Sophoclean Tragedy Research Articles

Una Antígona para tiempos de supervivencia: Lo heroico y lo sucio en Antígona del dramaturgo cubano Yerandy Fleites

Abstract: This essay analyzes Antígona (2008) by Yerandy Fleites to show how the author tackles the current Cuban political situation by rewriting the Sophoclean tragedy. Fleites adjusts the Greek myth to the Cuban context by means of parody and an intertextual dialogue with both Jean Anouilh's Antigone (1944) and Peruvian poet José Watanabe's Antígona (2000). The study then unpacks the idea of dirtiness and Fleites' depiction of the female heroine to demonstrate how the dramatist proposes hybris as the main psychological driver behind the Cuban Antígona (and that, to an extent, of the generation she represents) to suggest possible avenues for sociopolitical change. At the same time, this study considers the interpretations of Fleites' Antígona that Cuban directors Pedro Franco and Julio César Ramírez respectively brought to the stage in 2013 and 2020. Ramírez's reading in particular provides an understanding of Antígona in the context of the protests that occurred on November 27, 2020, when intellectuals, writers, and artists demanded that the Cuban Ministry of Culture recognize their rights and their freedom as citizens.

Thinking What Is Strange and Dangerous: Heidegger, Tragedy, and Original Ethics

ABSTRACT This paper returns to one of Heidegger’s pivotal references to ethics – his remarks in the “Letter on Humanism” – and attempts to follow up on a line of thinking in those remarks that Heidegger himself did not expand upon, namely, the link between ethics and Sophoclean tragedy. Reading Heidegger’s analysis of Heraclitus’s Fragment 119 on ἤθος with reference to Sophoclean tragedy and in conjunction with Heidegger’s thinking and his comments elsewhere on ethics and tragedy, the paper seeks to clarify how the thinking of being is, as Heidegger called it, an “original ethics” and what that means for ethical thinking following Heidegger.

Antigone's Voice

Antigone's Voice Lior Levy (bio) She cried out bitterly, with a sound like the piercing note of a bird when she sees her empty nest robbed of her young. (Sophocles, Antigone, 1994, 423–424) For while fish are dumb in their element of water, birds soar freely in theirs, the air; separated from the objective heaviness of the earth, they fill the air with themselves, and utter their self-feeling in their own particular element. (Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, §351Zß, pp. 354–355) Introduction: Philosophers Reading Antigone—Action and Speech The stakes are high in reading Antigone. Oscillating between the figure of a daughter loyal to maternal ancestry and a symbol of disruption, or even the eradication of the meaningfulness of kinship structures, Antigone is read by philosophers and psychoanalysts alike as an image of sexuate identity caught in a web of psychic, familial, political, and social relationships. The stakes are high, of course, even when Antigone is not read, as George Steiner (1984) demonstrates, pointing to Freud's investment in Oedipus Rex, the first in Sophocles's Theban trilogy,1 an investment that leads to concern with vertical lines of kinship instead of the horizontal axis of relationships between siblings that is central to Antigone.2 The stakes are high, and so Luce Irigaray (1994), for instance, urges readers to "abstract Antigone from the seductive, reductive discourses and listen to what she has to say" (p. 70).3 What did she have to say? At least from the 19th century onward, readers of Sophocles's tragedy concentrated on Antigone [End Page 437] the agent, writing and thinking about what she does. Renowned, admired even, for her defiant acts of burying her brother, by which she self-consciously transgressed the ruler's decree, and mourned for her premature, self-inflicted death, Antigone's deeds were understood as dramatizing the possibilities—both the risks and the promises—of human existence. For Hegel, Antigone's actions, meant to protect divine law and familial bonds of love, were crucial for setting in motion the tragic conflict—the opposition between Antigone's one-sided commitments to the "unwritten laws" of the family, and Creon's one-sided commitment to the laws of the polis—out of which the ethical substance, where the two positions are mediated by one another, emerged.4 Others—for example, Judith Butler and Jacques Lacan—who challenge this Hegelian opposition, still emphasized Antigone's deeds. For Lacan (1992), Antigone's actions are central to articulating an ethics of desire for the Other; for Butler (2000), her actions reveal "the socially contingent character of kinship" (p. 6). The focus on Antigone's actions is not unfounded, given that out of the 1,338 lines that comprise Sophocles's tragedy, less than one-fifth (about 216 lines) are spoken by the play's eponymous character. But if her words are scarce, her deeds are even rarer. Antigone's acts of burial embody, for Hegel, her loyalty to family ties; for Butler, a defiance that put kinship into question; and for Lacan, the desire to recognize what lies beyond language. These acts, by which she comes to be what she is under these readings, are absent from the stage. They are retrospectively reported by the guard, who describes a "deed" (pragma) of an unknown doer (asemos), an agent leaving no marks on what was done. When Antigone's act is first introduced, recounted by the guard, it is left unclaimed, an unowned doing, whose results are plainly visible—the body "not buried in a tomb, but covered with a light dust"—but that do not disclose their author—"the doer left no mark" (253–255). This fact, of course, did not escape the readers of the play; commentators on the text readily acknowledge the fact that Antigone's acts are implicated by her speech. But moving from action to speech does not necessarily involve attentiveness to Antigone's voice. Butler (2000), for example, assimilates speech to action, linking the two under the heading of illocutionary [End Page 438] acts, a form of linguistic doing that subverts the "language of the state" from within (p. 6).5 Lacan (1992), in a twist on...

