From the Publisher
Specifically
commissioned for stage production, it rings easily on the modern ear
and yet remains faithful to Sophocles' original, avoiding the archaisms
of other translations.
The text is accompanied by a wealth of carefully chosen background
materials and essays.
"Passages from Ancient Authors" includes selections from Homer's Odyssey,
Thucydides' account of the plague, and Euripedes' Phoenissae.
The best of ancient and modern criticism is represented, encouraging
discussion from psychological, religious, anthropological, dramatic,
and literary perspectives.
Under the heading "Religion and Psychology" are included writings on the
Oedipus myth by Martin P. Nilsson, Meyer Fortes, Gordon M. Kirkwood,
Thalia Phillies Feldman, and Sigmund Freud.
The authors of the selections in "Criticism" are Aristotle, C. M. Bowra,
R. C. Jebb, S. M. Adams, A. J. A. Waldock, Albin Lesky, Werner Jaeger,
Friedrich Nietzsche, John Jones, D. W. Lucas, Bernard M. W. Knox,
Cedric H. Whitman, Richmond Lattimore, Robert Cohen, Francis Fergusson,
and H. D. F. Kitto.
The special question of Oedipus's guilt or innocence is addressed in
essays by J. T. Sheppard, Laszlo Versenyi, P. H. Vellacott, E. R.
Dodds, Thomas Gould, and Philip Wheelwright.