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Webster's paperbacks take advantage of the fact that classics are frequently assigned readings in English courses. By using a running English-to-Swedish thesaurus at the bottom of each page, this edition of The Oedipus Trilogy was edited for three audiences. The first includes Swedish-speaking students enrolled in an English Language Program (ELP), an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) program, an English as a Second Language Program (ESL), or in a TOEFL� or TOEIC� preparation program. The second audience includes English-speaking students enrolled in bilingual education programs or Swedish speakers enrolled in English-speaking schools. The third audience consists of students who are actively building their vocabularies in Swedish in order to take foreign service, translation certification, Advanced Placement� (AP�) or similar examinations. By using the Rosetta Edition( when assigned for an English course, the reader can enrich their vocabulary in anticipation of an examination in Swedish or English.
TOEFL�, TOEIC�, AP� and Advanced Placement� are trademarks of the Educational Testing Service which has neither reviewed nor endorsed this book. All rights reserved. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Not worth the time to download.
The arguments of the plays are here, but not the plays. There are broken links, supposedly to play sections, but who knows since the plays themselves are not contained in this "trilogy"? I'm just glad it was free. ... Read more

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Webster's paperbacks take advantage of the fact that classics are frequently assigned readings in English courses. By using a running English-to-Danish thesaurus at the bottom of each page, this edition of The Oedipus Trilogy was edited for three audiences. The first includes Danish-speaking students enrolled in an English Language Program (ELP), an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) program, an English as a Second Language Program (ESL), or in a TOEFL� or TOEIC� preparation program. The second audience includes English-speaking students enrolled in bilingual education programs or Danish speakers enrolled in English-speaking schools. The third audience consists of students who are actively building their vocabularies in Danish in order to take foreign service, translation certification, Advanced Placement� (AP�) or similar examinations. By using the Rosetta Edition( when assigned for an English course, the reader can enrich their vocabulary in anticipation of an examination in Danish or English.
TOEFL�, TOEIC�, AP� and Advanced Placement� are trademarks of the Educational Testing Service which has neither reviewed nor endorsed this book. All rights reserved. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Not worth the time to download.
The arguments of the plays are here, but not the plays. There are broken links, supposedly to play sections, but who knows since the plays themselves are not contained in this "trilogy"? I'm just glad it was free. ... Read more

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Webster's paperbacks take advantage of the fact that classics are frequently assigned readings in English courses. By using a running English-to-Hindi thesaurus at the bottom of each page, this edition of The Oedipus Trilogy was edited for three audiences. The first includes Hindi-speaking students enrolled in an English Language Program (ELP), an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) program, an English as a Second Language Program (ESL), or in a TOEFL� or TOEIC� preparation program. The second audience includes English-speaking students enrolled in bilingual education programs or Hindi speakers enrolled in English-speaking schools. The third audience consists of students who are actively building their vocabularies in Hindi in order to take foreign service, translation certification, Advanced Placement� (AP�) or similar examinations. By using the Rosetta Edition( when assigned for an English course, the reader can enrich their vocabulary in anticipation of an examination in Hindi or English.
TOEFL�, TOEIC�, AP� and Advanced Placement� are trademarks of the Educational Testing Service which has neither reviewed nor endorsed this book. All rights reserved. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Not worth the time to download.
The arguments of the plays are here, but not the plays. There are broken links, supposedly to play sections, but who knows since the plays themselves are not contained in this "trilogy"? I'm just glad it was free. ... Read more

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Webster's paperbacks take advantage of the fact that classics are frequently assigned readings in English courses. By using a running English-to-Slovak thesaurus at the bottom of each page, this edition of The Oedipus Trilogy was edited for three audiences. The first includes Slovak-speaking students enrolled in an English Language Program (ELP), an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) program, an English as a Second Language Program (ESL), or in a TOEFL� or TOEIC� preparation program. The second audience includes English-speaking students enrolled in bilingual education programs or Slovak speakers enrolled in English-speaking schools. The third audience consists of students who are actively building their vocabularies in Slovak in order to take foreign service, translation certification, Advanced Placement� (AP�) or similar examinations. By using the Rosetta Edition( when assigned for an English course, the reader can enrich their vocabulary in anticipation of an examination in Slovak or English.
TOEFL�, TOEIC�, AP� and Advanced Placement� are trademarks of the Educational Testing Service which has neither reviewed nor endorsed this book. All rights reserved. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Not worth the time to download.
The arguments of the plays are here, but not the plays. There are broken links, supposedly to play sections, but who knows since the plays themselves are not contained in this "trilogy"? I'm just glad it was free. ... Read more

