How to approach Sophocles

[Kendall]

We have less than 3 weeks of school left. As usual at this time of year, I am ready to quit. We did the following works this year.

 

Several books in the Bible

Gilgamesh

Odyssey

Iliad

Aeschylus - Orestia trilogy

some of Herodotus

some of Plutarch

Death of Socrates

Some Aristotle

Retelling of the Aeneid

 

 

With 2+ weeks left I thought we should do Julius Caesar and at least Antigone, maybe Oedipus Rex as well.

 

How do you teach Sophocles? Do you give them a rough summary of the whole trilogy and then have them read? I don't think he is going to like these. How can I make it palatable? Any general tips on approaching the work?

 

I think my brain is shutting down! Any attempts to motivate me to finish strong will be appreciated.

 

Thanks

 

 

Thank

[regentrude]

I just had my DD read it, and then we talked about it.

 

For Oedipus, she knew of course the story and it is absolutely essential because only then you feel the full horror.

If you think your son might not like Antigone, maybe Oedipus works better?

 

you could try and find a good video of the staged play and watch it instead of reading- plays are meant to be seen, not read.

 

Teaching Company has a great lectures series on Greek Tragedy by Elizabeth Vandiver; maybe you can borrow it somewhere (I guess you would not want to buy this for two weeks)

[Kendall]

Thanks for the input. Do you think they should be read in the order written? Did you mean that she just read the plays without any background? A video is a good idea.

[Carol in Cal.]

I think that Antigone is more approachable and easy to relate to than Oedipus Rex. It's far less contrived, by today's standards. That doesn't make it better or more important, but it does make it easier to teach. If I only had two-three weeks left of school, that's the one I would pick, UNLESS Julius Ceasar just extends background that the students have already...like if you had studied "Famous Men of Rome" fairly recently, for instance.

 

If it were me, though, my inclination would be to have a summer intensive on literature for a month, where we didn't do anything else except study plays, watch them, talk about them, write about them. That would be heavenly! And then I would do all three, and possibly add in the birth and death narratives of Christ in the Bible, especially in Matthew and Luke.

 

So here's how I would approach Antigone: I'd set up the story with all the background. I'd talk about the Biblical quote, "We must obey God rather than men." I'd talk about the challenges of decisions around civil disobedience. I'd introduce, "And this is then the highest treason, to do the right thing for the wrong reason." I'd talk about being a hero by standing up for what is right, vs. being a hero by keeping the peace even in the face of difficulties. I'd talk about how new administrations always consolidate their power, to some extent, or they fail. I'd talk about whether or not rulers have an obligation to morality.

 

THEN we would read Antigone. It's pretty short, and it's easy to follow. We would talk about who we admired and/or identified with, and why. Then papers would be assigned about that. We would also talk about whether fate is ever escapable, and about how our worldview is and isn't the same as the Greeks'.

[Kendall]

Carol,

 

Thank you so much! I'm not sure how all you said fits with Antigone, but I am going to read it this weekend and figure it out. I love your approach.

[Julie in MN]

I love Carol's guidelines, too!

 

But I feel kinda like Oedipus is the figure most familiar to most folks in today's culture, so there is some merit to choosing him. If it weren't for Freud, then I probably wouldn't think about Oedipus, but there he is in all the textbooks.

 

Julie

[Ester Maria]

Assuming you already did the usual introduction to theatre as an art form and thus covered the basics needed (the confines between the religious and the secular world - does it, and how, stem from the ritual; to what extent can we even reconstruct it properly; the visual aspect of theatre; its relationship with societal and political institutions, the significance of Oresteia specifically; Aristotle's structural aspects of tragedy and key terms and the problems with translation of those terms, etc.), you might wish to consider some of the things I did with my daughter this year.

 

Oedipus Rex

She knew the plot already, I had her read the work and we discussed it in Aristotelian terms (its structure, the disproportional relationship between Oedipus' and Thebes' well-being, the instances of hubris, etc.).

