Sophocles’ Antigone 2

“I am no man”

Image from cover, Casey Dué The Captive Women’s Lament in Greek Tragedy

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Agenda

Adventures in Critical ThinkingCreon’s Counselors…

Recap and UpdatePlay and Its “Ideological Horizons”

Winners and LosersGender in in the Antigone

29-Aug

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Adventures in Critical Thinking

Creon’s Counsillors…

29-Aug

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What to Tell the King?

29-Aug

“… from the first there were some men in town / who took the edict hard.

These are the people — oh it’s clear to me — who have bribed these men and

brought about the deed.”“No current custom among men as bad / as silver currency.” (Creon pp.

168–9)

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Recap and Update

Play and Its “Ideological Horizons”

29-Aug

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Background

Playwright and playHouse of Labdacus

genealogy…Oedipus and aftermath…

Oedipus the King (after 429)Oedipus at Colonus (406)Antigone (442/1)

Oedipus and Antigone

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Ideological Oppositions

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ANTIGONEthesis

femaleprivate

insideoikos (family, household, kinship)

lamentationdivine law

CREONantithesismalepublicoutsidepolis (politics, city)

retributionhuman law

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Syntheses or Reversals?

29-Aug

ANTIGONEsynthesis (?)

masculine femaledivine law

(but doesn’t the comparison to Niobe contradict that?)

CREONsynthesis (?)feminized malehuman law(but isn’t maintenance of the oikos what it’s all about)

“I am no man and she the man insteadif she can have this conquest without pain”

(Creon, p. 175).

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Winners and Losers, or…

Gender in in the Antigone

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In Sophocles’ Antigone…

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If Antigone, along with all that she represents (including female

gender), wins, what of the play’s ideological horizons?

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Discussion

more of a power struggle more that creon lost

gender only really affecting creon

29-Aug