Tragedy and Civilization

By Charles Segal

Book Overview

Drawing on comprehensive analyses of all of Sophocles' plays, on structuralist anthropology, and on other extensive work on myth and tragedy, Charles Segal examines Sophocles both as a great dramatic poet and as a serious thinker. He shows how Sophoclean tragedy reflects the human condition in its constant and tragic struggle for order and civilized life against the ever-present threat of savagery and chaotic violence, both within society and within the individual. For this edition Segal also provides a new preface discussing recent developments in the study of Sophocles.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0806131365
• ISBN13: 9780806131368
• Release Date: March 1999
• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
• Length: 528 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.0" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

20th Century French Classicism comes to America

This collection of essays is very tightly wrapped around Levi Straussian et al. structuralism, especially the introductory "theory" chapters at the beginning on ritual, kingship, etc. It's a lucid read and something every Sophoclean scholar should be familiar with. The chapter/essay on Antigone gets excerpted quite a bit - probably because like the play itself, it refuses to make the play fit the theory, so to speak. Anyway, lots of stuff on the definition of human, divine, savage and humanity's uneasy relationship to both in Sophocles. There's also a good deal of Roland Barthes' structuralist approach here (another 20th cenutry Frenchie! - hehe). Finally, there's a fairly unspoken undercurrent of psychoanalytic theory here (more straightforward Freudian than Lacanian - which he does get into in another collection). With that in mind, it's ironic that I suggest reading J. P. Vernant if you like Segal or vice versa (Vernant was no fan of psychoanalysis).