Sophocles and Shakespeare: A Comparative Study of Classical and Elizabethan Tragedies (original) (raw)
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Greek or Attic tragedy was an inherent part of the culture of ancient Athens. The form, originating from earlier ritualistic traditions was considered to be the most superior of dramatic forms. Apart from tragedy, the other forms of dramatic productions were comedy and satyr-plays but these were considered to be of lesser import. The city celebrated a five day annual festival in late March to honor Dionysius Eleuthereus, the god of wine and theatre. In this festival, three acclaimed writers each of whom presented a trilogy of tragic plays and a satyr drama competed for the prize. Earlier, all four plays were thematically tied and constituted a tetralogy but later Sophocles and Euripedes espoused a single play format. As for the subject, the playwrights used to modify and creatively present different versions of myths that were widely accepted.
ANALYSIS OF SOPHOCLES' OEDIPUS THE KING AS AN ARISTOTELIAN TRAGEDY Sinde KURT
ABSTRACT Aristotle built the system of tragedy in his Poetics and gave examples from Sophocles’ play ‘Oedipus the King’ while describing the basic elements of tragedy. Based on this, it is possible to say that Sophocles' Oedipus the King is one of the ideal examples of the tragedy. Why does Aristotle, particularly, gives examples from Oedipus the King in Poetics while explaining the tragedy, what is the reason behind this situation and how did the basic tragedy elements of Aristotle take place in the text of Oedipus the King? The objective of this article is to analyze the structure and features of Sophocles’ tragedy, Oedipus the King, and to interpret why Aristotle particularly referred to this play while giving significant information about tragedy in Poetics. Accordingly, it is aimed to explain the tragedy elements in Aristotle’s Poetics, and to explain such elements within the structure of the play, Oedipus the King. Building a deeper understanding following topics will be examined as a result of this article; the general characteristics of Ancient Greek Theater, the emergence of tragedy, Aristotle’ basic elements of tragedy in Poetics, different views of Aristotle and Plato on tragedy, short biography of Sophocles, and his characteristics made him shine as a tragedy writer, the basic structure and characteristics of Oedipus the King. Key Words: Catharsis, Drama, Mythos, Mimesis, Tragedy, Theater
Review of Sophocles & the Greek Tragic Tradition (CR 2011)
The Classical Review / Volume 61 / Issue 01 / April 2011, pp 36 - 39
Sophocles (S.) Goldhill, (E.) Hall (edd.) Sophocles and the Greek Tragic Tradition. Pp. xvi + 336, ills. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Cased, £55, US\$99. ISBN: 978-0-521-88785-4.
Skenè Studies I - 2, 2019
open access under: https://textsandstudies.skeneproject.it/index.php/TS/catalog/series/Studies-1 chapter 7 https://textsandstudies.skeneproject.it/index.php/TS/catalog/view/67/13/424-1 ABSTRACT Sophocles bases his posthumous Oedipus at Colonus on the famous treatment of the transformation of the Furies to the Kindly Ones in Eumenides, the last play of Aeschylus’ Oresteia that has gained the status of a master-play. Accordingly Sophocles shapes the plot and its main character on a cultic reality and on the ritual concept of chthonic heroes and gods. The Erinyes/Eumenides, to whose grove Oedipus arrives, function as the model for Sophocles’ most questionable hero. Their quintessential polarity between the dreadful dimension of death and euphemistic names to veil it, between mythic scenarios of anger, curse, hate as well as cultic blessing and plenty is the basic pattern of a play that stages Oedipus as a chthonic hero in the making. He acts right from the beginning as the hero he is going to become. Sophocles makes Oedipus oscillate between staging a real mystic miracle and a problematic manipulation of religious facts in order to take revenge on his Theban homeland by finding support from his new city of Athens. This open perspective involves the audience in thinking about what really happened and reflecting about the relation between ritual, religion, politics, and their manipulations by men for their own purposes. In this way it comes quite close to Euripides’ Bacchae written about the same time. OC is thus in many respects like a metatheatrical exploration of the constitutive gap of signifier and signified to be gradually closed by the blind director who gathers, like the blind and unwitting audience, the piecemeal information divulged as the play progresses. KEYWORDS: Oedipus; Sophocles; Erinyes; Eumenides; Oresteia; chthonic polarity; heroization; cultic hero in the making; Kolonos as tumulus; metatheatre; oracles; manipulation; curse; blessing; military support; indeterminacy; narratological strategy; mimesis; politics; mystery; religious and metatheatrical exploration
The relationship between Classical Athenian tragedy and democracy remains a much-discussed problem which deserves to be examined from as many points of view as possible. Although Sophocles has sometimes been seen as less tied to his contemporary world than other authors, his works are nonetheless closely related to their democratic context, both as a product of their time and as a means of encouraging their audiences to reflect on major political questions. This book explores the staging of non-elite characters in the seven extant tragedies of Sophocles and how they related to contemporary middling citizens. The structure of fifth-century Athenian society underwent deep changes between the early and late plays of Sophocles. The appearance and growing political importance of a middling socio-political group of citizens played a crucial role in the development of Athenian democracy and this phenomenon is closely linked to the way in which non-elite characters are presented in Sophocles’ plays. To lead to a better understanding of the links between Sophoclean tragedies and democracy, the book analyses the text of Sophocles’ extant plays as carefully as it examines the structure of Athenian society on the basis of both historical and archaeological sources. The performances of Sophocles’ tragedies not only reflected changes that took place in the structure of contemporary society but also fostered such changes by attributing increasingly active roles to characters with whom middling citizens could easily identify.
SOPHOCLES ROAD TO CONTEMPORARY GREEK THEATRE
The aim of our study is to trace the presence of Sophocles in Modern Greek Theatre, from its first steps during the Enlightenment period up to the present day. Because the meaning of the term theatre includes both the stage action and the dramatic production, our research will extend in both directions. That is to say, we shall identify stage interpretations of the dramas of Sophocles, which were landmarks and which set the pace for the course of contemporary approaches to interpreting, not only the works of Sophocles, but ancient Greek drama in general. At the same time we shall record and comment on original theatrical works by contemporary Greek playwrights, while having the works of Sophocles as a direct or indirect model. In this sense our research exceeds the boundaries of the specific ancient tragic poet and expands further into how ancient Greek drama is assimilated by its modern equivalent. It extends itself to the expressed or unexpressed relationship that links ancient to contemporary Hellenism. Beginning from the stage action parameter we can pause at a number of representative performances of the works of Sophocles (and, in a wider sense, of ancient Greek tragedy), which in their own way became milestones in later stage interpretations of ancient Greek drama. Modern Greek theatre is in constant and direct contact with the wider body of European theatre. Through this process it takes on the form of specific, more general tendencies. Views initially identified in our study must refer to archetypal performances of Sophocles' tragedies that act as symbols not only in Modern Greek, but also in world theatre as a whole.