Love and loyalty; hatred and revenge; fear; deprivation; and political ambition: these are the motives which thrust the characters portrayed in these three Sophoclean masterpieces on to their collision course with catastrophe.Recognized in his own day as perhaps the greatest of the Greek tragedians; Sophocles reputation has remained undimmed for two and a half thousand years. His greatest innovation in the tragic medium was his development of a central tragic figure; faced with a test of will and character; risking obloquy and death rather than compromise his or her principles: it is striking that Antigone and Electra both have a woman as their intransigent hero.Antigone dies rather neglect her duty to her family; Oedipus determination to save his city results in the horrific discovery that he has committed both incest and parricide; and Electras unremitting anger at her mother and her lover keeps her in servitude and despair.These vivid translations combine elegance and modernity; and are remarkable for their lucidity and accuracy. Their sonorous diction; economy; and sensitivity to the varied metres and modes of the original musical delivery make them equally suitable for reading or theatrical peformance.
#1104031 in eBooks 2010-03-15 2010-03-15File Name: B003SE6C34
Review
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful. Thoughtful pieces with far reaching consequencesBy Hugh JapeThis an interesting book. suitable for students and researchers with a broad range of media interests - whether it be in relation to fine arts. mass communication. or any other area of the field. First. Ill give an indication of what this book is not. Its probably not effective to use this book as an encylopedia. or as an introduction to media studies. For that. I suggest trying New Media: A Critical Introduction (but maybe wait to see if a paperback version of the 2nd edition is released) or Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks (KeyWorks in Cultural Studies) or The New Media Reader if you want a good selection of key works that have influenced the often overlapping fields of media and cultural studies (see moreso the 2nd half of that book for stuff on media). I think people who would most benefit from the book under review are people who have some familiarity with the sorts of ideas that are discussed in these three books. A careful reader with any experience reading from the Humanities should be alright. though.What this book does offer the reader is a careful interrogation of concepts that are crucial to the contemporary vocabulary of media studies. I will not evaluate the individual pieces as I think its a bit too arduous if I try to do it well. and unfair to the authors if I do a shoddy job. Instead. Ill simply iterate what the terms are and who deals with them.Section 1: AestheticsArt - Johanna DruckerBody - Bernadette WegensteinImage - WJT MithcellMateriality - Bill BrownMemory - Bernard StieglerSenses - Caroline JonesTime and Space - Mitchell HansenSection 2: TechnologyBiomedia - Eugene ThackerCommunication - Bruce ClarkeCybernetics - Katherine HaylesInformation - Bruce ClarkeNew Media - Mark HansenHardware/Software/Wetware - Geoffrey Winthrop-YoungTechnology - John JohnstonSection 3: SocietyExchange - David GraeberLanguage - Cary WolfeLaw - Peter GoodrichMass Media - John Durham PetersNetworks - Alexander GallowaySystems - David WellberyWriting - Lydia LiuI recommend this book for people wanting to keep abreast/ahead of the current debates about the relations between embodiment. technology and society.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Extra DetailsBy DSObtuse and academic--but useful as a rhetorical reference.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Five StarsBy Jimmy Barkahgreat!
