Authorial presence in Sophocles’ Electra

Abstract

Authorial presence in tragedy, where the poet never speaks in his own person and where there is no master voice to guide our reception, is elusive and implicit. Despite tragedy’s polyphony the purpose of this study is to analyze some sample passages from Sophocles’ Electra for textual traces of its author’s voice as a response to Aeschylus’ Oresteia. Each part of this study is focusing on different aspects of self-reflexive poetics.