ANTIGONE UNINTERRUPTED: SOPHOCLES’ ANTIGONE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE THEBAN PLAYS AS ANTIGONE’S BIOGRAPHICAL TALE OF LEARNING FROM TRAGIC COUNSEL
Abstract
The plot of Sophocles’ Antigone is that Antigone performs the burial rites for her brother, Polyneices, despite the ruling king’s decree that anyone caught doing so would be sentenced to death. My project surveys the Antigone legend and demonstrates that current scholarship on Sophocles’ Antigone would benefit from reading her story in the context of the three Theban Plays in the order of the myth, by which I mean a biographical reading of her legend as provided by Sophocles. Though I find nothing wrong with incorporating the characters or actions from tragic drama into current political and ethical discourse, I argue that tragic insights are overlooked when the straightforward explanations of the characters are no longer trusted. My chapters reconstruct scholarship that analyzes Antigone’s statements in a manner I call indirect, meaning seeking new interpretations for the purposes of staking a claim upon a philosophical, psychological, or political argument by appealing to her timeless authority or by undermining it. By laying claim upon what is unsaid, her interpreters are able to make Antigone a mouthpiece for whatever it is they would like to say. Each of my chapters also examine how reading the Theban Plays in the order of the myth provides a context for responding to the most prominent questions about Antigone’s motivations discussed in recent scholarship. My examination reveals that once we listen to Antigone directly throughout the Theban Plays in the order of the myth, her tragic insights about living with the acceptance of mortality support the straightforward reasons Antigone gives for the choices she makes. Contemporary discourse on Antigone tends to consider it limiting to keep with the traditional reading of tragedy being centrally concerned with death, loss, and the way human action affects human life. I argue that it is limiting to dismiss what we can learn from the traditional tragic themes of mortality.
Subject
AntigoneGreek tragedy
Sophocles
Theban Plays
ancient philosophy
Antigones
Antigone and Feminist Theory
Antigone and Counsel
Antigone and Creon
Antigone and Ismene
Antigone and Polyneices
Antigone and Polynices
Antigone and the cave
Antigone and Plato
Citation
Bustamante, Wendy Mariel (2019). ANTIGONE UNINTERRUPTED: SOPHOCLES’ ANTIGONE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE THEBAN PLAYS AS ANTIGONE’S BIOGRAPHICAL TALE OF LEARNING FROM TRAGIC COUNSEL. Doctoral dissertation, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /186302.