This Norton Critical Edition includes: Emily Wilson's superb translation of Sophocles' best-known play, accompanied by her engaging introduction, translator's note and explanatory footnotes. Comparative ancient sources that provide insight into the many different approaches to the Oedipus myth, inviting readers to see what is distinctive about Sophocles' approach. These nine sources are followed by the final scene of Rita Dove's modern verse tragedy, The Darker Face of the Earth, which follows closely the plot of Oedipus Tyrannos. Critical essays by Froma I. Zeitlin, Edith Hall,...

In this volume, tragedy in antiquity is examined synoptically, from its misty origins in archaic Greece, through its central position in the civic life of ancient Athens and its performances across the Greek-speaking world, to its new and very different instantiations in Republican and Imperial Roman contexts. Lively, original essays by eminent scholars trace the shifting dramatic forms, performance environments, and social meanings of tragedy as it was repeatedly reinvented. Tragedy was consistently seen as the most serious of all dramatic genres; these essays trace a sequence of different...