Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 1901. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 51-52).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 1901. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 51-52).

Most people place their sincerest hopes for emotional fulfillment on a rewarding family life. The "loved ones" that constitute our nuclear and extended familial worlds are the primary beneficiaries of our affections and of the fruits of our labors. In return for the primacy we accord our family members, we expect their behavior to demonstrate their loyalty to the clan. However, at a certain point obligations to the family can conflict with the needs of the individual. In this thesis I examine how filial duties influence the plights of the tragic heroines in Sophocles's Antigone and Shakespeare's King Lear. Both Antigone and Cordelia organize their lives around the virtue of family honor, and yet the strength of these commitments is not sufficient to spare them from their respective, calamitous ends. Their unwavering dedication to the sanctity of family bonds leaves them susceptible, as individuals, to great harm.

No description available.

Statement of the problem. It was the purpose of this study (l) to determine and illustrate the influence of time, culture and production situation upon the form and content of two plays based on the Greek legend of Antigone; the texts in question were those of Sophocles and Anouilh; and (2) to determine and illustrate the same influence of time, culture, and production situation upon the means of producing Lewis Galantiere's adaptation of Anouilh's Antigone at the University of the Pacific Play box in the Spring of 1965.

The costume design for the University of Central Florida Conservatory Theatre‘s production of Seamus Heaney‘s The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles’ Antigone took an ancient Greek classic by Sophocles and infused it with influences from avant-garde theatre. This thesis documents the process of designing the costumes from academic, artistic, and technical aspects. Through this process, I explored how to communicate abstract ideas about humanity into actual costumes and how multiple cultural heritages can be intertwined in a united visual which pushes the audience to think more critically about the story. The recurring themes of duality are central to the final costume design: silk chiffon chitons draped over seemingly nude tattooed bodies, representing the ever-present competing allegiances to the will of the gods or to the law of man. Working backwards through the process, this thesis discusses the avant-garde aims of the production and how they were achieved in design. The historical and cultural research, and how it directly influenced the costume design, is discussed for both Seamus Heaney and The Burial at Thebes, as well as for Sophocles and Antigone. Moving through a thorough script analysis and text-to-text comparison of Antigone and The Burial at Thebes illuminates the character and situation traits that are expressed in the design. Script-to-script comparisons reveal the heightened political language Heaney has created to make a story readily accessible to modern audiences. This gives Creon more humanity, thus magnifying the conflict, which is analyzed using conflict theory

This thesis evaluates tragic characters from three representative tragedies, Macbeth, Antigone, and Death of a Salesman, in terms of Lawrence Kohlberg's six stage theory of moral development. A tragic character's moral judgment is described as being founded on universal values and principles which determine stage placement. The tragic situation is precipitated by conflict experienced by a character between his present stage form of evaluation and the more preferred, differentiated and integrated form of the next higher stage. Since Kohlberg's theory is cognitive-developmental with the moral principle of justice emerging autonomously at the stage six level, its application aids in supporting a view of tragedy based on a moral order having justice as its highest principle and on a continuity independent of historical and cultural influence.