Vandiver Lecture Two - Democracy, Culture, and Tragedy

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Vandiver Lecture Two - Democracy, Culture, and Tragedy

Vandiver Lecture Twelve - Antigone and Creon

Chronologically, the story of Antigone comes after the story of Oedipus. It makes sense to study Antigone before the Oedipus plays, though, because Sophocles wrote it first. Thus, Antigone represents

Many tragedies are set in Thebes. Froma Zeitlin suggests that Thebes is an "anti-______" because 1.

2.

This is well illustrated by Antigone because

To leave a body unburied is a terrible punishment to the ancient Greeks because

Like Chrysothemis in Elektra, Ismene ______, but

In the end Creon changes his mind--not because of his son's arguments, but because On one level, the conflict between Creon and Antigone is the conflict between oikos and polis.

By representing ______, Antigone is

By representing ______, Creon is

The categories of oikos and polis are interwoven and confused here because

Creon is

Antigone is

Modern productions tend to trivialize the play because

What, exactly, did Polynices do?

Creon's edict is meant to do two things:

Display

Deter As King, Creon cannot allow

The play is also trivialized if Antigone

Antigone was a disturbing figure to the Athenian audience because she is

A young unmarried girl who

A citizen who

A woman who

Antigone considers herself bound by "higher laws." In effect, what this means is that this is the first drama on the topic of

Taken to the extreme, Creon's position leads to

Taken to the extreme, Antigone's position leads to

Tiresias says Creon has confused the world of the living with the world of the dead in two ways.

1.

2.

Creon's crucial mistake was to forget

The fact that Antigone is proven right does not make her less ______. We see that the chorus

Creon is actually more The play demonstrates that

The topic had immediate relevance in Sophocles' day because

The sophists were usually described as itinerant teachers of rhetoric and argumentation, which were useful things to learn, but they made many people uncomfortable because

Protagoras the sophist is most famous for his dictum that man is ______

______, which probably means

The sophists also questioned the validity of oracles, which

The sophist controversy applies to Sophocles' "Ode to Man" because

The word deinos

Shipbuilding

Agriculture

When the choral ode says that man cannot escape from death, the ode turns toward

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