Antigone (Student Editions) - Softcover

Jean Anouilh

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0413695409 ISBN 13: 9780413695406

Publisher: Methuen Drama, 2000

Synopsis

'Anouilh is a poet, but not of words: he is a poet of words-acted, of scenes-set, of players-performing' Peter Brook Jean Anouilh, one of the foremost French playwrights of the twentieth century, replaced the mundane realist works of the previous era with his innovative dramas, which exploit fantasy, tragic passion, scenic poetry and cosmic leaps in time and space. Antigone, his best-known play, was performed in 1944 in Nazi-controlled Paris and provoked fierce controversy. In defying the tyrant Creon and going to her death, Antigone conveyed to Anouilh's compatriots a covert message of heroic resistance; but the author's characterisaation of Creon also seemed to exonerate Marshal Petain and his fellow collaborators. More ambivalent than his ancient model, Sophocles, Anouilh uses Greek myth to explore the disturbing moral dilemmas of our times. Commentary and notes by Ted Freeman.

About this title

Review:

"Anouilh is a poet, but not of words: he is a poet of words-acted, of scenes-set, of players-performing." --Peter Brook, Director

Synopsis:

ANTIGONE was originally produced in Paris in 1942, when France was an occupied nation and part of Hitler's Europe. The play depicts an authoritarian regime and the play's central character, the young Antigone, mirrored the predicament of the French people in the grips of tyranny. Based on Sophocles ancient Greek tragedy of the same title, which was first performed in Athens in the 5th century BC, the theme of ANTIGONE was nevertheless topical. For in Antigone's faithfulness to her dead brother and his proper burial and her reiterated 'No!' to the dictator Creon, the French audience saw its own resistance to the German occupation. The Germans allowed the play to be performed presumably because they found Creon's arguments for dictatorship so convincing. The play is regularly performed and studied around the world.

About this edition

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0413695409
• ISBN 13: 9780413695406
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144