Listening in Sophocles: The Sounds of Empathic Dialogue

This article explores how listening sounds in Sophoclean tragedy. Engaging with insights from the work of psychotherapists and philosophers of sound and voice, I offer an understanding of listening as an active form of vocalization—a manifestation of empathy. By focusing on metric structures and other poetic effects making up the vocal soundscape of Sophocles, I explore how such listening is sonically performed between characters as they engage in sung dialogue, and how such dialogues may offer a possibility of healing during or after extreme suffering. Musical passages in particular bring together the protagonist and the chorus, a collective body of listener-witnesses, in moments of great distress and heightened emotionality. Three sung dialogues are examined in detail: one from Oedipus Tyrannus and two from Oedipus at Colonus. The exchange between the chorus and Oedipus the King immediately following his act of self-blinding already suggests the possibility of mitigating and making sense of suffering through empathic resonance. The first dialogue at Colonus exemplifies the chorus's refusal to empathically listen to Oedipus, an interaction that magnifies his traumatic experience; the second demonstrates the subsequent development of choral listening and the radical therapeutic potential of a reciprocally empathic vocal exchange.

New insights into the mechanisms of fast and slow conduction in the atrioventricular node

Cardiac pathologists and electrophysiologists have studied the atrioventricular (AV) node since 1906, when Tawara 1 Tawara S. Das Reitzleitungssystem des Saugetierherzens: Eine anatomisch-histologische Studie uber das Atrioventrikularbundel und die Purkinjeschen Faden. Gustav Fischer, Jena, Germany1906: 135-136 Google Scholar described its inferior extensions in the human heart. One century later, this important cardiac structure still carries the reputation of a profound enigma, invoked as the riddle of Sphinx, by means of its electrophysiological properties during both normal conduction and reentrant tachycardia. 2 Katritsis D.G. The human atrioventricular node: oedipus and the riddle of the Sphinx. Arrhythm Electrophysiol Rev. 2020; 9: 52-53 Crossref PubMed Scopus (0) Google Scholar In recent years, considerable evidence has accrued pertaining to its anatomic structure, 3 Inoue S. Becker A.E. Posterior extensions of the human compact atrioventricular node: a neglected anatomic feature of potential clinical significance. Circulation. 1998; 97: 188-193 Crossref PubMed Scopus (271) Google Scholar , 4 Hikspoors J. Macias Y. Tretter J.T. et al. Miniseries 1–part I: the development of the atrioventricular conduction axis. Europace. 2022; 24: 432-442 Crossref PubMed Scopus (1) Google Scholar , 5 Macias Y. de Almeida M.C. Tretter J.T. et al. Miniseries 1–part II: the compara-tive anatomy of the atrioventricular conduction axis. Europace. 2022; 24: 443-454 Crossref PubMed Scopus (3) Google Scholar , 6 Anderson R.H. Sanchez-Quintana D. Mori S. Cabrera J.A. Back Sternick E. Re-evaluation of the structure of the atrioventricular node and its connections with the atrium. Europace. 2020; 22: 821-830 Crossref PubMed Scopus (32) Google Scholar along with the electrophysiological properties, which have allowed identification of the so-called fast and slow pathways involved in atrioventricular nodal reentrant tachycardia (AVNRT). 7 Katritsis D.G. Josephson M.E. Classification, electrophysiological features and therapy of atrioventricular nodal reentrant tachycardia. Arrhythm Electrophysiol Rev. 2016; 5: 130-135 Crossref PubMed Scopus (29) Google Scholar , 8 Katritsis D.G. A unified theory for the circuit of atrioventricular nodal re-entrant tachycardia. Europace. 2020; 22: 1763-1767 Crossref PubMed Scopus (7) Google Scholar , 9 Katritsis D.G. Calkins H. Anderson R.H. The specialized atrioventricular ring tissues participate in the circuit of atrioventricular nodal reentrant tachycardia. J Am Heart Assoc. 2021; 10e022811 Crossref Scopus (0) Google Scholar But still the nature of these patterns of conduction in the context of sinus rhythm, as opposed to those observed during tachycardia, remains obscure. In the great Sophoclean tragedy, in light of its insurmountable difficulty, the denouement of the riddle of Sphinx by mortal Oedipus was initially perceived by the Athenians as a form of hubris against the gods by a human. 10 Sophocles. Oedipus Tyrannus. 429 BC. Google Scholar We believe that the accumulation of recent anatomic and electrophysiological evidence now enables us to provide the rationale for solving the nodal riddle without committing scientific hubris.

