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