 

Then we went out of the field of literary analysis and turned to the father / son opposition, the societal taboo which arises when the fundamental difference between the two is taken away (when son "takes" what is "father's" assuming his "role", i.e. the taboo of incest). A bit of chatting about anthropology there, then we turned to Freud, we read a part from The Interpretation of Dreams which concerns Oedipus, as well as Kafka's Letter to his Father, and talked about the dynamics of that relationship.

 

Next thing, if you have read Job when you studied Bible, this is an excellent comparison point: the discussion of whether one can talk about the elements of tragedy too in Biblical mindset, or it is a phenomenon so strictly tied to the specifically Greek mindset, and why. We had some great discussions about that :D, about free will, gods, Fate overrunning even gods, God, etc. But all of that went out of the sphere of literary analysis, like the previous readings too.

 

Antigone

I think Carol's approach is neat, I would do something similar: first provide for a general context, if needed (my daughter had read it before, so this was a rereading and it was not needed). I had DD read the work and map it out according to Aristotelian scheme.

 

Then we talked about laws vs. Law, man-made conventional laws vs. divine Law, who represents which element in Antigone and where the friction lies. Then we talked about the fundamental difference tragedy poses to a typical "good and evil" story (in terms of two equally valid and right principles conflicting, where the common use of term misses the point, Hegel, etc.). I had my daughter read a part dedicated to Sophocles in Lesky's History of Greek Literature (I highly recommend that work, I used many of its parts with my kids), which sparked some additional questions and insights related to both tragedies.

 

I did not do any additional readings for Antigone and, in a way, we took a lot less thorough approach. We concluded with Oedipus at Colonus, though, I find that the three should really be read together as one sensible unit.

[Kendall]

Oh I wish, Ester Maria, that I could say of course I have covered all that you assumed(or even knew it), but I can't! I do really appreciate the over my head responses and want to learn as much as I can in the next few days, the rest will give me something to work on when I prep for the next go around (6 more kids to take through the Greek plays!)

 

Do you have an online or book recommendation for covering these things that you mentioned? "Assuming you already did the usual introduction to theatre as an art form and thus covered the basics needed (the confines between the religious and the secular world - does it, and how, stem from the ritual; to what extent can we even reconstruct it properly; the visual aspect of theatre; its relationship with societal and political institutions, the significance of Oresteia specifically; Aristotle's structural aspects of tragedy and key terms and the problems with translation of those terms, etc.), "

 

The book you mentioned by Lesky is not available locally, so reading that one will have to wait.

 

Thank you so much.

[Hunter]

I have fond memories of my son and his elderly grand uncle (a retired physicist who lived in a van) watching a couple Greek tragedies. I remember them having a long debate on whether to watch them in English, or in Greek with subtitles. They chose Greek, and the dirty and crippled old dog was so excited about the uncle being there he wouldn't stop walking back and forth in front of the TV, while they moaned and groaned about not being able to read the subtitles, and had to keep rewinding it.

 

My husband's Italian blue collar family found both my son's and the uncle's educational pursuits to be VERY odd, and when I talked about the incident they all laughed, but were so confused, that they didn't even fully understand what I was talking about.

Edited May 8, 2011 by Hunter

[Sebastian (a lady)]

Who Killed Homer? has a good chapter on Antigone and why it matters. Good parallels to modern war.

[Ester Maria]

Do you have an online or book recommendation for covering these things that you mentioned? "Assuming you already did the usual introduction to theatre as an art form and thus covered the basics needed (the confines between the religious and the secular world - does it, and how, stem from the ritual; to what extent can we even reconstruct it properly; the visual aspect of theatre; its relationship with societal and political institutions, the significance of Oresteia specifically; Aristotle's structural aspects of tragedy and key terms and the problems with translation of those terms, etc.), "

 

Hmm, Lesky sounds like the best introduction. However, don't let him overwhelm you, the work is HUGE and feel free to skim or skip what is not relevant to you. :001_smile: It's written exactly the way I personally think - you know, chronologically, orderly, in the best of German philological tradition :tongue_smilie: - so I personally "clicked" with the work very well, that's not a universal response, but I find it very clear and accessible.