Tragedy and the Modernist Novel by Manya Lempert

Reviewed by: Tragedy and the Modernist Novel by Manya Lempert Gabriel Hankins Manya Lempert. Tragedy and the Modernist Novel. Cambridge UP, 2020. ix + 241 pp. Manya Lempert begins her study with the admirably clear double question: "why did modern European novelists value ancient tragedy" (1) and why do we now? Her answer ranges over both ancient and contemporary philosophical and literary ground. On the philosophical side, she moves from Aristotle and Plato to Nietzsche, Judith Butler, Martha Nussbaum, and Simon Critchley; and on the literary side, she takes in a wide range of different modernists, from Thomas Hardy to Virginia Woolf to Albert Camus and Samuel Beckett. Her thinking is exemplary in seriously considering both the philosophical treatments of ancient tragedy in modernist and contemporary literature, and the historical reception of ancient tragedy by the modernists themselves. Ancient tragedy itself is a highly contested and historically contingent term, both in the modernist period and now. The term might refer to the Sophoclean tragedies, which are concerned with the tragic fall of an exemplary culture hero, as in the Oedipus myth that has generated one modernist line of thought. It might mean the tragedy that features the other Oedipus, at Colonus, who, though elderly and blinded, pronounces that "all is well" (113), a remark that Albert Camus takes as his own. Or it might refer to the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides, which are concerned with collective grief, lamentation, and the response to atrocity. Lempert is primarily concerned with the latter strain of collective tragedy, a mode not invested in the reaffirmation or resolution of the individual or culture in the face of a divine cosmos ruled by chance and tuchê (luck), but in modernist fiction's sense of "tragic sociality" (28). Lempert's treatment of Hardy and Woolf offers convincing readings of the transformation of received notions about tragedy in British fiction around the turn of the century, a moment when Greek tragedy was both highly valued and antithetical to much of its surrounding political culture. Lempert resists ascribing the Christian framework of individual guilt to the tragedies of Tess and Sue (in Hardy). Christian interpretive schemata work both within Hardy's texts and outside them to condemn fallen women for what was done to them, an individualizing view that arises in part out of Aristotle's own misreading, for Lempert. Against this individualization of guilt, Hardy arranges the crushing force of inhuman Nature. Woolf sees Hardy as "the greatest tragic writer among English novelists" (5) and registers his characteristic settings of individual life within a vast natural chaos in her fiction, along with the influence of Janet Case and Jane Ellen Harrison, whose Themis (1912) is an important text here. Lempert registers an important critical debate: does tragedy "promote individualism and authorize patriarchal violence" (66), on [End Page 381] the view of Harrison (and perhaps of Jacob's Room), or does it allow women's political voices and protests to be newly heard? Woolf's thinking changes on this question, perhaps. The best source for her early engagement with masculinist (and imperialist) uses of Greece, in Jacob's Room, receives little treatment here. The fourth chapter engages a wide range of debates on the use of tragedy in Camus's thought and fiction, centering on the contemporary debates between Camus and Sartre over committed politics, the colonial occupation of Algeria, and the role of tragic rebellion or indifference. Camus's Oedipus is that of Colonus, pronouncing that "all is well" (113); Camus determines that his hero Sisyphus "too concludes that all is well" and that "we must imagine Sisyphus happy" (114). A wide range of Camus's tragic heroes are read as tragic counterpoints in a larger renovation of tragic fiction, from his first heroine Janine to Clamence in The Fall to Meursault in The Stranger. Lempert contends that Camus sees Meursault's famously motiveless killing of the Arab as an indictment of modern nihilism, not as an enactment of a colonialist abstraction. Meursault is a bad nihilist, not aware of the limits imposed on action in a tragic conception of life. Blinded by the "absurd Algerian sunlight" (143), Meursault kills, unable to shed the "second light" of the...

