Antigone: The Curse Transformed
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu20.2024.201Abstract
This paper is dedicated to the analysis of the intertextual relationship between Sophocles’ Antigone and the plays of Aeschylus, especially the Theban trilogy. It is shown that Sophocles in this play creates the situation that is radically different from that of Aeschylus’ tragedies. The main differences are the attitude towards “peace in death” and towards the ancestral curse. In Sophoclean play, by contrast with Aeschylus, death is not the end of the strife — at least not until those in power acknowledge that it is; blood ties are not enough for belonging to the cursed family, and this belonging is not necessarily envisaged in negative terms. To illustrate the utter inadequacy of the Aeschylean approach to the world and the events of his tragedy, Sophocles embodies such approach in his Chorus and provokes, during the course of the play, the growing disappointment of the spectator by it. The Chorus is irresponsive when directly addressed, annoyingly counterproductive during the commos with Antigone and prone to change their opinion and perspective too quickly and radically. At the fifth stasimon Sophocles, by the reference to another Aeschylus’ tragedy, this time the Eleusinians, gives the spectator the short-living hope for the rescue of Antigone. This trap is also intended to disappoint the spectators and show them the inadequacy of the Chorus’ Aeschylean perspective.
Keywords:
Antigone, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Chorus, Eleusinians, Labdacids, ancestral curse, free choice
Downloads
Download data is not yet available.
References
Barzakh Z. Soph. Ant. 471 and Aeschylus’ Oedipus. Philologia Classica 2017, 12 (1), 4–11.
Bernardete S. Sacred Transgressions: A Reading of Sophocles’ “Antigone”. South Bend, St Augustine’s Press, 1999.
Billings J. The Philosophical Stage: Drama and Dialectics in Classical Athens. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2012.
Blake Tyroll W, Bennett L. J. Recapturing Sophocles’ Antigone. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1998.
Blaydes F. H. M. (ed.). Sophocles, with English Notes, vol. 1. London, Whittaker, 1859.
Blundell M. W. Helping Friends and Harming Enemies. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Bowie A. W. Aristophanes: Myth, Ritual and Comedy. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Bremmer J. N. Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World. Boston, De Gruyter, 2014.
Brown A. (ed., notes). Sophocles, Antigone. Warminster, Aris and Philips, 1987.
Burkert W. Homo Necans. The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Rituals and Myth. Translated by P. Bing. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1963.
Cairns D. ‘The bloody dust of the nether gods’: Sophocles, “Antigone” 599–603. In: Е. К. Emilsson, A. Maravela, M. Skoie (eds). Paradeigmata. Studies in Honour of Øivind Andersen. Athens, The Norwegian Institute at Athens Press, 2014a, 39–51.
Cairns D. From Solon to Sophocles: Intertextuality and Interpretation in Sophocles’ “Antigone”. Japan Studies in Classical Antiquity 2, 2014b, 3–30.
Cairns D. Sophocles: Antigone. London — New York, Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.
Campbell L. (ed., notes). Sophocles. Vol. 1. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1879.
Carter D. Antigone. In: A. Markantonatos (ed.). Brill’s Companion to Sophocles. Leiden, Brill, 2012, 111–128.
Coleman R. The Role of the Chorus in Sophocles’ “Antigone”. Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 1972, 18, 4–27.
Collard Chr. (ed., comm.). Euripides, Supplices. Groningen, Bouma, 1975.
Cornford F. The Ἀπαρχαί and the Eleusinian Mysteries. In: Quiggin E. C. (ed.). Essays and Studies Presented to William Ridgeway. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1913, 153–166.
Csapo E. Star Choruses: Eleusis, Orphism, and New Musical Imagery and Dance. In: M. Revermann, P. Wilson (eds). Performance, Iconography, Reception: Studies in Honour of Oliver Taplin. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008, 262–290.
Dietrich B. The Religious Prehistory of Demeter’s Eleusinian Mysteries. In: M. J. Vermaseren, U. Bianchi (eds). La soteriologia dei culti orientali nell’Impero Romano. Leiden, Brill, 1982, 445–471.
Dovatur A. I. Ancestral Guilt in Solon, Theognis and Aeschylus. In: Iu. V. Otkupshchikov (ed.). Philologia Classica. Language and Literature of the Ancient World. Leningrad, 1977, 36–45 (in Russian).
Dunn F. Dynamic allusion in Sophocles. In: A. Markantonatos (ed.). Brill’s Companion to Sophocles. Leiden, Brill, 2012, 263–279.
Erbste H. Haimons Liebe zu Antigone. RhM 1991, 134, 253–264.
Flaig E. To Act with Good Advice: Greek Tragedy and the Democratic Public Sphere. In: J. P. Arnason, K. A. Raaflaub, P. Wagner (eds). The Greek Polis and the Invention of Democracy: A Politico-Cultural Transformation and Its Interpretations. Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, 71–98.
Foster M. Fathers and Sons in War. Seven against Thebes, Pythian 7 and the Polemics of Genres. In: E. Torrance (ed.). Aeschylus and War. Comparative Perspectives on Seven against Thebes. New York, Routledge, 2017, 150–172.
Frazer J. G. (ed., comm.). Pausanias’ Description of Greece, Volume 2: Commentary on Book 1. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1898.
Garvie A. F. (ed., comm.). Sophocles. Aiax. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998.
Goheen R. The Imagery of Sophocles’ Antigone. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1951.
González González Μ. Funerary Epigrams of Ancient Greece. London, Bloomsbury, 2019.
