Antigone and Literary Criticism

Summer Reading English II Honors Antigone and Literary Criticism English II Honors students are required to complete the posted reading over the summer and come to class prepared to discuss the critical issues raised in the essays about the play Antigone. A suggested reading order is as follows: “Antigone Synopsis” “Introduction to Antigone” Antigone (text provided in .pdf form) “Antigone Commentary” It is recommended that students print out hard copies of the three critical essays for note-taking purposes; a hard copy of the complete text of Antigone will be provided the first week of class, so there is no need to print the entire play. Student Goals: to familiarize yourself with Antigone, Greek Drama, and literary criticism prior to the first day of class; to demonstrate critical thinking and writing skills the first week of class. See you in August!. Mr. Gordon 5/13/2019 History - Print - Introduction to Antigone Bloom's Literature Introduction to Antigone I. Author and Background It seems that in March, 441 B.C., the Antigone made Sophocles famous. The poet, fifty-five years old, had now produced thirty-two plays; because of this one, tradition relates, the people of Athens elected him, the next year, to high office. We hear he shared the command of the second fleet sent to Samos. When the people of Samos failed to support the government just established for them by forty Athenian ships, Athens sent a fleet of sixty ships to restore democracy and remove the rebels. The Aegean then was an Athenian sea. Pericles, the great political leader and advocate of firm alliance, was first in command. Pericles' political, and Sophocles' poetic, authority had grown during Athens' expansion. Sophocles had been a close friend of the conservative Kimon, Pericles' chief political rival, who died in 449. Before his successful presentation of Antigone, Sophocles had become Pericles' friend. In 444, when the Athenian people chose Pericles as their leader, they demanded greatness: democracy combined with imperialism. Periclean democracy meant free speech, free association, and open access to power limited by law; for, assuming that intelligence is born in all, law created by all is the best ruler. Imperialism—to which the Samian War is to be referred—meant wealth, the power to enjoy. If, moreover, enjoyment is itself a kind of power, it too must be limited by law: the law which defines enjoyment is beauty. Freedom, justice, and beauty are the components of greatness which the Athenians had chosen for themselves when they granted first literary acclaim, and then imperial duty, to Sophocles. Sophocles and his fellow-citizens chose to widen democracy and extend imperialism. The alternative for the east-Greek peoples was oligarchy and Spartan influence. This choice—which the Samians tried to make for themselves—involved less exploitation, but far more repression. The inhabitants of oligarchic states lacked freedom and, often, beauty; instead, the principle of justice was rationalized by their apologists, who broadly used terms such as "order" and "stability," in which they claimed to find the essence of good rule. In this world climate, it is not surprising that the Athenians wished the author of Antigone to hold military office. A man who was so skilled was also wise. Sophocles might be expected to judge rightly and govern well should the cargo of free society, legal limits, and the acquisitive and aesthetic instincts shift and clash in the waves of crisis. https://online.infobase.com/HRC/Search/Print?assetId=362458&assetType=article 1/12 5/13/2019 History - Print - Introduction to Antigone The few details of Sophocles' life that tradition provides combine in brief glimpses. Sophocles, for instance, must have known Anaxagoras and Herodotos; but how he affected them, or they him, is obscure. The sub-theme of custom vs. nature (nomos-physis) in the Antigone indicates that Sophocles was acquainted with contemporary sophistic teaching, but does not show what stand, if any, he took in this debate. An anecdote tells how once, during the Samian affair of 440, Pericles scolded the poet for showing more interest in a certain boy than in his war duties. Then again, in old age, we hear, Sophocles praised his impotence, likening himself to a slave who had at last escaped from a maniacal master. Finally, there is the tale that in 420, when Asclepius was brought to Athens to purify the city, Sophocles kept the god in his own house until a temple was built. From this, it appears likely that Sophocles was an officer of the cult of Asclepius. It is difficult not to believe that the author of Antigone was truly a healer. With the Antigone, Sophocles began work on material that interested him for the rest of his life. A dozen years later—perhaps