A STUDY IN THE LIGHT OF ANCIENT GREEK TRAGEDIES- “MADNESS” AS A TRAGIC ELEMENT

Since the beginning of time, madness has been ascribed to the sacred. This was also the case for the Ancient Greeks. They believed that their anthropomorphic deities were involved in all aspects of life. So they characterized madness as a condition sent by the gods. The connection between madness and the divine powers has also been the theme of Ancient Greek poetry. In Homer’s The Iliad, at the fiercest moment of the war, the enraged Hector wears the armor of Patroclus and there enters into him Ares the god of war, his limbs are filled with might. In The Odyssey, when the suitors of Penelope gather for dinner, Athena makes them laugh uncontrollably and then makes them cry. The theme of madness can also be seen in the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Although insanity still is a divine punishment in those plays, there are other reasons for the madness of tragic heroes and heroines. Feelings of guilt, sense of responsibilty, sadness, shame, honor and arrogance may be mentioned among them. In the Sophoclean tragedy “Aias”, Aias goes mad and kills Greek cattle believing that it is the Greeks. After returning to his senses, he kills himself out of shame. In the Euripidean tragedy “Medeia”, after Iason’s betrayal, Medeia goes mad and takes vengeance on Iason by murdering Glauce, his new wife as well as her own children. Our aim in this study is to examine the notion of madness in the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.

Leaders who Lunch. Tragedy and Corporeality in Sophocles’ Syndeipnoi

Sommerstein’s persuasive reconstruction of the Syndeipnoi (Sommerstein 2003; Sommerstein et al. 2006) nonetheless yields a plot outline with several features atypical of Sophoclean tragedy and indeed Greek tragedy in general. The play begins at or after nightfall, features a(n offstage) banquet as a central plot device, employs a number of unusual linguistic terms, and includes a chorus not designated by the play’s plural title. Proposals to classify the play as satyric or prosatyric (a now highly dubious category) might efface some but not all of these oddities. An examination of several key fragments suggests rather that the play comes from quite early in Sophocles’ career when plot expectations for tragedy were less rigid and less Aristotelian than they later became.

Truly Bewept, Full of Strife: The Myth of Antigone, the Burial of Enemies, and the Ideal of Reconciliation in Ancient Greek Literature

In postwar Western culture, the myth of Antigone has been the subject of noted literary, literary-critical, dramatic, philosophical, and philological treatments, not least due to the strong influence of one of the key plays of the twentieth century, Jean Anouilh’s Antigone. The rich discussion of the myth has often dealt with its most famous formulation, Sophocles’ Antigone, but has paid less attention to the broader ancient context; the epic sources (the Iliad, Odyssey, Thebaid, and Oedipodea); the other tragic versions (Aeschylus’s Seven Against Thebes and his lost Eleusinians; Euripides’s Suppliants, Phoenician Women, and Antigone, of which only a few short fragments have been preserved); and the responses of late antiquity. This paper analyses the basic features of this nearly thousand-year-long ancient tradition and shows how they connect in surprising ways – sometimes even more directly than Sophoclean tragedy does – with the main issues in some unique contemporary traditions of its reception (especially the Slovenian, Polish and Argentine ones): the question of burying the wartime (or postwar) dead and the ideal of reconciliation.

