On Antigone: Tragedy and History

It has, I believe, been given to only one literary text to express all the principal
constants of conflict in the condition of man. (George Steiner)
Sophocles Antigone, described thus by Steiner, is not only one of the masterpieces of
Western literature. The text and its heroine have generated an extraordinary, vital and
flexible tradition of political and poetic protest. In this seminar we shall study modern
literary renderings of and philosophical commentary on Sophocles work,
concentrating on philosophical, postcolonial, feminist and linguistic. Students are
asked to read all the set texts as early as possible. Every seminar will concentrate on
particular texts, however the seminar topics can be interpreted in relation to every set
text.
Set Texts (You need to have your own copy of these; read also any notes included in
your edition or translation. All except Osofisan can be bought easily; Osofisans text
will be made available)
1. Sophocles, Antigone (first produced 442-438 BC) (any translation, ideally more
than one, with line numbers)
The standard scholarly edition of the original with conservative, learned English
translation is:
Sophocles, Works, Vol II: Antigone, The Women of Trachis, Philoctetes, Oedipus
at Colonus, edited and translated by Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Loeb Classical Library,
21 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994)
A more recent, recommended translation is Sophocles, Antigone, translated by
David Franklin and John Harrison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2003)
2. Hlderlin, Friedrich, Antigone (first published 1804)
In Hlderlins Sophocles: Oedipus & Antigone, translated by David Constantine
(Tarset: Bloodaxe, 2001)
3. Tagore, Rabindranath, Punishment (first published 1891-1895)
In Tagore, Selected Short Stories, translated by William Radice (London: Penguin,
any edition), pp. 125-33
4. Anouilh, Jean, Antigone (first produced 1944) (any complete translation)
5. Fugard, Athol, John Kani and Winston Ntshona, The Island (first produced 1973)
In (among other places) Fugard, Township Plays, edited by Dennis Walder
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 193-227
6. Gambaro, Griselda, Antgona Furiosa (first produced 1986)
In Information for Foreigners: Three Plays by Griselda Gambaro, edited and
translated by Marguerite Feitlowitz (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1991)
7. Osofisan, Femi, Tegonni: An African Antigone (first produced 1994)
Tegonni: An African Antigone (Lagos: Concept Publications, 2007)
Or, in Recent Outings (Ibadan: Open Ifa Readers, 1999)
8. Heaney, Seamus, The Burial at Thebes (first produced 2004)
The Burial at Thebes: Sophocles Antigone (London: Faber and Faber, 2004)
9. Carson, Anne, Antigonick (London: Bloodaxe, 2012)

Introductory Secondary Reading

Antigone, special number of the journal Mosaic, vol. 41, no. 3 (Sept. 2008)
Hardwick, Lorna, and Carol Gillespie, eds, Classics in Post-Colonial Worlds (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2007)
Leonard, Miriam, Athens in Paris: Ancient Greece and the Political in Post-War
French Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)
Steiner, George, Antigones (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984)
Wilmer, S. E., and Audron ukauskait, eds, Interrogating Antigone in Postmodern
Philosophy & Criticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)