Thesis (Ph. D.)--Princeton University, 1983. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 299-309).

The Trachiriiae has been seen as something of an anomaly among Sophocles' seven extant plays. It is the only play that is not named for its hero, and critics have argued variously that Deianeira, or Heracles, or both Deianeira and Heracles are the heroes of the play. This thesis seeks to establish Deianeira as the hero of the Trachiriiae. In order to provide an objective model against which both Deianeira and Heracles can be measured, a summary of eight views of the Sophoclean tragic hero, excluding references to the Trachiriiae, is presented. Emphasis is given to the heroic model of B.M.W. Knox, who himself, believing that the Trachiriiae is not clearly based on the figure of a tragic hero, excludes it from his development of a heroic model. The models of the Sophoclean hero do apply to the Trachiniae, and Deianeira, not Heracles, is the hero. The lives and deaths of Deianeira and Heracles are interrelated in the closest possible way, but by looking with a discerning eye, one discovers that Deianeira is the leading dramatic figure. Deianeira fulfills the heroic characteristics, including those presented by Knox, remarkably well. Within the play, Deianeira faces the supreme, crisis of her life. Isolated in time and space to a profound degree, she finds the source and greatness of her free and responsible action of trying to recover Heracles' love within herself alone. Even though she acts out of love for Heracles, her dependence on the power of the "charms" of the lbve-philtre suggests defiance of and withdrawal from Cypris' will and power. By her act, she becomes totally and tragically isolated from men and abandoned by the gods. She destroys Heracles, her one key to the worlds outside and inside herself. By her love, she destroys what she most loves, and her own identity. Like Ajax, she is unwilling to live without that identity, and so, in a quiet display of nobility and strength, sacrifices herself to the same love that made her unwittingly sacrifice Heracles. Throughout the play it is Deianeira's will and strength that cause arid suffer the dramatic movement and tension. It is her will to obtain the truth about Iole from Lichas, to send the anointed robe to Heracles, and to die without attempting to receive forgiveness from Hyllus of Heracles. Deianeira's will and fate act upon Heracles. Heracles belongs to her but she does not belong to him and hence it is she who is dramatically independent. The destruction of Heracles is a direct result of an action of her will and is the culmination of her tragedy. Heracles does not rise to meet his fate but is full of bitterness against the fate that has brought him down at the hands of a woman. Unlike Deianeira, who within the course of the play reaches her end and fulfills her heroic will, Heracles does not meet his final end, death and release from his labors; nor does he hold any control over his destiny. He is helpless and weak in his suffering until he hears Nessus' name, at which time he accepts the inevitability of his fate. Throughout the play he is treated more as a force thaxi a person. Nor is he independent; he is a slave to the metaphorical voooz of his passion and its physical manifestations. His catastrophe is the result of his general depravity rather than a single error. He accepts no responsibility for any of his actions and is, in fact, a pawn in the action of the series of events set in motion by Deianeira. His own action is merely in response to Deianeira's and exercises110 control over the outcome of the play's events. When he realizes the inevitability of his death, all action has already been taken. Nor is Heracles truly isolated. He is, instead, extremely self-centered. His self-centeredness is at its most obvious during his suffering, which he is not able to endure and so to rise to the stature of a moral hero. He will meet his death without having risen above his own nature; his death will mark the end of his life and sufferings, but nothing more. Heracles does not satisfy many of the characteristics ascribed to other Sophoclean heroes. He could hardly be considered the hero of his scene, let alone of the entire play. In the play's structure, Heracles exists because of Deianeira, whose life and death do have a purpose in the play. In fact, Heracles is the unheroic with which the heroic Deianeira is contrasted. Heracles does not appear until Deianeira has killed herself for love of him, and the total terror of his self-centered existence is the realization of the full tragedy of her life and death. His appearance at the end of the play and complete lack of interest in her death and innocence consummate, her tragedy. One looks at Heracles to see what the object of Deianeira's great love really is. The play is named for the Chorus instead of for Deianeira. In this respect, the relationship between Deianeira and the Chorus is significant. Deianeira appears to a certain degree to be the leader of the Chorus of Trachinian maidens. The similarity of their status to that of the maiden Deianeira's points to them as universalizing agents of the personal and tragic life of Deianeira, the hero of the Trachiniae. / Arts, Faculty of / Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies, Department of / Graduate

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Originally presented as the author's Thesis (Ph. D.--Harvard), 1978). / Includes bibliographical references (p. [204]-210) and index.

Originally presented as the author's Thesis (Ph. D.--Harvard), 1978). / Includes bibliographical references (p. [204]-210) and index.

The goal of this thesis is to analyse the differences and similarities in the perceptions of fate and aleatory events in the Antigone, the Oedipus Tyrannus, and the Oedipus at Colonus of Sophocles. Rather than dwelling on the anachronistic question of “determinism versus freewill”, the focus will be on the ways in which the characters themselves interpret the things that happen to them in their lifespan, in terms of luck, fate, or things that could have been different had they known better at a given moment of time. The conditions in which they perform the determining actions of their lives will be under scrutiny. Actions that seem to arise from contingency, from the previous moves of other actors, from accidental miscalculation, or even from voluntary offence will be contrasted with those for which there is no visible chain of cause and effect, and that are thus attributed to the desires of the gods or to inborn misfortune. There is, from one play to another, a contrast between authoritative assertions of characters with acknowledged prophetic power (Tiresias in the first two works, Oedipus in the later play) that lead the audience to hope for different things: in the Antigone, it shall be argued, there is more room for the possibility of a timely solution for the conflict, than in the Oedipus Tyrannus, where everything has happened already before the start of the play. In the Oedipus at Colonus, Oedipus’ new status means that he has understood more about the functioning of reality and the workings of destiny. The ways in which the plot structure itself conveys a view on the workings of fate will also be analysed, from the series of coincidences in the Oedipus Tyrannus to the function of the episodes in the other two plays. Even though the Theban plays are not philosophy treatises, the echoes of contemporary philosophical ideas are a constant in their text. Wherever relevant, a contrast with the Presocratic corpus has been made in an attempt to identify some of the thought patterns reused and adapted by Sophocles for his specific purposes and portrayals of the human position in the vaster cosmos.

Thesis (M.A.)--Michigan State University. Dept. of Theatre, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Nov. 20, 2008). Includes bibliographical references (p. 54-55). Also issued in print.

Zugl.: Göttingen, Univ., Diss., 2005