Critique de Choice
Tyrrell and Bennett interpret Sophocles' Antigone scene by scene from the point of view of the culture norm of proper burial of war's dead and in light of anthropological literature on burial rites in other cultures. The thesis follows the reader-response critical reading and assumes that the audience will respond to the play in terms of both the custom of exposure of enemy corpses and the newer custom of public funeral, which diminished the role of the family in burial. For the authorial audience, the play is about who is in control of the dead and the mourning for the dead. The authors do not concede to tragic characters any psychological entity or personal identity, but see them as figures who embody social roles and gender expectations. Thus they explain Antigone's persistence in burying Polyneices as social and gender conventions, placing it in the context of women's insurrection and dissatisfaction over the burial ritual. Public funeral both denied women their rights in caring for the dead and struck at women's place in society by robbing them of the public medium (lamentations). The authors see Sophocles' play as attempting to redress the flaws caused by the intrusion of the demos into women's territory. For upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, researchers, and faculty. H. M. Roisman; Colby College