Sophocles Ajax

Sophocles' Ajax describes the fall of a mighty warrior denied the honour which he believed was his due. This edition of the play presents a text and critical apparatus which take full advantage of advances in our understanding of Sophoclean manuscripts and scholarship. The introduction and commentary scrutinise all important aspects of the drama - from detailed analysis of style, language, and metre to consideration of wider issues such as ethics, rhetoric, and characterisation. Notorious dramaturgical problems, including the staging of Ajax's suicide, receive particular attention; so too do questions of literary history, such as the date of the play and Sophocles' creative interaction with previous accounts of the myth. The translation which accompanies the commentary ensures that this edition will be accessible to Hellenists of all levels of experience, as well as to readers with a general interest in the history of drama.

Ajax, perhaps the earliest surviving tragedy of Sophocles, presents the downfall and disgrace of a great hero whose suicide leads to his rehabilitation through the enlightened magnanimity of one of his enemies.

Here, for the first time in English, is celebrated French classicist Jacques Jouanna's magisterial account of the life and work of Sophocles. Exhaustive and authoritative, this acclaimed book combines biography and detailed studies of Sophocles' plays, all set in the rich context of classical Greek tragedy and the political, social, religious, and cultural world of Athens's greatest age, the fifth century. Sophocles was the commanding figure of his day. The author of Oedipus Rex and Antigone, he was not only the leading dramatist but also a distinguished politician, military commander, and religious figure. And yet the evidence about his life has, until now, been fragmentary. Reconstructing a lost literary world, Jouanna has finally assembled all the available information, culled from inscriptions, archaeological evidence, and later sources. He also offers a huge range of new interpretations, from his emphasis on the significance of Sophocles' political and military offices (previously often seen as honorary) to his analysis of Sophocles' plays in the mythic and literary context of fifth-century drama. Written for scholars, students, and general readers, this book will interest anyone who wants to know more about Greek drama in general and Sophocles in particular. With an extensive bibliography and useful summaries not only of Sophocles' extant plays but also, uniquely, of the fragments of plays that have been partially lost, it will be a standard reference in classical studies for years to come.

Athena 'twas I Restrained Him, Casting On His Eyes O'ermastering Notions Of That Baneful Ecstasy, That Turned His Rage On Flocks And Mingled Droves Of Booty Yet Unshared, Guarded By Herdsmen. Then Plunging Amid The Thronging Horns He Slew.

"This volume collects papers on pragmatic perspectives on ancient theatre. Scholars working on literature, linguistics, and theatre will find interesting insights on verbal and non-verbal uses of language in ancient Greek and Roman Drama. Comedies and Tragedies spanning from 5th B.C.E. to 1st C.E. are investigated in terms of im/politeness, theory of mind, interpersonal pragmatics, and body language, to name some of the approaches which afford new interpretations of difficult textual passages or shed new light into nuances of characterisation, or possibilities of performance. Words, silence, gestures, do things, all the more so in dramatic dialogues on stage"--

These contemporary translations of four Greek tragedies speak across time and connect readers and audiences with universal themes of war, trauma, suffering, and betrayal. Under the direction of Bryan Doerries, they have been performed for tens of thousands of combat veterans, as well as prison and medical personnel around the world. Striking for their immediacy and emotional impact, Doerries brings to life these ancient plays, like no other translations have before.

Sophocles' play is a famous retelling of Aias's (Ajax's) demise. After the armor is awarded to Odysseus, Aias feels so insulted that he wants to kill Agamemnon and Menelaus. Athena intervenes and clouds his mind and vision, and he goes to a flock of sheep and slaughters them, imagining they are the Achaean leaders, including Odysseus and Agamemnon. When he comes to his senses, covered in blood, he realizes that what he has done has diminished his honor, and decides that he prefers to kill himself rather than live in shame.

A series of interconnected studies which analyze the seven surviving tragedies by Sophocles.

Sophocles' Ajax is one of the most disturbing and powerful surviving ancient tragedies. This book draws together the latest critical work on the play and introduces the reader to key frames for its interpretation.