Biblical versus Greek Narratives for Suicide Prevention and Life Promotion: Releasing Hope from Pandora’s Urn

Although suicide has been unfortunately stigmatized unfairly through the ages, we should not make the mistake of going to the opposite extreme and valorizing it. We should not forget that the major role of health care professionals is to prevent suicide when possible and to invigorate the underlying life force in the person. Suicide is often the ultimate outcome of a tragic and pessimistic view of life. It was prevalent in ancient Greek writing. Indeed, over 16 suicides and self-mutilations can be found in the 26 surviving tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides. In contrast, only six suicides can be found in the Hebrew Scriptures, and only one suicide in the Christian Scriptures. In addition, the Hebrew Scriptures present numerous suicide-prevention narratives that effectively provide a psychological instruction for people in despair which seems unavailable to figures in the writings of the great Greek tragedians. Unfortunately, some religious traditions tended to go to the opposite extreme in stigmatizing suicide rather than understanding it and trying to prevent it. This paper examines evidence regarding seven evidence-based risk factors for suicide: (1) Feeling depressed and isolated; (2) Feeling one’s life is without purpose; (3) Being a refugee from one’s homeland; (4) Feeling unable to express oneself with others; (5) Being adopted; (6) Feeling abandoned by one’s child leaving the family nest; and (7) Feeling doomed by a dysfunctional (indeed incestuous) family of origin We contrast biblical and Greek narratives regarding each of these factors, respectively: (1) Elijah against Ajax, (2) Job against Zeno, (3) David against Coriolanus, (4) Jonah against Narcissus, (5) Moses against Oedipus, (6) Rebecca against Phaedra, and finally, (7) Ruth against Antigone. These biblical figures thrive across risk factors while their Greek and Roman counterparts kill or mutilate themselves or provoke others to do the job. All these contrasts should demonstrate to psychotherapists, counselors, and clergy alike as to how Greek narratives lead to self-destructive behaviors while biblical narratives provide a hopeful positive psychology, and a constructive way out these dilemmas. My colleagues (Paul Cantz, Matthew Schwartz, and Moriah Markus-Kaplan) and I call for a biblical psychotherapy for positive psychology, suicide prevention, and indeed life promotion. Where hope is locked up in Pandora’s urn after she has released all the evils unto the world, the biblical God places hope into the sky as a bow after Noah and his family and all the creatures on the ark disembark to land after the receding of the flood.

Заметки к изучению Эдипова сюжета (вопросы генезиса, эволюции, типологии)

The Oedipus plot, which is based on the fate of an involuntary parricide and incestor, is one of the most famous in world literature and folklore. Various scientists from historians and ethnographers to psychoanalysts have tried to explain the story of Oedipus plot and incest as its plot-forming motif, but only interdisciplinary research can help to properly understand and adequately describe this “multi-layered” and time-varying phenomenon. Reflecting on V. Ya. Propp’s classic work “Oedipus in the Light of Folklore” (1944), the author of the article offers his own experience of the structural analysis of the famous plot, unfinished by his predecessor-folklorist due to the struggle against “formalism”. The typology of plot processing, proposed by Propp, also needs historical explicitation, due to the Propp’s timeless approach to the analyzed materials, which does not allow judging its evolution. Meanwhile, the Oedipus plot has passed through several stages in its development. Its archaic basis reflected the historical struggle of different forms of succession in a fabulous way. The story of Oedipus, which became one of the examples of the irresistible power of fate for ancient consciousness, found its ethical dimension in the tragedies of Sophocles. In the Middle Ages it was reinterpreted in the spirit of the Christian doctrine of repentance and absolution, becoming the basis of a number of legends about “sinful saints”, but later it lost relevance against the background of the Catholic trade in indulgences and the development of the idea of pre-destination among Protestants. A particular understudied stage in the evolution of the Oedipus plot is the period of its existence in Russia. It came to the Eastern Slavs through Polish media-tion only at the end of the Middle Ages in several versions at once and is represented in the Russian manuscript tradition by a group of “stories about an incestor”. These stories were actively rewritten for three centuries, went into East Slavic folklore and were reflected in the works of new Russian literature.

