Private Lives, Public Deaths : Antigone and the Invention of Individuality / Jonathan Strauss.

Format:

• Book

Author/Creator:

• Strauss, Jonathan, Author.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (232 p.) : 1 Illustration, black and white

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Fordham University Press, [2022]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

In Private Lives, Public Deaths, Jonathan Strauss shows how Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone crystallized the political, intellectual, and aesthetic forces of an entire historical moment—fifth century Athens—into one idea: the value of a single living person. That idea existed, however, only as a powerful but unconscious desire. Drawing on classical studies, Hegel, and contemporary philosophical interpretations of this pivotal drama, Strauss argues that Antigone’s tragedy, and perhaps all classical tragedy, represents a failure to satisfy this longing. To the extent that the value of a living individual remains an open question, what Sophocles attempted to imagine still escapes our understanding. Antigone is, in this sense, a text not from the past but from our future.

Contents:

• Frontmatter
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Greek Transliterations
• Introduction: Tragedy, the City, and Its Dead
• 1. Two Orders of Individuality
• 2. The Citizen
• 3. Loss Embodied
• 4. States of Exclusion
• 5. Inventing Life
• 6. Mourning, Longing, Loving
• 7. Exit Tragedy
• Appendix A: Summary of Sophocles’s Labdacid Cycle
• Appendix B: Timeline of Relevant Events in Ancient Greece
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Mrz 2022)

ISBN:

0-8232-9244-4

OCLC:

1350686526