Description

By (author) Sophocles; Edited and translated by Gibbons Reginald; Edited and translated by Segal Charles

Short /annotation:
Echoing through Western culture for more than two millenia, Sophocles” Antigone has been a touchstone of thinking about human conflict, and the degree to which men and women are the creators of their own destinies.

:
For readers, actors, students, teachers, and theatrical directors, this new translation of one of the greatest plays in the history of the western world provides the best combination of contemporary, powerful language, along with superb background and notes on meaning, interpretation, and ancient beliefs, attitudes, and contexts.

Table of contents:
IntroductionOn the TranslationAntigoneNotes on the TextAppendices1: The Date of Antigone2: The Myth of Antigone, to the End of the Fifth CenturyThe Transmission of the TextGlossarySuggestions for Further Reading

Review quote:
“I highly recommend [Antigone]. Translators Reginald Gibbons and Charles Segal have done a good job in steering a reasonable course between a literal prose rendition and a poetic paraphrase. There is a very good detailed introduction to the play, an essay on the problems of translating it, a glossary of proper nouns, and three appendices about the date, the history of the myth, and how the play was transmitted. As a director, most valuable are the extensive notes that are found in the back of the book [and] stage blockings added to the texts by the editors.”–Frank Behrens, Brattleboro Reformer

Review quote:
“These two new additions to Oxford”s ”Greek Tragedy in New Translations” series only add to the luster of the previous releases. Each is firmly packed with insightful introductions, comprehensive and numbered notes, glossaries, and up-to-date bibliographies (the plays” texts take up about half of each volume). The collaboration of poet and scholar in each volume produces a language that is easy to read and easy to speak (compare, for instance, the Watchman”s first lines in Shapiro and Burian”s Agamemnon with those in Lattimore”s 1947 translation). Each volume”s introduction presents the play”s action and themes with some detail. The translators” notes describe the linguistic twists and turns involved in rendering the text into a modern poetic language. Both volumes are enthusiastically recommended for academic libraries, theatre groups, and theatre departments.”–Library Journal [starred review of Oresteia and Antigone]

Review quote:
“Sophocles” text is inexhaustibly actual. It is also, at many points, challenging and remote from us. The Gibbons-Segal translation, with its rich annotations, conveys both the difficulties and the formidable immediacy. The choral odes, so vital to Sophocles” purpose, have never been rendered with finer energy and insight. Across more than two thousand years, a great dark music sounds for us.”–George Steiner, Churchill College, Cambridge

Biographical note:
Reginald Gibbons is the author of nine volumes of poems, including Sparrow: New and Selected Poems, It”s Time and Fern-Texts. With Charles Segal he has also translated Euripides” Bakkhai. He teaches at Northwestern University. The late Charles Segal was Walter C. Klein Professor of the Classics at Harvard University. His many books include Sophocles” Tragic World, Tragedy and Civilization: An Interpretation of Sophocles, and Oedipus Tyrannus: Tragic Heroism and the Limits of Knowledge.

Review quote: previous edition:
“Gibbons”s translation is the most faithful to the original Greek I know … his translation is the truest to Sophocles” language.” –The Journal of Classics Teaching”Gibbons” text remains faithful to the Greek and yet poetic and apt for the stage; and Segal”s contributions offer an insightful introduction to the play as a product of its own tim