Versions of Antigone - Einzelansicht

Dear students, all courses will be taught as online courses with asynchronous access until further notice. Once you have signed on in PULS and have been admitted in PULS, your instructor will email you via PULS to let you know when and how to access the online material (moodle, etc.). Testatsleistungen (course requirements) may be subject to change. Students who cannot (yet) access PULS: Please email your instructor directly. It is possible that classes can be switched to classroom teaching (Präsenzlehre) at some point during the semester. If this happens, your instructor will let you know and classes will take place at the times originally scheduled.

Best known as the protagonist of Sophocles' classical Attic tragedy, the figure of Antigone has been revisited, revised and rewritten in multiple ways all through European modernity and beyond. As thinkers from Hegel to Lacan as well as writers from Racine and Hölderlin to Anouilh and Brecht have offered their specific versions of that tragic heroine, Antigone appears to have spoken to all kinds of conflicted historical situations. Nor is the play's appeal and relevance restricted to Europe as numerous appropriations by South African, Nigerian, Indian or Canadian writers demonstrate. 

In our seminar we will read and discuss, proceeding from Sophocles, a number of important (mostly) Anglophone revisions of Antigone, both literary and theoretical/philosophical, and speculate on Antigone's relevance for the present. We will focus on Fagles's translation of Sophocles's Antigone and three present-day adaptations: Anne Carson's Antigonick (2012), Slavoj Zizek's Antigone (2016) and Kamila Shamsie's novel, Home Fire (2017).

N.B. This is a seminar with extensive reading assignments including:

* Sophocles, Antigone. Tr. Robert Fagles. in The Three Theban Plays. Penguin Classics. (It is important that you get hold of this translation and no other!)

* Ann Carson, AntigoNick. Hexham (Bloodaxe) 2012.

* Slavoj Zizek, Antigone. London (Bloomsbury) 2016.

* Kamila Shamsie, Home Fire. London (Penguin) 2017.

 Additonal material will be made available on Moodle in due course.

3 CPs for:

* regular attendance and active participation by contributing to at least two forum sessions 

* one response paper (750 words) to be submitted by the middle of the semester

* one response paper (750 words) to be submitted at the end of the semester.