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Very Much The Safest Plan or, Last Words in Sophocles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2015

D.A. Hester
D.A. Hester*
Affiliation:
University of Adelaide
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Extract

Ever since A. W. Schlegel the role of the Sophoclean chorus has been the subject of debate. To him the chorus was ‘the ideal spectator’, by which he meant that it moves at a deeper level than the actors and interprets the meaning of the play to us: it is as Schiller put it, ‘not an individual, but a general reflection’. This might be called one of the extreme views of the role of the chorus; even those who do not take it in general, such as Helg and Helmreich, still see some of the choral odes as a kind of parabasis, in which Sophocles lets the plot go and speaks to us in person. The main candidates are the first stasimon of the Antigone and the second stasimon of the Oedipus Rex. It is not clear whether these ‘messages’ were for posterity or Pericles; in my view these odes are entirely explicable in the dramatic context in which they occur; at least, the burden of proof lies with those who would maintain otherwise.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 7 , 1973 , pp. 8 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 1973

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References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Also remarks on finales of Electra by

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Becker, C, Studien zum Sophokleischen Chor (Diss. Frankfurt, 1950). Coleman, R., ‘The choral odes of the Antigone’, PCPhS n.s. 18 (1972), 4–27.Google Scholar
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Haigh, A.E., The Tragic Drama of the Greeks (Oxford, 1896), pp. 151–6.Google Scholar
Helg, W., Das Chorlied der griechischen Tragödie in seinem Verhältnis zur Hand-lung (Diss. Zurich, 1950).Google Scholar
Helmreich, F., Der Chor bei Sophokles und Euripides (Diss. Erlangen, 1905), pp. 1–43.Google Scholar
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Kitto, H.D.F., Greek Tragedy (London, 1950), pp. 156–68.Google Scholar
Müller, G., ‘Chor und Handlung bei den Griechischen Tragikern’ in Diller, H., Sophokles (Darmstadt, 1967), pp. 212–38.Google Scholar
Rahm, A., Ueber den Zusammenhang zwischen Chorliedern und Handlung in den erhaltenen Dramen des Sophokles (Sonderhaussen, 1907).Google Scholar
Ronnet, G., Sophocle (Paris, 1969), pp. 133–69.Google Scholar
Schiller, J., Die Brant von Messina, foreword (Werke, ed. Fricke, and Göpfert, , 2 [Munich, 1959], pp. 815–23).Google Scholar
Schlegel, A.W., Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, trans. Black (London, 1892), pp. 64–71.Google Scholar
Mayerhoefer, F., Über die Schlȕsse der erhaltenen griechischen Tragödien (Diss. Erlangen, 1908).Google Scholar
Patin, A., Aesthetische-Kritische Studien zu Sophokles (Paderborn, 1911), pp. 82–117.Google Scholar
Calder, W.M. (GRBS 4 [1963], 213–6) andGoogle Scholar
Carroll, J.P. (TAPhA 70 [1939], 30–31); of Oedipus Rex byGoogle Scholar
Calder, W.M. (CPh 57 [1962], 219–29),Google Scholar
Graffunder, P.L.W. (NJPhP 132 [1885], 389–408),Google Scholar
Livingstone, R.W. (Essays presented to Murray, G. [Oxford, 1936], 158–63), and Google Scholar
Poetscher, W. (Emerita 38 [1970], 149–61); of Trachiniae byGoogle Scholar
Schneider, W., Ueber der Text der Tradh. (Wien, 1883), pp. 9–11.Google Scholar