After a brief review of changes in Sophoclean scholarship since the 1950s, O. states that his intention is to produce a book on ‘Sophocles and politics, Sophocles and society, Sophocles and gender, Sophocles and medical science, Sophocles and various modes of critical reception’, with the aim of providing new work ‘that looked forward at least as much as (if not more than) backward’ (p. 4). He imagines a varied readership. The 38 chapters each consist of a discussion, guide to further reading and bibliography, more or less extensive. The book is divided into seven parts. Part 1, ‘Text and Author’; Part 2, ‘The Plays and the Fragments’; Part 3, ‘Sophoclean Techniques’; Part 4, ‘Sophocles and Fifth-Century Political, Religious, and Intellectual Thought’; Part 5, ‘Gender and Sexuality’; Part 6, ‘Historical Interpretations’; Part 7, ‘Influence and Imitation’. Given space limitations, not every contribution can be discussed and my comments are of necessity selective, but I shall conclude with some general observations.
In Part 1, P. Finglass gives a concise but helpful overview of ‘The Textual Transmission of Sophocles’ Dramas' and concludes that much work is still needed on the texts of both plays and scholia. R. Scodel provides a judicious discussion of the often anecdotal and contradictory data concerning ‘Sophocles’ Biography' and J. Davidson reviews the evidence relating ‘Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides’. There is some overlap here between the last two chapters. What should have been included in Part 1 is S. Schein's excellent ‘Sophocles and Homer’. This sits oddly in Part 6 which otherwise deals with post-Sophoclean interpretations. Sophocles' relationship to the Homeric tradition and matters of intertextuality deserve a prominent place.
Of the discussion of the seven tragedies in Part 2, M. Kitzinger, ‘The Divided Worlds of Sophocles’ Women of Trachis', provides a sensitive reading with a useful discussion of the problematic ending. Avoiding an examination of the tragedy mainly in terms of character analysis, she concentrates on the political divide between male and female worlds. She does not consider, however, the verbal/visual use of bed/litter imagery, emblematic of death and of the sexual divide between Deianeira and Heracles. P. Burian, ‘Polyphonic Ajax’, examines secondary characters' responses to Ajax's actions rather than concentrating on Ajax himself. This approach has merits but for less specialist readers leaves important gaps. A. Lardinois on Antigone and P. Woodruff on Philoctetes cover most of the central problems of interpretation. The main thesis, however, of F. Dunn on Electra that the central focus is on the ‘personality’ of the heroine who provides an obstacle to the framing revenge theme is unconvincing. As a corrective, see C. Dué's chapter in Part 3. The discussions of V. Liapis on Oedipus Tyrannus and T. Van Nortwick's ‘Oedipus at Colonus and the End of Tragedy’, while making some useful points, are too eclectic and therefore of limited value. W. Slenders has a useful chapter on Ichneutae and the satyr play which could profitably be read in conjunction with H. Marshall's informative discussion of ‘Tony Harrison's The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus’ in Part 7.
In Part 3 in ‘Sophocles Didaskalos’ C. Marshall provides a good general discussion on Sophocles' theatre and the playwright as a theatrical practitioner. More awareness of this vital factor could have been shown in the other chapters on the tragedies. S. Murnaghan is sensible and helpful on ‘Sophocles’ Choruses'. Unhelpfully, however, she makes no distinction between stasima and parodoi, but the distinction is dramatically important. Dué, ‘Lament as Speech Act in Sophocles’, reviews women's lamentations in the tragedies and uses anthropological evidence to show how integral Electra's behaviour as an unmarried woman is to the revenge theme of the play. Though not original, her main point is important.
The best chapters in Part 4 are R. Osborne's ‘Sophocles and Contemporary Politics’ and B. Currie's ‘Sophocles and Hero Cult’. Osborne's discussion is exemplary in examining the contentious problems of what is involved in understanding Sophocles' political views and using his tragedies for readings of contemporary politics. Currie gives a judicious examination of the evidence as to whether the endings of Ajax, Trachiniae and Oedipus at Colonus foreshadow the establishment of hero cults. With due caution he inclines to a positive view. The first two words of the title of R. Mitchell-Boyask's ‘Heroic Pharmacology: Sophocles and the Metaphors of Greek Medical Thought’ are misleading and unnecessary. He sees terms for disease as political metaphors particularly associated with male rather than female characters.
In Part 5 the most significant chapter is C. Patterson's ‘Marriage in Sophocles: a Problem for Social History’. After giving an overview of ‘The Process of Marriage in Classical Athens’, she considers marriage in Sophocles and suggests that he can be read ‘as social history if we understand that his plays neither imitate reality nor propagate an ideology, but rather portray essential social values and human conflicts through characters who act in ways that would be most unlikely in the “real world” but are nonetheless “necessary” given who these characters are’ (p. 392). This approach seems more fruitful than that of E. Harris, ‘Sophocles and Athenian Law’, in Part 4 where, for example, he takes a literalist legal approach to Oedipus as a murderer and finds him guilty according to the Athenian law of justifiable homicide. Sophocles had his own dramatic requirements and was unconcerned with the letter of the law.
Parts 6 and 7 both deal with reception and the influence of Sophocles. If we omit Schein's contribution, mentioned above, Part 6 presents five chapters on intellectual receptions from Aristotle to Lacan. The most important is M. Lurie's ‘Facing Up to Tragedy: Toward an Intellectual History of Sophocles in Europe from Camerarius to Nietzsche’. He surveys the history of post-Renaissance reception and interpretation, especially with regard to Aristotle and Oedipus Tyrannus. Many students could profit from this enlightening discussion. Part 7 deals with dramatic influence with chapters on Seneca's Oedipus, Anouilh's Antigone, Antigone in nineteenth-century Greece, Harrison's Trackers (referred to above) and black American versions of the two Oedipus plays. All are of interest.
The Companion contains one significant omission; there is no chapter on the gods in Sophocles. But I should like to draw attention to a more general problem. Several contributions are what I would call character driven. Although the question of how to read characterisation in Sophocles and Greek tragedy in general has been the subject of critical debate, this Companion shows no evidence of this. For example, in P. Rose's Marxist contribution, ‘Sophocles and Class’, while his argument may well be valid that Sophocles shows an ideological bias towards the superiority of aristocrats, he demeans his argument when he characterises Antigone in ll. 905–12 by the words ‘her childishly sophistic rationalizations’ (p. 264). This seems more revealing of his own ideological bias than enlightening Sophocles' text. Again in E. Hall's ‘The Necessity and Limits of Deliberation in Sophocles’ Theban Plays' she addresses the academically futile debate on how intelligent Oedipus really is. Later, she describes Oedipus' reaction to his mistaken belief that Creon is accusing him of being the murderer of Laius as ‘his own paranoid assumption’ (p. 307). Is characterising Oedipus in modern psychological terms helpful? While Oedipus' limited understanding is a central issue, the crucial point is that Oedipus solved the riddle of the Sphinx, which gives him his exceptional status among his citizenry, but is blind to the divine insights of Teiresias. As for Oedipus' suspicions about Creon these arise from Sophocles' centring the political motif of the tragedy on Creon who later will become the new ruler. These things are plot rather than character driven. The understanding of Sophocles is not helped by applying modern, more ‘realistic’ criteria of characterisation.
This Companion has many strong points but also has limitations. There are some, not many, factual errors, and a few typos and solecisms but it is generally well produced.