 

Girard has one work called The violence and the sacred and a part about Oedipus there. That one is more obscure and I'm not sure I'd read it with a high school student, but for your own context maybe: he has an anthropological approach to tragedy and reads it in the context of what he calls "the circle of mimetic violence" which erases "differences" in society (esp. father / son one) and escalates in the need of a "scapegoat" of a kind to bring the society back to order. I generally don't "click" with interpretations of the kind, but it's an interesting thing to consider.

 

If you have nerves and concentration for some hardcore philosophy approach to tragedy - Hegel, Schlegel and Schelling are excellent starting points, however I warn you that the first of them is basically unreadable without a Greek coffee of the best, darkest kind :lol:. Scheler has one essay on the phenomenon of tragic (not sure the exact name) which might be the most accessible from the more or less same vein, I think that is in Vom Umsturz der Werte, I have some old notes from that, but no idea if/where that is translated. I recall it being okay. Jaspers has an essay on tragic knowledge too. Hm... it basically comes down to the German tradition now I think about it LOL. Even Schopenhauer can be used, even if I personally have some issues with him.

 

Nietzsche has a more "poetic" approach, but should not be underestimated, The Birth of Tragedy is extremely interesting and VERY readable. You just have to do the same thing as with Lesky, to skim and skip parts, as much of it will be irrelevant to you.

 

Anyhow, Lesky is your best bet unless you wish to specifically go more philosophical into the "point" of tragedy.

 

The visual aspect of theatre is fairly easy to cover, there are remaining physical structures of theatres and many reconstructions online with parts of theatre signalled, so you can try to imagine the reconstruction of the process.

The link with the opera is very important: notice the importance of choir, dance and song, and that historical opera was an attempt to reconstruct, in a way, Greek tragedy (Peri's Dafne first). This should provide an insight into just how distorted our views of tragedy as an art form can be because we are used to one much latter developed theatre tradition. Many many commentators of tragedy neglect some of those aspects too (the importance of choir, for example).

 

As to how things got there in the first place, you have a link with Greek mythology, Dionysian cults and how an art form grew out of the originally religious rite. I don't know a compact work on that (I do recall reading something Italian back in prehistory which focused on early development of tragedy :glare:, but I would really have to look it up somewhere, as I have no idea what it was).

 

Aristotle's Poetics is fairly readable and really a "basic" here, however you must know that the text is very cryptical, hard to translate and there are disagreements as to what individual terms mean. It doesn't help that in the latter tradition Aristotle was profoundly misunderstood, there is a whole history of misinterpretations of Aristotle, but that's not relevant when you study Ancients, it's relevant maybe if you study renaissance and classicism later. I do suggest going through Aristotle and help identify structural parts of Sophocles' tragedy.

 

Look, all the stuff I wrote are so overwhelming and fairly overboard for high school (especially all those German theoretical stuff). If I had to narrow it down, it would be Aristotle and Lesky, and the "pick and choose" method when it comes to the latter. The rest of the stuff are googlable for the general context (the link with religion, relationships with state - when sponsored, when not, etc.; visual aspect), but maybe not something to dwell on. Don't let it overwhelm you, it's a GREAT thing to study, but you must "dose" these stuff for your own needs, since I studied those in lycee and uni I have a broader context than the usual one, but that's far from binding, you can do a great job without any of it. I just thought I'd throw in some ideas for you, so you can pick on your own. I definitely don't address all of that with DDs, just "sneak in" some context.

 

I'm sure there are more stuff, but all the ones I can think of are fairly "specific", i.e. not general enough to be of much use.

[Kendall]

Yay!, our library has Who Killed Homer and Aristotles Poetics. I've been working on google for some of the background you mentioned Ester and have found some of the things you mentioned. I'll keep at it! Thanks for all of the suggestions, they are going in my file.

Edited May 9, 2011 by Kendall
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