in the plague year 429, the year of Pericles' death—he staged Oedipus Rex. His last play, Oedipus at Kolonos, may have busied him up to that clay in 406/5 when, it is said, as he recited from the Antigone to some friends, Sophocles died. II. Interpretation of the Play In considering the Antigone, the reader should be aware of three restrictions: first, that the play is our main source for its story; second, that the Oedipus Rex and Kolonos, written at wide intervals long after, cannot be used safely to criticize events or characters in the early work; and third, that Sophocles was not Aristotle's pupil. The first stricture forces us to concentrate attention on the text itself, without precluding comparison with the Theban legends;1 the second frees us from comparison in anticipation. (If I were concerned primarily with the later plays, I should start with Antigone.) The danger of Aristotelian criticism lies not only in its anachronism but in a basic confusion as to the purpose of poetry. Even were we more secure in our assumptions concerning Aristotle's own meaning, we could not understand Sophocles better for this. We would be, at best, seeing the poet through the eyes of one of his spiritual great-great-grandchildren, a less rewarding discipline, probably, than to regard him from our own viewpoint. Worse, we could be confining our judgment of poetry to the requirements of an irrelevant moral philosophy. Sophocles as poet showed what he believed to be actual. In Antigone, he presented the fall of the just and the evil consequences of good acts. The Antigone doubtless disgusted Aristotle (Poetics, 1452b, 4–6) Until new evidence appears, one must presume that Sophocles invented many events in the story of his Antigone: (1) the form of Kreon's decree; (2) the quarrels between Antigone and Ismene; (3) the double burial of Polyneices by Antigone and the final cremation-burial by Kreon; (4) the love of Antigone and Haimon; (5) the entombment of Antigone; (6) Teiresias' intervention and Kreon's change of mind; and (7) the suicides of Antigone, Haimon, and Eurydice. Some of these inventions pose problems: What is the poetic or dramatic purpose of the double burial? Why is the love story introduced at all, and then made known only when the action is nearly half over? https://online.infobase.com/HRC/Search/Print?assetId=362458&assetType=article 2/12 5/13/2019 History - Print - Introduction to Antigone Why is Kreon made, contrary to instructions, to bury Polyneices first and then proceed, too late, to try to save Antigone? Is Eurydice introduced merely to add to Kreon's sorrow? These are some of the questions that need to be answered chiefly from internal evidence. The difficulties of the Antigone are due in large part to thematic complexity; this in turn is due to variety of vision, or duplication of viewpoint, partly inherent in the subject, then intricately schematized in treatment. The Theban myths are stories of royal families. Such stories are, on the surface at least, necessarily split into public and domestic facts. This double aspect of the activities of its characters is obviously important in the Antigone. But here too it is well to remember that the Athenians believed the city-state was based on kinship. The poet's vision is divided again when he interprets legend for his contemporaries. Sophocles deliberately anachronizes when Kreon is addressed as an Homeric king, and answers democratic arguments like an oligarch, while deporting himself like a tyrant. Another complicating factor is the purely dramatic splitting of vision between audience and a variety of speakers. The characters do not merely act; far more, they comment on action, criticize motives, and judge ideas; all these moral utterances are astute or foolish, crude or gentle, intentionally or accidentally ironic, just as the author wishes. The vision of each character is limited in such a way as to enable the audience, with its wider perspective, to compare, criticize, and gradually assemble a composite vision. This audience is a viewpoint; like the characters, it is a part of the author's imagination. Sophocles' meaning exists in the ensemble of characters as it affects an audience of the Periclean age, which now, as then, exists in the imagination. Despite its doublings of vision, the play is extraordinarily moving. Its humanity is never frozen into symbol. It may be taken as tribute to the success of the Antigone that it has been found next to impossible, by those who study the play, not to describe the characters as real people. Assuming the originality of much of the story of Antigone, we can see that known portions of Theban myth may have been prototypes of the play's persons, events, and themes, and that these could have had clear relevance to the 440s B.C.

Load more