Vandiver Lecture Twelve - Antigone and Creon
Chronologically, the story of Antigone comes after the story of Oedipus. It makes sense to study
Antigone before the Oedipus plays, though, because Sophocles wrote it first. Thus, Antigone represents
Many tragedies are set in Thebes. Froma Zeitlin suggests that Thebes is an "anti-_____________" because
1.
2.
This is well illustrated by Antigone because
To leave a body unburied is a terrible punishment to the ancient Greeks because
Like Chrysothemis in Elektra , Ismene ________________________________________, but
In the end Creon changes his mind--not because of his son's arguments, but because

On one level, the conflict between Creon and Antigone is the conflict between oikos and polis.
By representing ________________, Antigone is
By representing ________________, Creon is
The categories of oikos and polis are interwoven and confused here because
Creon is
Antigone is
Modern productions tend to trivialize the play because
What, exactly, did Polynices do?
Creon's edict is meant to do two things:
Display
Deter

As King, Creon cannot allow
The play is also trivialized if Antigone
Antigone was a disturbing figure to the Athenian audience because she is
A young unmarried girl who
A citizen who
A woman who
Antigone considers herself bound by "higher laws." In effect, what this means is that this is the first drama on the topic of
1.
2.
Taken to the extreme, Creon's position leads to
Taken to the extreme, Antigone's position leads to
Tiresias says Creon has confused the world of the living with the world of the dead in two ways.
Creon's crucial mistake was to forget
The fact that Antigone is proven right does not make her less ___________________________.
We see that the chorus
Creon is actually more

The play demonstrates that
The topic had immediate relevance in Sophocles' day because
The sophists were usually described as itinerant teachers of rhetoric and argumentation, which were useful things to learn, but they made many people uncomfortable because
Protagoras the sophist is most famous for his dictum that man is ________________________
______________________________________________, which probably means
The sophists also questioned the validity of oracles, which
The sophist controversy applies to Sophocles' "Ode to Man" because
The word deinos
Shipbuilding
Agriculture
When the choral ode says that man cannot escape from death, the ode turns toward