Griffith M. (ed., comm.). Sophocles. Antigone. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Hahnemann C. Broken Sisterhood: The Relationship between Antigone and Ismene in Sophocles’ “Antigone”. Scripta Classica Israelica 2019, 38, 1–16.
Hanink J. Epitaphioi Mythoi and a Tragedy as an Encomium to Athens. Trends in Classics 5, 2013, 259–317.
Hubbard Τ. Κ. Cult Tradition in Pindar’s Ninth Nemean. HSCPh 1992, 94, 77–112.
Hutchinson G. O. (ed.). Aeschylus. Septem contra Thebes. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1985.
Jebb R. C. (ed., comm.). Sophocles. Plays and Fragments. Vols I–VII. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1883–1900.
Jiménes San Cristóbal Α. Iacchus in Plutarch. In: L. R. Lanzillotta, I. Muñoz (eds). Plutarch in the Religious and Philosophical Discourse of Late Antiquity. Leiden, Brill, 2012, 123–135.
Kamerbeek J. C. The Plays of Sophocles. Commentaries. Vols I–VII. Leiden, Brill, 1969–1984.
Kells J. H. Problems of interpretation in the “Antigone”. BICS 1963, 10, 47–64.
Kerényi K. Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1967.
Kitto H. D. F. Greek Tragedy: A Literary Study. London, Methuen & Co., 1973.
Kitzinger R. The Choruses of Sophocles’ “Antigone” and “Philoctetes”. Leiden, Brill, 2008.
Knox B. The Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1964.
Krauskopf I. Ismene. In: LIMC, V, 1. Zürich — München, 1964, 796–799.
Liapis V. (2012). Creon the Labdacid: Political Confrontation and the Doomed Oikos in Sophocles’ “Antigone”. In: D. L. Cairns (ed.). Tragedy and Archaic Greek Thought. Swansea, The Classical Press of Wale, 2012, 81–118.
Macedo J. M. In Between Poetry and Ritual: The Hymn to Dionysus in Sophocles’ “Antigone”. CQ 2011, 61, 402–411.
Martin L. H. Initiation. In: R. Uro, J. Day, R. E. DeMaris, R. Roitto (eds). The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Ritual. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2018, 334–352.
Mills S. Theseus, Tragedy and Athenian Empire. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997.
Μιστριώτης Γ. (εκδ.). ΣΟΦΟΚΛΕΟΥΣ ΑΝΤΙΓΟΝΗ. Αθῆναι, Εκ του τυπογραφείου των καταστημάτων Μιχαήλ Ι. Σαλιβέρου, 1874.
Müller G. Űberlegungen zum Chor in “Antigone”. Hermes, 89, 1961, 398–422.
Mylonas G. Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1961.
Nussbaum M. The Fragility of Goodness. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Papageorgios P. (ed.). Scholia in Sophoclis tragoedias vetera. Lipsiae, In aedibus B. G. Teubneri, 1888.
Proietti G. Beyond the “Invention of Athens”. The 5th century Athenian “Tatenkatalog” as an Example of “Intentional History”. Klio 2015, 97 (2), 516–538.
Quandt G. (ed., comm.) Orphei Hymni. Hildesheim, Olms-Weidmann, 2005.
Rehm R. Marriage to Death. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1994.
Rosenbloom D. “Thebes”. In: H. Roizman (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Greek Tragedy. Malden, MA, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, 1390–1392.
Schein S. The Language of Hatred in Aeschylus and Sophocles. Metis 9, 2011, 69–80.
Schneidewin F. W. (hrsgb., erklr.). Sophokles. 4. bd. Antigone. Berlin, Weidmann, 1869.
Seaford R. The Imprisonment of Women in Greek Tragedy. JHS 101, 1990, 76–90.
Seaford R. Tragedy, Ritual and Money in Ancient Greece. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Slatkin L. Sophocles’ “Antigone” and the Paradoxes of Language. Adalya 2016, 19, 95–102.
Smith W. A. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London, Spottiswoode and Co., 1873.
Sommerstein A. (ed., transl.). Aeschylus. Persians. Seven against Thebes. Suppliants. Prometheus Bound. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2009.
Sommerstein A. Aeschylean Tragedy. New York, Bloomsbury, 2013.
Sommerstein A. Antigone as Others See Her. In: Stuttart D. (ed.). Looking at Antigone. London — New York, 2018, 25–36.
Steinbock B. Social Memory in Athenian Public Discourse: Uses and Meanings of the Past. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2016.
Swift L. Stesichorus on Stage. In: P. J. Finglass, A. D. Kelly (eds). Stesichorus in Context. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015, 125–144.
Ustinova Y. Caves and the Ancient Greek Mind. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009.
Walters K. R. “We Fought Alone at Marathon”. RhM 1981, 124, 206–211.
Wecklein N. (ed., comm.). Sophocles. Antigone. Lipsiae, In aedibus Teubneri, 1878.
White J. H. Studies and Addresses. Boston, Boston University Press, 1883.
Winnington-Ingram R. P. Sophocles: An Interpretation. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980.
Wunder E. (ed., notes). Sophocles. Vol. I. London, Williams and Norgate, 1855.
Downloads
Published
2024-12-30
How to Cite
Barzakh, Z. A. (2024). Antigone: The Curse Transformed. Philologia Classica, 19(2), 192–214. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu20.2024.201
Issue
Section
Graecia antiqua
License
Articles of "Philologia Classica" are open access distributed under the terms of the License Agreement with Saint Petersburg State University, which permits to the authors unrestricted distribution and self-archiving free of charge.