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Drama / General; ... Read more

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Jealousy and suicide, love and passion, grief and intrigue, honor and deceit are the order of the day in four of Sophocles's great tragedies. The Penn Greek Drama Series presents original literary translations of classical Greek drama. The aim of the series is to make both the works and their interpretations accessible to the reading public. ... Read more

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A great success!
This rather experimental work attempts to translate classics into the modern American language - not just the concrete meaning of the words, but the abstract meaning as well, which is always derived from the entirety of the particular culture. As such, these translations are a monumental undertaking in making ancient Greeks speak to us directly, without the traditional use of modern rhyming or artificial pseudo-archaic English as most of the available translations employ.I would consider it a big success and recommend the entire series to anyone truly interested in ancient culture. However, for those who can't care less about antiquity, this is just a marvelous easy reading.

hmmm.
These stroies are worth reading,but the translations in this book are fairly bland.In fact, the translation for Ajax is pretty bad.I don't think I've ever seen the word twinkie used in a Greek trajedy before. Iwould recomend picking up other versions of these plays. ... Read more

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Sophocles' Theban Plays -- Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone -- lie at the core of the Western literary canon. They are extensively translated, universally taught, and frequently performed. Chronicling the downfall of Oedipus, the legendary king of Thebes, and his descendants, the Theban Plays are as relevant to present-day thought about love, duty, patriotism, family, and war as when they were written 2,500 years ago.

Recent translations of the plays, while linguistically correct, often fail to capture the beauty of Sophocles' original words. In combining the skills of a distinguished poet, Ruth Fainlight, and an eminent classical scholar, Robert J. Littman, this new edition of the Theban Plays is both a major work of poetry and a faithful translation of the original works.

Thoughtful introductions, extensive notes, and glossaries frame each of the plays within their historical contexts and illuminate important themes, mythological roots, and previous interpretations.

This elegant and uncommonly readable translation will make these seminal Greek tragedies accessible to a new generation of readers.

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The second story in the Oedipus Trilogy, "Antigone", examines the conflict between public duty and personal loyalty. Following the banishment of Oedipus, Eteocles and Polyneices kill each other over a dispute of succession to the thrown of Thebes. Creon, Antigone's uncle, succeeds to the thrown and declares that no one may bury Polyneices under penalty of death. Antigone, disregards this order and buries Polyneices and is willing to face the consequence for doing so. As a result, Creon must choose between what he believes to be his civic duty and his personal loyalty to his family. ... Read more

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Essential reading for a classical education
I read Sophocles Antigone for graduate Humanities class.It is an essential reading to understand Greek Tragedy.It is also a foundation stone of literature in studying Western Civilization.

Antigone, daughter of Oedipus in 3-cycle play, faces capital punishment for burying her brother who rebelled against Thebes.Obeying instincts of loyalty of love and the divine law, she defies Creon, the King and her uncle.Creon says laws of states outweigh all other laws, and family loyalty, when he finally relents it's too late.

Over the centuries there has been a great deal made about the conflicts played out in the play, law of state vs. law of goods, personal vs. state duties.Loves knowledge vs. state knowledge.Greek understanding of tragedy- Aristotle lays down understanding of Greek tragedy.He based it on Sophocles.Tragedy- most important thing for tragedy is plot, it is all essential. Tragedy defined as- is imitation of an action that is serious, complete and of a certain magnitude in language embellished with incidents arousing pity and fear ant to the audience it accomplishes catharsis of such emotions.Every tragedy must have six parts that determine its quality.1. plot2.character 3.diction 4.fault 5.spectacle and 6.melody.

According to Aristotle, tragedy is higher and more philosophical than history or poetry; it is one of the highest expressive forms because it dramatizes what may happen.History is a narrative that tells you what has happened tragedy shows what is possible.History deals with particulars, tragedy deals with the universal.Tragedy creates a cause and effect chain and shows how the world operates.It frames human experience in universal discourse, tragedy is central in this effort.Tragedy arouses pity and fear in audience because we can envision ourselves caught in this cause and effect chain.Plot most important feature, the arrangement of incidents, the way incidents, and action is structured.Tragedies outcome depends on the outcome of these cause and effect changes not on being character driven.Plot must be whole, beginning middle and end.Beginning must have a motivation that starts the cause and effect chain of events must be a center or climax that is caused by earlier incidents.There must be an end some kind of closure caused by earlier events in tragedy.This is all part of the complication of the tragedy all must be connected.You can't have a dues ex machnia in a superior tragedy.

