Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x24gv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-23T23:15:23.214Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

I. Recent Scholarship: Some Pointers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

Get access

Extract

So many thousands of scholars have written so many millions of words on Sophocles that one might be forgiven for concluding that there is little prospect of anything valuably new being said. But in fact during the last thirty years our appreciation of this dramatist has been considerably deepened and enriched. It is not that there has been (as with, say, Menander) a great increase in the quantity of material available: nothing of comparable length has turned up since the fragmentary Ichneutae discovered near the beginning of this century, so that as ever we must fall back on the seven fully extant tragedies. Yet, as will be evident from the chapters which follow, scholars have been engaged in a genuinely fruitful debate about the issues at stake in the plays.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Surveys in the Classics , Volume 16: Sophocles , 1984 , pp. 1 - 2
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Anyone wishing to examine Sophoclean studies over the past few decades should begin with Johansen, H. F., ‘Sophocles 1939–1959’, Lustrum 7 (1962), 94–288 Google Scholar. Evaluation of more recent scholarship can be found in Anzeiger für die Altertumswissenschaft thanks to A. Lesky (20 (1967), 193-216) and H. Strohm (24 (1971), 129-62; 26 (1973), 1-5; 30 (1977), 129-44).

2. We do, though, have a stupendously thorough edition of the fragments by Radt, S., Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta vol. 4, Sophocles (Göttingen, 1977)Google Scholar. Still to be consulted is the three-volume commentary on The Fragments of Sophocles by Pearson, A. C. (Cambridge, 1917)Google Scholar. A meticulous papyrological account can be found in Carden, R., The Papyrus Fragments of Sophocles (Berlin, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. E.g. recently Winnington-Ingram, R. P., Sophocles: an Interpretation (Cambridge, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Charles, Segal, Tragedy and Civilization: an Interpretation of Sophocles (Harvard, 1981)Google Scholar; Machin, A., Cohérence et continuité dans le théâtre de Sophocle (Haute-Ville, 1981)Google Scholar. German scholars have been regrettably reticent about expressing themselves at book-length about Sophocles, being perhaps overawed by the example of Reinhardt.

4. Sir R. C Jebb (Cambridge, 1883-96).

5. Kamerbeek, J. C., The Plays of Sophocles (Leiden, 1953-)Google Scholar. This series has now covered all the plays except Oed. Col.

6. Ajax, ed. Stanford, W. B. (London, 1963)Google Scholar; Trach., ed. Easterling, P. E. (Cambridge, 1982)Google Scholar. Other commentaries which may be mentioned are those by Kaibel, G. on Elec. (Leipzig, 1896, repr. Stuttgart, 1967)Google Scholar and Müller, G. on Ant. (Heidelberg, 1967)Google Scholar - see the review of this by Knox, B. M. W. in Word and Action (Baltimore, 1979) 165-82Google Scholar. There are smaller commentaries in English: Elec., by Kells, J. H. (Cambridge, 1973)Google Scholar; Oed. Tyr., by Dawe, R. D. (Cambridge, 1982)Google Scholar; Phil., by Webster, T. B. L. (Cambridge, 1970)Google Scholar.

7. Vol. I: Ajax, Elec., Oed. Tyr. (Leipzig, 1975); vol. II: Trach., Ant., Phil, Oed. Col. (Leipzig, 1979).

8. Ed. D. Grene and R. Lattimore (Chicago, 1954-7). One may also mention the translation (with commentary) on Oed. Tyr. by Gould, T. (Prentice-Hall Greek Drama Series, Englewood Cliffs, 1970)Google Scholar, the individual version of Trach. by Ezra, Pound (orig. publ. in The Hudson Review 6 (1953-4); Faber edn, London, 1969)Google Scholar, and translations of Oed. Tyr. by Fitts, D. and Fitzgerald, R. (London, 1951)Google Scholar and of Oed. Col. by Fitzgerald, R. (London, 1957)Google Scholar.