Text Access

Via Bb Course Site, "PDF Readings" menu choice. . .

Sophocles. Antigone. Trans. Elizabeth Wycoff. Sophocles I. The Complete Greek Tragedies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954. 157-204. Print.

Journal Entries

Post Journal Entries via Blackboard, "Online Journal," as per bingdev syllabus.

Class 2 on Antigone (10-Sep): Is Antigone/the Antigone Feminist?

Apologies for length, but this is an important question. The main part comes at the very end. . . .

In terms of tragic story lines, Sophocles' Antigone contains what many readers have found to be striking reversals, including in the play's ending.

Some of those reversals could be said to involve oppositions structuring the play's ideological component, where the conflict between Antigone and Creon plays out a conflict of female versus male, of divine order versus political order, and so on (as per Antigone1 PPT slide 13).

Perhaps, then, reversals in the play could also involve altered associations between characters and ideological positions: Antigone taking on originally Creon-like aspects (right column in above graphic) or Creon, Antigone-like aspects (left column).

So let's say, just for the sake of argument, Antigone "wins," at least on the moral plane. (She dies, but in the process, ushers in the triumph of her cause.) Will that then also be a win for "female"? And if so, what, if anything, happens to the category "female" in the process? Or, for that matter, to the category "male"?

Put differently, what happens when a gender becomes its "other"? In this play, is that just temporary play acting? Or does the play's action undermine fundamental assumptions about gender? And if so, does that make it "feminist"?

Class 1 on Antigone (29-Aug). Heroism, Gender

For this entry, you can write (briefly) in response to any/all of the following. Granted, we won't have read the whole play, but this will get us started:

• Antigone —
  • How is/isn't she a heroine?
  • How is/isn't her heroism "gendered"?
  • What does she stand for to you?
• Creon —
  • How is/isn't he a villain?
  • How is/isn't his villainy "gendered"?
  • What does he stand for to you?

Preliminary Comments

Rather than start in with intensive lecturing, I thought we'd ease in by acquainting ourselves with a text beautifully introducing issues of both gender and sexuality in the ancient world — a text that, as Judith Butler notes, has long been at the center of contemporary discussions/debates about gender-related, familial, social, and political roles within the post-ancient-Greek here-and-now.

So let's not let our relative unfamiliarity with the ancient world get in the way. At a certain level, I'd like you to treat this initial foray into matters sexual and gender-related as a contemporary reflection.

Text: Background

SOPHOCLES: ca. 496-ca. 406 BCE. Athenian tragic playwright.

The Antigone produced 442/1 BCE (probably!).

It belongs to a group of three plays, Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, that go together as a story, but do not represent a unified trilogy.

In terms of story order, the sequence is:

1. Oedipus the King (Oedipus, king of Thebes, suffers terrible reversals: incest, father-murder, fall from power).
2. Oedipus at Colonus (Oedipus, now a wandering beggar near the end of his life, undergoes a transformation in fulfillment of his destiny).
3. Antigone (Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, has returned to Thebes, where she places the law of the gods above that of humans, thereby clashing with the current king, Creon).

But in terms of order of composition, the order is:

1. Antigone 442/1 BCE.
2. Oedipus the King some time after 429.
3. Oedipus at Colonus around 406.

In other words, Antigone, though last in story order, was first in order of composition and production.

Mythological

Oedipus was king of Thebes, a city in Greece. Laius, Oed's father, had been warned by Apollo that if he (Laius) were to have a son, that son would kill him.

Oedipus ends up killing his father and marrying, and having children by, his mother. Oedipus then dies in exile. Eteocles, his younger son, eventually assumes the throne.

Bur Polynices, the exiled older son, challenges Eteocles. They fight and kill each other. Creon (their uncle) rules in their stead.

Creon decrees that Eteocles may receive proper burial, but not Polynices . . . you'll see why. . . .

Characters include

• Antigone, Oedipus' daughter, betrothed to Haemon
• Ismene, Oedipus' other daughter
• Haemon, Creon's son (betrothed to Antigone)
• Eurydice, Creon's wife
• Tiresias, elderly blind prophet (or "seer") at Thebes

General Questions

This play pits the claims of Antigone (based on an unwritten law decreeing burial for the dead) against those of Creon (a ruler shall be obeyed: no burials forbidden by me).

• Antigone is the product of an incestuous union: her father married her mother. Do you see incest in the play. . .
  • at the literal level? (note that Butler argues for Ant's incestuous desire for the brother she buries)
  • at a symbolic or metaphorical level?
• What is at issue? What conflicts are involved? How do they involve the characters?
• Who is (more?) at fault: Antigone or Creon? Is this a starkly drawn, good-guys-versus-bad-guys sort of drama? More ambiguous? How?
• How do gender and/or sexuality seem to "play out" in this play?