| The Three Theban Plays |  | Author: Sophocles
Publisher: Lightyear Pr
Category: Book
This item is no longer available
Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 4500718
Media: Hardcover
ISBN: 0899682650
Dewey Decimal Number: 808
EAN: 9780899682655
ASIN: 0899682650
Publication Date: August 1992
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Amazon.com Review
Aristotle called "Oedipus The King," the second-written of the three Theban plays written by Sophocles, the masterpiece of the whole of Greek theater. Today, nearly 2,500 years after Sophocles wrote, scholars and audiences still consider it one of the most powerful dramatic works ever made. Freud sure did. The three plays--"Antigone," "Oedipus the King," and "Oedipus at Colonus"--are not strictly a trilogy, but all are based on the Theban myths that were old even in Sophocles' time. This particular edition was rendered by Robert Fagles, perhaps the best translator of the Greek classics into English.
Product Description
Antigone defending her integrity and ideals to the death, Oedipus questing for his identity and achieving immortality - these heroic figures have moved playgoers and readers since the fifth century BC. Towering over the rest of Greek tragedy, these three plays are among the most enduring and timeless dramas ever written. Robert Fagles' translation conveys all of Sophocles' lucidity and power: the cut and thrust of his dialogue, his ironic edge, the surge and majesty of his choruses and, above all, the agonies and triumphs of his characters.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 Translation isn't transliteration December 16, 2008
I try to reread Sophocles every few years, both because I enjoy him and because I find him a moral tonic. Since I can only haltingly stumble through his Greek, I always read translations, and I read a different translation each time.
When one reads a translated literary work, one is reading a piece of literature that, in a manner of speaking, is "co-authored." Translation isn't, can't, and oughtn't to be a mechanically isomorphic transliteration of the original text. Translators--good ones, anyway--are artists in their own right. The choices they make in deciding how best to render the original text reflects not only their own creative sensitivity, but also their cultural context. Different translators, because of the variability of their temperaments, talents, and times, focus on different inflections. (In this regard, they're not unlike stage directors, who also "co-author" the plays they present.) So one never reads Sophocles, unless one reads the original Greek. One always reads Fagles' Sophocles, or Fitzgerald's Sophocles, or X's Sophocles.
I think Fagles and Sophocles make a marvelous collaboration. In fact, I like this translation better than any other I've read over the past half-century (and I've liked some others very much). Fagles has the soul of a poet (his volume of poems, I, Vincent, is very good indeed), and his rendering of "Antigone" and "Oedipus the King" are especially fine. Like all translators, he has a spin that mirrors the fears and hopes of his own time. In Fagles' case, it's what the existentialists would call nausea or anxiety over the absurd contingency of existence. For example, Oedipus the King [1442], after learning of his unhappy fate:
...the agony! I am agony--
where am I going? where on earth?
where does all this agony hurl me?
where's my voice?
winging, swept away on a dark tide--
My destiny, my dark power, what a leap you made!
What more could one ask of a translator than that s/he remain loyal to the ancient text being interpreted while rendering it in such a way as to speak to contemporary readers? For translators aren't transliterators or transcribers. They're not secretaries. They're artists.
Must Have for Serious Study June 19, 2008
No one can study the greek classics without these titles; a spring board to other works. Page layouts are easily read (numbered and indexed with referent notes). Each offering is accompanied by its own introduction loaded with connections!
DRAMA January 2, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The three Theban plays are a great way to introduce high school student into classical Greek literature. While the introductions can be lengthy, and give away the story, the plays are quite short and good for students like myself with the attention span of a infant. Both plays a very dramatic and filled with scandal which is something that the tens of today can relate to. The first play, Antigone, tells of a woman who fights for her right to give her brother a proper burial, and even though she is dating the son of the king she is sentenced to death. This causes uproar within the royal family eventually showing that the king's rash actions and need for power leads to the dismantling of his own household.
The second play, Oedipus the King, tells the tale the grown son of the king of Thebes that had been given away at birth, in an effort to avoid a prophecy by a blind prophet. Everything that they tried to avoid comes true in the most unfortunate of fashions. For those who enjoy the modern media it can be compared to a celebrity sex scandal.
 Excellent But Not The Best; 4.5 Stars April 15, 2006
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is a fine translation of Sophocles' great Oedipus trilogy. Fagles has rendered these plays into fluent English with a fine feel for how to vary the nature of the language between characters and scenes. That said, I still prefer the older Fitts/Fitzgerald translations, which are a model of restrained but powerful poetic expression. I think Fagles' translations of Homer are the finest available but he has not done quite as well with these plays. A very nice feature of this edition are the fine introductions to the plays and a short discussion of the history of the texts.
Translations March 19, 2006
63 out of 64 found this review helpful
Researching translations is never an easy task, and in this case, where you'll have to search on Amazon for the title and the translator to find what you want, it's particularly difficult.
Here's what I've found by comparing several editions:
1. David Grene translation: Seems to be accurate, yet not unwieldy as such. My pick. Language is used precisely, but not to the point where it's barely in English.
2. Fitts/Fitzgerald translation: Excellent as well, though a little less smooth than the Grene one. Certainly not a bad pick.
3. Fagles translation: Beautiful. Not accurate. If you are looking for the smoothest English version, there's no doubt that this is it. That said, because he is looser with the translation, some ideas might be lost. For instance, in Antigone, in the beginning, Antigone discusses how law compels her to bury her brother despite Creon's edict. In Fagles, the "law" concept is lost in "military honors" when discussing the burial of Eteocles. This whole notion of obeying positive law or natural law is very important, but you wouldn't know it from Fagles. In Grene, for example, it is translated to "lawful rites."
4. Gibbons and Segal: Looks great, but right now the book has only Antigone (and not the rest of the trilogy) and costs almost 3x as much. I'll pass. But, from a cursory review, I'm impressed with their work.
5. MacDonald: This edition received some good write-ups, but I wasn't able to do a direct passage-to-passage comparison.
6. Woodruff: NO, NO, NO. Just NO. It's so colloquial it makes me gag. Very accessible, but the modernization of the language is just so extreme as to make it almost laughable. You don't get any sense of the power of language in the play. You just get the story. If you want this to be an easy read, then get Fagles, not this.
7. Kitto: Looks good, though not particularly compelling over either Grene or Fitzgerald (or Gibbons if I wanted to pay so much more).
8. Roche: Practically unreadable the English is so convoluted. Might be the most literal translation, but what's the point unless you are learning Greek and want such a direct translation.
9. Taylor: Way too wordy. Might be more literal, but again, why?
Hope this all helps. Translations can make or break the accessibility of literature. Pick wisely.
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