A Companion to Sophocles presents the first comprehensive collection of essays in decades to address all aspects of the life, works, and critical reception of Sophocles.
- First collection of its kind to provide introductory essays to the fragments of his lost plays and to the remaining fragments of one satyr-play, the Ichneutae, in addition to each of his extant tragedies
- Features new essays on Sophoclean drama that go well beyond the current state of scholarship on Sophocles
- Presents readings that historicize Sophocles in relation to the social, cultural, and intellectual world of fifth century Athens
- Seeks to place later interpretations and adaptations of Sophocles in their historical context
- Includes essays dedicated to issues of gender and sexuality; significant moments in the history of interpreting Sophocles; and reception of Sophocles by both ancient and modern playwrights
Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations x List of Abbreviations xi
Notes on Contributors xv
Acknowledgments xx
1 Introduction 1
Kirk Ormand
PART I Text and Author 7
2 The Textual Transmission of Sophocles’ Dramas 9
P. J. Finglass
3 Sophocles’ Biography 25
Ruth Scodel
4 Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides 38
John Davidson
Part II The Plays and the Fragments 53
5 Antigone 55
André Lardinois
6 Polyphonic Ajax 69
Peter Burian
7 Oedipus Tyrannus 84
Vayos Liapis
8 Electra 98
Francis Dunn
9 The Divided Worlds of Sophocles’ Women of Trachis 111
Margaret Rachel Kitzinger
10 The Philoctetes of Sophocles 126
Paul Woodruff
11 Last Things: Oedipus at Colonus and the End of Tragedy 141
Thomas Van Nortwick
12 Sophocles’ Ichneutae or How to Write a Satyr Play 155
Willeon Slenders
13 Sophoclean Fragments 169
Carolin Hahnemann
Part III Sophoclean Techniques 185
14 Sophocles Didaskalos 187
C. W. Marshall
15 Poetic Speakers in Sophocles 204
Sarah H. Nooter
16 Sophocles’ Choruses 220
Sheila Murnaghan
17 Lament as Speech Act in Sophocles 236
Casey Dué
Part IV Sophocles and Fifth-Century Political, Religious, and Intellectual Thought 251
18 Sophocles and Class 253
Peter W. Rose
19 Sophocles and Contemporary Politics 270
Robin Osborne
20 Sophocles and Athenian Law 287
Edward M. Harris
21 The Necessity and Limits of Deliberation in Sophocles’ Theban Plays 301
Edith Hall
22 Heroic Pharmacology: Sophocles and the Metaphors of Greek Medical Thought 316
Robin Mitchell-Boyask
23 Sophocles and Hero Cult 331
Bruno Currie
Part V Gender and Sexuality 349
24 Cutting to the Bone: Recalcitrant Bodies in Sophocles 351
Nancy Worman
25 Staging Mothers in Sophocles’ Electra and Oedipus the King 367
Laura McClure
26 Marriage in Sophocles: A Problem for Social History 381
Cynthia Patterson
27 Masculinity and Freedom in Sophocles 395
Bruce M. King
Part VI Historical Interpretations 409
28 Aristotle on Sophocles 411
John T. Kirby
29 Sophocles and Homer 424
Seth L. Schein
30 Facing Up to Tragedy: Toward an Intellectual History of Sophocles in Europe from Camerarius to Nietzsche 440
Michael Lurie
31 Virginia Woolf, Richard Jebb, and Sophocles’ Antigone 462
Denise Eileen McCoskey and Mary Jean Corbett
32 Freud and the Drama of Oedipal Truth 477
Richard H. Armstrong
33 Sophocles with Lacan 492
Mark Buchan
Part VII Influence and Imitation 505
34 Oedipus on Oedipus: Sophocles, Seneca, Politics, and Therapy 507
Alex Dressler
35 Jean Anouilh’s Antigone 523
Jed Deppman
36 Enter Antigone, Let the Agones Begin: Sophocles’ Antigone in Nineteenth-Century Greece 538
Gonda Van Steen
37 Tony Harrison’s The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus 557
Hallie Rebecca Marshall
38 Black Oedipus 572
Emily Wilson
Index Locorum 586
Index 590
About the Author :
Kirk Ormand is Professor of Classics at Oberlin. He is author of Exchange and the Maiden: Marriage in Sophoclean Tragedy (1999), Controlling Desires: Sexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome (2009), and The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women and Archaic Greece (2014).
Review :
"This volume will indeed serve as an indispensable reference point for the future study of Sophocles." ("Bryn Mawr Classical Review", 1 January 2013)
"Although the book is scholarly and packed with information, it is accessible to nonspecialists. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above." ("Choice", 1 November 2012)
"This future work might be conducted in areas that this Companion, for all its admirable breadth, does not treat thoroughly -- a chapter on the metrical features and effects of his verse, for example, would have been valuable -- but this volume will indeed serve as an indispensable reference point for the future study of Sophocles." ("Bryn Mawr Classical Review", 1 January 2013)
"Although the book is scholarly and packed with information, it is accessible to nonspecialists. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above." ("Choice", 1 November 2012)
"Although the book is scholarly and packed with information, it is accessible to nonspecialists. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above." ("Choice", 1 November 2012)