'Ajax' is a Greek tragedy play written by Sophocles in the 5th century BCE. It opens with a dialogue between Athena and Odysseus: After the great warrior Achilles had been killed in battle, there was a question as to who should receive his armor. As the man who now could be considered the greatest Greek warrior, Ajax felt he should be given Achilles' armor, but the two kings, Agamemnon and Menelaus, awarded it instead to Odysseus. Ajax became furious about this and decided to kill the three of them. However, Athena stepped in and deluded Ajax into instead killing the spoils of the Greek army, which includes cattle as well as the herdsman. Athena gave false visions to Ajax, making him see the animals as humans.

Literary historians have long held the view that the plays of the Greek dramatist, Sophocles deal purely with archetypes of the heroic past and that any resemblance to contemporary events or individuals is purely coincidental. In this book, Michael Vickers challenges this view and argues that Sophocles makes regular and extensive allusion to Athenian politics in his plays, especially to Alcibiades, one of the most controversial Athenian politicians of his day.Vickers shows that Sophocles was no closeted intellectual but a man deeply involved in politics and he reminds us that Athenian politics was intensely personal. He argues cogently that classical writers employed hidden meanings and that consciously or sub-consciously, Sophocles was projecting onto his plays hints of contemporary events or incidents, mostly of a political nature, hoping that his audience's passion for politics would enhance the popularity of his plays. Vickers strengthens his case about Sophocles by discussing other authors - Thucydides, Plato and Euripides - in whom he also demonstrates a body of allusions to Alcibiades and others.

Meineck and Woodruff's new annotated translations of Sophocles' Ajax, Women of Trachis, Electra, and Philoctetes combine the same standards of accuracy, concision, clarity, and powerful speech that have so often made their Theban Plays a source of epiphany in the classroom and of understanding in the theatre. Woodruff's Introduction offers a brisk and stimulating discussion of central themes in Sophoclean drama, the life of the playwright, staging issues, and each of the four featured plays.

Brill's Companion to the Reception of Sophocles offers a comprehensive account of the reception of Sophocles’ plays over the centuries, across cultures and within a range of different fields, such as literature, intellectual history, visual arts, music, dance, stage and cinema.

This ebook is a selective guide designed to help scholars and students of the ancient world find reliable sources of information by directing them to the best available scholarly materials in whatever form or format they appear from books, chapters, and journal articles to online archives, electronic data sets, and blogs. Written by a leading international authority on the subject, the ebook provides bibliographic information supported by direct recommendations about which sources to consult and editorial commentary to make it clear how the cited sources are interrelated. A reader will discover, for instance, the most reliable introductions and overviews to the topic, and the most important publications on various areas of scholarly interest within this topic. In classics, as in other disciplines, researchers at all levels are drowning in potentially useful scholarly information, and this guide has been created as a tool for cutting through that material to find the exact source you need. This ebook is just one of many articles from Oxford Bibliographies Online: Classics, a continuously updated and growing online resource designed to provide authoritative guidance through the scholarship and other materials relevant to the study of classics. Oxford Bibliographies Online covers most subject disciplines within the social science and humanities, for more information visit www.aboutobo.com.

A Companion to Sophocles presents the first comprehensive collection of essays in decades to address all aspects of the life, works, and critical reception of Sophocles. First collection of its kind to provide introductory essays to the fragments of his lost plays and to the remaining fragments of one satyr-play, the Ichneutae, in addition to each of his extant tragedies Features new essays on Sophoclean drama that go well beyond the current state of scholarship on Sophocles Presents readings that historicize Sophocles in relation to the social, cultural, and intellectual world of fifth century Athens Seeks to place later interpretations and adaptations of Sophocles in their historical context Includes essays dedicated to issues of gender and sexuality; significant moments in the history of interpreting Sophocles; and reception of Sophocles by both ancient and modern playwrights

This volume offers an overview of the ways in which Sophocles’ use of the Greek language is currently being studied. The book is divided into three sections, which deal with aspects of diction, syntax, and pragmatics.