Angus Fletcher. <em>Wonderworks. The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature</em>

Angus Fletcher. <em>Wonderworks. The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature</em>

Enraged: Why Violent Times Need Ancient Greek Myths

Enraged: Why Violent Times Need Ancient Greek Myths

La cortesía verbal en Sófocles: análisis del optativo potencial en actos de habla directivos

El presente trabajo, centrado en las tragedias completas de Sófocles, analiza el uso del optativo potencial en actos de habla directivos. Las gramáticas analizan el optativo potencial en este tipo de actos de habla como una expresión de cortesía. No precisan, sin embargo, si el optativo tiene un funcionamiento idéntico en todos los contextos. El análisis de los datos seleccionados para este trabajo permite concluir que el uso del optativo en segunda persona refleja, en general, una estrategia de cortesía diferente del uso en primera y en tercera persona. De hecho, en segunda persona el optativo funciona en la mayor parte de los casos como una expresión convencional de cortesía. En primera y en tercera persona, por el contrario, el optativo ha de analizarse como una expresión de cortesía off record que tiene como fin reducir la implicación del interlocutor en el cumplimiento del contenido proposicional del acto de habla.

Heidegger and the “Situation” of Ethics

It is often stated that the German twentieth-century philosopher Martin Heidegger never wrote an ethics while undertaking his critique and deconstruction of the Western tradition of metaphysics. It is, therefore, difficult to know what manner of normative ethics, if any, is consistent with his “hermeneutic of Dasein” such as articulated in his Being and Time. However, in his “Letter on Humanism,” Heidegger refers to the tragedies of Sophocles as “preserving the ēthos” more originally, thus better, than does Aristotle’s ethics. Hence, one may examine Sophocles’s tragedies guided by the hermeneutic Heidegger provides, especially through the concepts of authenticity and authentic selfhood. Doing so, it is argued here that Sophocles’s Philoctetes presents one such opportunity for moral understanding in the interplay of authenticity and inauthenticity, in particular through a study of the moral dilemma that Neoptolemus must resolve as he moves from a situation of inauthenticity to a display of authentic resolve.

“This Remarkable Piece of Antiquity”: Epic Conventions in Shelley’s Oedipus Tyrannus; or, Swellfoot the Tyrant

ABSTRACTShelley’s Swellfoot the Tyrant has recently begun to gain the concerted attention of critics, who have noted the play’s signature blend of low and high, of ephemeral, late Regency politics with the classic genres of Sophoclean tragedy, Aristophanic comedy, and mock epic. But Austin Warren’s famous and widely accepted definition of mock epic as “not mockery of the epic but elegantly affectionate homage, offered by a writer who finds [the serious epic] irrelevant to his age” does not describe Shelley’s earnest goal of immediate political reform in authoring Swellfoot. Instead, the play evinces Shelley’s unique, conscious reconfiguration of four conventions characteristic of the high, classical epic: the “prosperous breeze”; the epic simile; katabasis or descent into the underworld; and divine intervention. I argue that Shelley’s comic adaptation of these epic conventions reflects his serious aim of helping effect reform through Swellfoot and embodies his absorption of the concept of Shakespeare’s history plays as an experimental hybrid of dramatic forms with epic subjects, gained during his earlier reading of A. W. Schlegel’s Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature. Though the immediate suppression of Swellfoot prevented its relevance in its own historical moment, it comprises a singular hybrid of Aristophanic satire and Sophoclean tragedy with high epic conventions, while ironically also identifying Shelley as a proponent of the French neoclassical theory of the epic’s consciously didactic purpose propounded by Le Bossu.

Elodie Paillard: The Stage and the City. Non-Elite Characters in the Tragedies of Soph-ocles.

Elodie Paillard: The Stage and the City. Non-Elite Characters in the Tragedies of Soph-ocles.

