The Oedipus Plays of Sophocles

Oedipus the King, ""Oedipus at Kolonos"", ""Antigone

Sophocles author Robert Bagg translator

Format:Hardback

Publisher:University of Massachusetts Press

Published:31st Aug '04

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The Oedipus Plays of Sophocles cover

Vivid translations of three masterworks of Western literature; With this volume, poet Robert Bagg completes his translation of the three plays in which Sophocles dra matized the agony and destruction inflicted on Oedipus and his family, the royal house of Thebes. To the newly revised Oedipus the King, first published in 1982, Bagg adds Antigone and Oedipus at Kolonos. Composed decades apart in the fifth century bce, these tragedies hold a central place in Western literature - not only because of the formal beauty and dramatic power of their poetry, but because of the shocking ironies that convey Sophocles' understanding of divine malice and human vulnerability. Bagg's goal has been to make accurate but idiomatic renderings of the Greek originals that are suitable for reading, teaching, or performing. What makes his versions ""leaner, tauter, more luminous and Sophoclean than other transitions,"" writes classicist Richard P. Martin, is Bagg's ""decision to follow the American poetic tradition of Stevens, Pound, and Frost rather than the English tradition"" of most other contemporary translators. Readers and actors alike will find these translations loyal to Sophocles' characteristic directness and concision, his pervasive irony, his unsparing descriptions of physical violence, and the music of his choral songs. Each character speaks with a distinctive voice; each play possesses a tone expressive of the issues that preoccupied Sophocles during the stages of his long engagement with the fate of Oedipus, his wife/mother Jocasta, and their children. In the introductions, Bagg and his wife Mary discuss factors in ancient Greek social and cultural life that are likely to be unfamiliar to the general reader but are central to interpreting Sophocles' meaning. They have also annotated each play to clarify mythological references and points of interpretation and translation. In their general introduction they explore the origins of Greek theater, the nature of the Athenian festival of Dionysos at which Sophocles' plays were first performed, and the characteristic ingredients of Greek drama in performance. They conclude with a discussion of the known facts and surviving anecdotes of the playwright's life.

Robert Bagg's new renditions of the Oedipus plays are closer to the Greek, in their rhetorical power, precision of image, rhythm, pace, and tone, than any other versions I know.... Through his clear and bold translations, the radiant strength of the original shines through. They have the power of a distinctive personal voice, but a voice that never gets in the way of the ancient script by calling attention to itself. - Richard P. Martin, Stanford University

ISBN: 9781558494534

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 100g

304 pages