In tragedy, the hero or heroine walks knowingly towards the fate that is written and can't be changed.Unity of action plot must be structurally self-contained, each action leading invariably to the next without outside intervention.The worst kinds of plots are episodic, like a Jerry Seinfeld sitcom, can't be something about nothing, must have unity of action.Magnitude, quantatively meaning length, and quality of action, it must be serious.Must be of universal significance, depth, and richness.Character- most important feature is the fatal flaw.Motivations of characters are important but character is there to support the plot.Character must be a prosperous renowned personage.Change of fortune from good to bad will really matter and bring fear and pity to the audience.In ideal tragedy, the hero will mistakenly bring about his own downfall.Because they make a mistake, because knowledge of our selves is always partial, we can't have complete knowledge of ourselves.Hall quotes Descartes in the article, "The limited error prone perspective of the individual.Subject is always imperfect and human and these limitations include our ability to know in any reliable way ourselves."The fact that we as subjects, as agents can never fully know ourselves means that we are always prone to error, error is the essence of the tragic hero, tragedy is the essential drama of human subjectivity.

What is Hegel's understanding of concept of tragedy?He revises Aristotelian principals and logic.Immensely influential German philosopher, he writes about; tragedy in the Aesthete 1820-29, he proposes, "the suffering of the tragic hero are merely the means of reconciling the opposing moral clients."According to Hegel's account of Greek tragedy, the conflict isn't between good and evil, but between competing goods, all is good.Between two entirely ethical worlds that clash and can't come together.Both characters have an ethical vision or belief that they have to follow it is there one-sidedness of their vision that clashes with the one-sidedness of the other character.Both sides of contradiction are justified.Conflict of irreconcilable justifiable ethical worlds, ethical visions.Just as his dialectic must lead to an ultimate synthesis, so to must tragedy lead to a synthesis.This is dramatized in the death of the tragic actor, which becomes the synthesis.Hegel says; "the characters are too good to live."They are too good to live in this world.What is interesting is that Hegel so wants to correct moral imbalances his emphasis is on moral balances.

The better translations are Paul Roche, and RobertFagles.

Greek tragedy is great reading for people interested in aesthetics, history, psychology, and philosophy.
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A new translation into English. Includes a map, notes, interpretative essay.

This translation is intended for students, teachers, and general readers who desire a version that is as close to the Greek as I have been able to make it without sacrificing readability. I have tried to preserve or to convey the effects of Sophokles’ idioms, imagery, figures of speech, meter, word order, and sentence structure, as well as the combination of a traditional high style with colloquial Attic Greek that is characteristic of all Attic tragedy. Despite some inevitable awkwardness and the impossibility of bringing over into English everything that I see in the Greek, I hope that my version will help readers to achieve an intimate familiarity with the play and its complex meanings. ... Read more

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Sophocles on the citizen's responsibility to the state
"Philoktetes" takes place near the climax of the Trojan War. The title character has the great bow of Hercules, given by the demi-god on his pyre to Philoktetes's father. A member of the Achaean expedition that sailed to Troy, Philoktetes was making an altar on an island along the way when he was bitten by a snake. His cries of pain were so great that he was abandoned by his shipments, under the orders of Odysseus, and marooned on the deserted island of Lemnos. Alone and crippled, Philoktetes used the great bow to survive for the ten years the Achaeans have been fighting against Troy. During that time his hatred against the Achaeans in general, and Odysseus in particular, has grown.

Meanwhile, back at Troy, Odysseus and the other Achaean chieftains have learned from an oracle that Troy will fall only with the help of Philoktetes and his bow (a juicy tidbit it certainly would have been nice to have known eight or nine years earlier). Odysseus and Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, are sent to bring Philoktetes and his bow back to the war. Of course, Odysseus dare not show himself to Philoktetes and sends Neoptolemus to do the dirty work. Neoptolemus gains the confidences of the crippled man by lying about taking him home. During one of his agonizing spasms of pain, Philoktetes gives his bow to Neoptolemus. Regretting having lied to this helpless cripple, Philoktetes returns the bow and admits all, begging him to come to Troy of his own free will. Philoktetes refuses and when Odysseus shows his face and threatens to use force to achieve their goal, he finds himself facing a very angry archer.