Titanen, Giganten und Riesen im antiken Epos: Eine literaturtheoretische Neuinterpretation by Arnold Bärtschi

196 PHOENIX and reasoning provided in support of her interpretations, many of which readers are likely to find insightful. Brook’s unremitting determination, however, to apply the approach of “ritual poetics” to the study of Sophocles sometimes also leads to results that may be less convincing. Her interpretations occasionally lack differentiation and nuance, perhaps due to an eagerness to spot as many instances of ritual action as possible. As a consequence, she does not always sufficiently distinguish between “real” rituals that are a part of the tragedy’s plot, actions that are not rituals but are referred to or framed as such by some characters, and events that share similarities with rituals but are considered by no one to be rituals (for instance, bloodshed and killing can be a part of murder as well as sacrifice). In addition, in Brook’s analyses, the plots of entire tragedies can appear to be driven by rituals gone wrong, which lead to further rituals that also go wrong, and so forth. This sometimes obfuscates the actual causal dynamics, such as murder leading to revenge and then more revenge; and Ajax did not kill himself because he committed a ritual flaw. Lastly, some readers may remain skeptical about Brook’s extremely anti-closural readings of the final scenes of Sophoclean tragedies, not least because she systematically places more weight on what, as she claims, must be implied or assumed or silently extrapolated (from flawed rituals that happened earlier in the play) than on what the final scene’s text overtly says. This hermeneutic procedure runs the risk of simplifying rather than resolving the interpretive difficulties that Sophoclean endings always pose. These criticisms notwithstanding, Brook’s study is a valuable addition to the secondary literature on Sophocles that should, and no doubt will, find many readers in the community of scholars of Greek tragedy. Lafayette College Markus Dubischar Titanen, Giganten und Riesen im antiken Epos: Eine literaturtheoretische Neuinterpretation. By Arnold BÈ artschi. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter. 2019. Pp. ix, 465. Epic is the giant among ancient literary genres. However, a comprehensive study on giants in ancient epic has been missing so far. Arnold Bärtschi fills this gap with his monograph, which is based on a doctoral thesis defended at the University of Bochum in 2018. The book consists of four chapters: an introduction (“Einleitung,” 1–36), an examination of the hybrid character of giants in antiquity (“Hybridität von Riesenfiguren ,” 37–103), a diachronic study of epic giant figures from Homer to Valerius Flaccus (“Topographische und geopoetische Verortung von Riesenfiguren,” 105–184), and an in-depth discussion of giants in Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica (“Posthomerische Riesenfiguren,” 185–354). Oddly, a conclusion which the author announces in his introduction as his fifth chapter (“ein kurzes Abschlusskapitel 5 fasst die zentralen Ergebnisse der Untersuchung zusammen,” 35) was not included. Five appendices follow (350–390), including an overview of epic “giant passages,” the geographical location of giants in epic poetry, and comparisons and similes involving giants in the Posthomerica. The bibliography is substantial (391–418), as is the index of passages cited (419–465). A general index was, unfortunately, not produced. In the introduction, the scope and the methodological premises of the study are laid down. The main focus of Bärtschi’s enterprise lies in Greek epic (Homer, ps.-Hesiod, BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 197 Apollonius of Rhodes, Quintus of Smyrna), but with Valerius Flaccus it also incorporates Latin epic. Epic poetry from late antiquity was deliberately (and understandably) excluded for reasons of space and scope. It does not, however, become clear why Valerius Flaccus should be the only representative of Latin epic; one would have expected at least some justification for not including Vergil (whose narration of the Hercules-Cacus episode in Aeneid 8 would have been a perfect fit for this book). Methodologically, Bärtschi combines the vast fields of narratology and intertextuality. Regarding the latter, he distinguishes between what he calls “Einzeltextreferenzen” and “Systemreferenzen” (29), that is, allusions to concrete text passages and general references to, or reminiscences of, the literary tradition. Strangely, two further important theoretical concepts remain unmentioned, namely diachronic narratology (which follows logically from pairing narratology with intertextuality) and...

