Tragedy and Civilization

By Charles Segal

Book Overview

Revised

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0806131365
• ISBN13: 9780806131368
• Release Date: August 1970
• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
• Length: 528 Pages
• Weight: 1.54 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).