In "Philoktetes" Sophocles clearly deals with the balance between the rights of the individual and the needs of society. But this is also a play about citizenship and the need for the idealism of youth to be give way to the responsibilities of adulthood. In fact, this lesson is learned both by Philoktetes, who is taught by the shade of Hercules who appears to resolve the tenses conclusion, and Neoptolemus, who finds his duties at odds with his idealized conception of heroism based upon his father. Although this is a lesser known myth and play, "Philoktetes" does raise some issues worth considering in the classroom by contemporary students.

"Philoktetes" is similar to other plays by Sophocles, which deal with the conflict between the individual and society, although this is a rare instance where Odysseus appears in good light in one of his plays; usually he is presented as a corrupter of innocence (remember, the Greeks considered the hero of Homer's epic poem to be more of a pirate than a true hero), but here he is but a spokesperson for the interests of the state. Final Note: We know of lost plays about "Philoktetes" written by both Aeschylus and Euripides. Certainly it would have been interesting to have these to compare and contrast with this play by Sophocles, just as we have with the "Electra" tragedies. ... Read more

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This Halcyon Classics ebook collection contains the seven surviving plays of ancient Greek playwright Sophocles, including his famous works OEDIPUS REX and ANTIGONE. Sophocles (c. 496 BC-406 BC) wrote more than 120 plays in a career spanning more than thirty years, although just seven complete plays have survived.Sophocles won numerous awards in his lifetime, usually besting his contemporaries Aeschylus and Euripides in competitions held during the religious festivals of the Lenaea and the Dionysia.Includes an active table of contents for easy navigation.

Contents:

Antigone
Ajax
Oedipus The King
Electra
The Trachinian Maidens
Philoctetes
Oedipus At Colonos
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DEIANEIRA Ye have heard of my trouble, I think, and that hath brought you here; but the anguish which consumes my heart- ye are strangers to that; and never may ye learn it by suffering! Yes, the tender plant grows in those sheltered regions of its own! and the Sun-god's heat vexes it not, nor rain, nor any wind; but it rejoices in its sweet, untroubled being, til such time as the maiden is called a wife, and finds her portion of anxious thoughts in the night, brooding on danger to husband or to children. Such an one could understand the burden of my cares; she could judge them by her own. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Delightful.Profound.A joy to study.
Ideal for the student who is new to tragedy -- this is my first Sophocles and second tragedy.You get the Greek text, a sizeable introduction on matters literary, mytho-historical and dramatic, and a metrical analysis of the choral odes.
The introduction is very helpful, as Trachiniae is not the most obvious of tragedies from an interpretive point of view.
Then the greatest part of the book, in size, is the Commentary:Everything you need to know about each passage, phrase and word.It anticipates nearly all of my grammatical and syntactical questions, and what is especially helpful is that the author is generous in pointing out where and how a line may be construed in more than one way.
My only complaint is that in this text, as in most of the books I have seen in this Cambridge series, iota-adscript is printed instead of iota-subscript; that may be the most authentic scholarly method, but it is just an obstacle to those still building their Greek reading fluency.
A very thought-provoking lit.crit. adjunct are the two long chapters on Trachiniae in Segal, C:Sophocles' Tragic World (Harvard 1995). ... Read more

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Sophocles, Holderlin, Brecht, Malina - four major figures in the world's theatre - have all left their imprint on this remarkable dramatic text. Friedrich Holderlin translated Sophocles into German, Brecht adapted Holderlin, and now Judith Malina has rendered Brecht's version into a stunning English incarnation. Available for the first time in English. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

is this too deep?
i think this book is too deep and meaningful.. it enters too deep into the morals and values of man....

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One in a trilogy, the cat fights in this book between Antigone and her sister should keep you interested for the hour it take to read.for a better understanding of Sophocles wisdom, get the whole trilogy. ... Read more

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

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'Today good reading and effective performance of ancient drama require a constellation of talents to succeed, and in the four brought together for "The Electra Plays" we are getting some of the best. Justina Gregory provides a fine critical Introduction to the whole project, and the performance-tested translations of Peter Meineck, Cecelia Eaton Luschnig, and Paul Woodruff are wonderfully readable and speakable - even when the events to be spoken of are not. This is not the usual random gathering of plays, but a volume with a concentrated focus on the three playwrights' treatment of the same events in the House of Atreus. There are parallels and profound differences, all of them endlessly discussable. This ensemble of plays and the team that made it should appeal to anyone interested in Greek literature, theater history, or mythology' - James Tatum, Aaron Lawrence Professor of Classics, Dartmouth College (Johns Hopkins University Press). ... Read more