The Music of Tragedy: Performance and Imagination in Euripidean Theater by Naomi A. Weiss

400 PHOENIX æsow, he argues, is both more consistent with the rest of the play and more rhetorically satisfying. Regarding issues of translation, Finglass focuses on both syntax and semantics. He pays careful attention to the valence of particles and offers extensive lists of parallels for vocabulary, usage, idiomatic expressions, and various tropes and motifs. While parallels from other tragedies are cited most commonly, Finglass consults a huge range of genres across a huge span of time. The commentary also gives full metrical analysis of each choral ode. Where Finglass offers less guidance is in the interpretation of the text once it is translated. Comments that do not concern the text or its translation tend to offer factual information (e.g., the location of cult sites), staging considerations, or what one might call an enriched summary of what is happening, often with reference to the work of other scholars and with attention to parallels elsewhere in the play. Some interpretive comments on plot and theme are offered in brief introductions to each section of the play (prologue, parodos, etc.) and to major divisions within scenes. However, the emphasis here is on the accurate rendering of Oedipus the King. No commentary can cover every facet of a text—Finglass is explicit that his does not attempt to (xi)—and this one decidedly privileges the text itself over interpretation. The volume contains a collection of bibliographies whose contents span the sixteenth to the twenty-first century; these include reference works, editions and translations, and works of scholarship. The commentary is thoroughly cross-referenced making the impractical choice of reading it cover to cover unnecessary. Readers can scan those loci most important to their research questions and trust that Finglass will direct them to relevant discussion elsewhere. The commentary also contains a long index of Greek words as well as an index of subjects. While the formatting of the latter is difficult to parse visually, readers will have no difficulty locating relevant keywords. It is also worthy of note that this book regularly refers readers to discussion or notes in Finglass’s Electra and Ajax (and, indeed, his other work on Sophocles), emphasizing the way in which this edition of Oedipus the King fits within a broad and comprehensive reading of Sophoclean tragedy. In brief, Finglass has done a great service to the discipline in writing another commentary of such high quality. We can only eagerly await the next instalment. Adriana Brook The Music of Tragedy: Performance and Imagination in Euripidean Theater. By Naomi A. Weiss. Oakland, CA: University of California Press (The Joan Palevsky Imprint in Classical Literature). 2018. Pp. xiii, 284. THE MUSIC OF TRAGEDY is an important and delightful study of tragic choral poetry, offering subtle and sensitive readings that illuminate how the words of choral song employ music and imagery for poetic and theatrical effects. It offers a stunning demonstration of careful and creative close reading, revealing important elements of each of the four plays that receive a chapter-length discussion: Euripides’ Electra, Trojan Women, Helen, and Iphigenia in Aulis. In her own terms, Weiss describes mousikē in choreia, and the importance of these concepts is crucial to the ambitions of her project. Choreia involves song and dance that is specifically choral (and so in Athens an organized collective practice of citizens); mousikē is the inseparable complex of music, song, and dance (including choreia, but embracing a wider field of practice and the educational system that produces BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 401 it). Evidence for choreia for the most part comes from the lyrics sung, and so there is much that grounds the investigation in traditional approaches of literary analysis. Weiss’s work draws helpfully on important previous scholarship on choral song, while advancing new interpretations of the choral contribution to plays. To do so, Weiss focuses on choral descriptions of the music of others. It is in the juxtaposition of tragic music and imagined musical performances that a creative tension emerges. This means she can sidestep choral self-reference (15–17)1 while building on the important studies of choral imagery by E. Csapo (8).2 She challenges the characterization of Aeschylus as musically old-fashioned, as seen...

Ancient Drama and Reception of Antiquity in the Theatre and Drama of the German Democratic Republic (GDR)

Theatre in the German Democratic Republic was an essential part of the state propaganda machine and was strictly controlled by the cultural bureaucracy and by the party. Until the early sixties, ancient plays were rarely staged. In the sixties, classical Greek drama became officially recognised as part of cultural heritage. Directors free to stage the great classical playwrights selected ancient plays, on one hand, to escape the grim socialist reality, on the other to criticise it using various forms of Aesopian language. Two important dramatists and three examples of plays are presented and discussed: an adaptation of an Aristophanic comedy (Peter Hack’s adaptation of Aristophanes’ Peace at the Deutsche Theater in Berlin in 1962), a play based on a Sophoclean tragedy (Heiner Müller’s Philoktet, published in 1965, staged only in 1977), and a short didactic play (Lehrstück) based on Roman history (Heiner Müller’s Der Horatier, written in 1968, staged in 1973 in Hamburg in West Germany, and in the GDR only in 1988). At the end there is a brief look at a production of Aeschylus Seven against Thebes at the BE in 1969.