyne

"Scholars who have profited from the impressive learning and uncommon good sense displayed in Finglass’s 2007 commentary on Sophocles’ Electra will find his new Ajax, in the same series, equally satisfying . . . The text of the play is expertly edited and beautifully printed . . . One is almost never left feeling that more could have been said or that some aspect of the text has been ignored . . . There is little of substance to criticize, and much of value to learn, in the pages of this formidable volume." — New England Classical Journal

"Finglass has followed up his fine commentary on Sophocles’ Electra with an impressively thorough and well-informed edition of Sophocles’ Ajax. This is an authoritative and provocative piece of work . . . He shows a keen dramatic and literary sensibility on issues of interpretation, in each scene and line. Particularly welcome is his attention to practical details of staging, and awareness of the difference that details of staging may make to the effect of a scene . . . There is no disputing the enormity of his achievement. This will be the definitive English edition of the Ajax for a long time to come." —Classical Review

From the Publisher