Drawing on comprehensive analyses of all of Sophocles’ plays, on structuralist anthropology, and on other extensive work on myth and tragedy, Charles Segal examines Sophocles both as a great dramatic poet and as a serious thinker. He shows how Sophoclean tragedy reflects the human condition in its constant and tragic struggle for order and civilized life against the ever-present threat of savagery and chaotic violence, both within society and within the individual. For this edition Segal also provides a new preface discussing recent developments in the study of Sophocles.
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About the Author
Charles Segal is the late Walter C. Klein Professor of the Classics, Harvard University.
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
20th Century French Classicism comes to America,
By Dan (Albany, NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Tragedy and Civilization: An Interpretation of Sophocles (Paperback)
This collection of essays is very tightly wrapped around Levi Straussian et al. structuralism, especially the introductory "theory" chapters at the beginning on ritual, kingship, etc. It's a lucid read and something every Sophoclean scholar should be familiar with. The chapter/essay on Antigone gets excerpted quite a bit - probably because like the play itself, it refuses to make the play fit the theory, so to speak. Anyway, lots of stuff on the definition of human, divine, savage and humanity's uneasy relationship to both in Sophocles. There's also a good deal of Roland Barthes' structuralist approach here (another 20th cenutry Frenchie! - hehe). Finally, there's a fairly unspoken undercurrent of psychoanalytic theory here (more straightforward Freudian than Lacanian - which he does get into in another collection). With that in mind, it's ironic that I suggest reading J. P. Vernant if you like Segal or vice versa (Vernant was no fan of psychoanalysis).
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First Sentence:
High on a mountainside in a rugged and lonely part of Arcadia stands a remote shrine to Zeus Lykaios, Wolf Zeus. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
heroic companionship, immortal excellence, beastlike life, civilizing fire, imperishable piety, urn scene, perverted sacrifice, fifth stasimon, cosmological consciousness, second stasimon, savage disease, fourth stasimon, polluted outcast, first stasimon, savage woodland, destructive night, accursed past, civilizing hero, previous ode, wild mountainside, next ode, sheltered meadow, third stasimon, last ode, corrupted sacrifice Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Oedipus Tyrannus, Eleusinian Demeter, Great Goddesses, Olympian Zeus, Unlike Heracles, Heracles Mad, Odysseus of the Ajax, Zeus Herkeios New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
High on a mountainside in a rugged and lonely part of Arcadia stands a remote shrine to Zeus Lykaios, Wolf Zeus. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
heroic companionship, immortal excellence, beastlike life, civilizing fire, imperishable piety, urn scene, perverted sacrifice, fifth stasimon, cosmological consciousness, second stasimon, savage disease, fourth stasimon, polluted outcast, first stasimon, savage woodland, destructive night, accursed past, civilizing hero, previous ode, wild mountainside, next ode, sheltered meadow, third stasimon, last ode, corrupted sacrifice Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Oedipus Tyrannus, Eleusinian Demeter, Great Goddesses, Olympian Zeus, Unlike Heracles, Heracles Mad, Odysseus of the Ajax, Zeus Herkeios New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 97
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- Oedipus Tyrannus by Sophocles on 19 pages
- Greek Tragedy (Drama Classics) by Sophocles Sophocles on 19 pages
- Greek Tragedy: Modern Essays in Criticism by Erich Segal on 7 pages
- The Glory of Hera by Philip Elliot Slater on 5 pages
- Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud on 4 pages
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- Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment by David Scott in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- Laughing with Medusa: Classical Myth and Feminist Thought (Classical Presences) by Vanda Zajko on page 146, and Back Matter
- Enlightenment: Athenian Political Thought and the Dilemmas of Modernity (Classics & Contemporary Thought) by Christopher Rocco on page 39, and page 186
- Philostratus's Heroikos: Religion and Cultural Identity in the Third Century C.E. (Writings from the Greco-Roman World) by Ellen Bradshaw Aitken on page 22, and Back Matter
- Heidegger's Political Thinking by James F. Ward in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
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