Essays on Antigone

441 BC, Sophocles

Play; Tragedy

Antigone, Ismene, Creon, Eurydice, Haemon, Tiresias, Sentry, Leader of the Chorus

The gray world, Creon's attack, Eurydice's knitting, the chorus, tragic beauty, the tomb/bridal bed

The ideas presented in Antigone are relevant in the modern world and indicate that modern society is not as developed as we think. We still have issues of gender equality, democratic voice and religious faith. Antigone is trying to show everyone the power of women in the face of male power.

"Nobody likes the man who brings bad news."
"I have no love for a friend who loves in words alone."
"You are always defying the world, but you're only a girl, after all."
"It is the dead, not the living, who make the longest demands."
"We have only a little time to please the living.

It is said Sophocles died while reading aloud Antigone.
The asteroid (129) Antigone, which was discovered in 1873, is named after the heroine.
In 1944 the French playwright and screenwriter Jean Anouilh published the play Antigone, the production of which in Paris occupied by German troops received a huge response.
Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, called his daughter Anna Antigone.

1. Murnaghan, S. (1986). Antigone 904-920 and the Institution of Marriage. The American Journal of Philology, 107(2), 192-207. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/294602)
2. Honig, B. (2009). Antigone's laments, Creon's grief: Mourning, membership, and the politics of exception. Political Theory, 37(1), 5-43. (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0090591708326645)
3. Rouse, W. H. D. (1911). The two burials in Antigone. The Classical Review, 25(2), 40-42. (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/classical-review/article/abs/two-burials-in-antigone/5F435DF66023E724D84BE90BCA655AAA)
4. Meltzer, F. (2011). Theories of desire: Antigone again. Critical Inquiry, 37(2), 169-186. (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/657289?journalCode=ci)
5. de Fátima Silva, M. (2017). Antigone. In Brill's Companion to the Reception of Sophocles (pp. 391-474). Brill. (https://brill.com/display/book/edcoll/9789004300941/B9789004300941_007.xml)
6. Davis, C. (1995). The Abject: Kristeva and the Antigone. Paroles gelées, 13(1). (https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8qt465qh#main)
7. Margon, J. S. (1970). The Death of Antigone. California Studies in Classical Antiquity, 3, 177-183. (https://online.ucpress.edu/ca/article-abstract/doi/10.2307/25010605/33738/The-Death-of-Antigone?redirectedFrom=PDF)
8. Marini, F. (1992). The uses of literature in the exploration of public administration ethics: The example of Antigone. Public Administration Review, 420-426. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/976801)
9. Benardete, S. (2014). Sacred Transgressions: A Reading of Sophocles' Antigone. (https://philpapers.org/rec/BENSTA-7)