here are the current recs for the next poll.

Fathers and Sons - Ivan Turgenev
Cyberiad - Stanisaw Lem
Amores - Ovid
Fates and Furies - Lauren Groff
The Wretched of the Earth - Frantz Fanon

So we're finally doing it eh? Sounds good

>>8098543
It's been going on for a week now. I wonder how many people actually read the plays.

>choosing a book everyone has already read in high school

why do you do this

>>8099764
I have and am pretty interested in seeing how this turns out. None of my friends read so im hoping this does work. Its sad not being able to share thoughts and have discussions about books because no-one around you has any interest in reading which is why i lurk on here.

>>8099769
Good readers also reread. I reread the Phantom Tollbooth when I was older and I got more of the puns and allusions than when I read it in elementary.

>>8098520
I have been following these threads but its time I admitted I don't understand how this works. By when is one supposed to have read the plays in question? When and where is the discussion taking place? I only see bits here and there, mostly questions left hanging. Is there another venue for the actual discussion?

>>8100485
6/6/16. Finish reading start talking? Is this right?

>>8100485
>>8100837
23/05/16 - 06/06/16 are the dates where we read and and discuss the Three Theban Plays here in this thread. One of the reasons we chose the Three Theban Plays is that it takes about 3 hours to read all of them.

Which translation?

>>8101939
Whatever works for you. I think most people are reading Fagles.

>Did Sophocles purposely end each of his plays with destiny prevailing over free will because he would have been lynched by the audience otherwise?

Is there any background for this question? Since this is what the classic form of tragedy dictates, it seems logical to end it with destiny prevailing over free will

>>8102308
But do you think Sophocles actually believed that? Or that the Ancient Greek audience would accept the idea that free-will could prevail over fate?

I just want to point out that while Jocasta commited suicide for her crime of Incest, Oedpius blinded himself. It was an act of punishment that Oedipus chose for himself. His crime was fated, but his punishment was his own. Do you feel that Sophocles was being cheeky there, and Oedipus sort of in a last act of defiance rebelled against destiny by blinding himself instead of committing suicide?

polling starts tomorrow so get your recs in while you can.

>>8102335
Oedipus managed to avoid the fate by blinding himself. Man is the master of his own fate. It was not being cheeky, it was just the way Sophocles saw the world, he modernized Greek tragedy by doing innovations such as introducing the idea of an actual free will.

>>8104869
>Man is the master of his own fate.

Man is clearly not the master of his own fate in these plays. I think Sophocles did see the world where freewill is greater than providence, but I think he thought the Greek audience wouldn't be accepting of that idea.

I wonder when the first plays started to appear where the prophecy turned out to be wrong.

lets do to kill a mockingbird

>>8105384
It is taking the first steps in order to show that man can be a master of his own faith by showing us how a man can affect his fate. Sophocles puts forth the man who wishes to avoid his predetermined fate.

Do you guys think it's a good idea to choose two books so that people who only want to casually read can join in once a month instead of every two weeks?

So like the next poll will decide the next book, but also the one after it, and then every poll after will decide the book which we'll read two weeks later rather than the monday after the poll.

>>8106531
Casual readers would not contribute to the conversation.

>>8106564
I mean like casual members of the bookclub, who maybe have other things they want to read.

>>8105514
No it showed no matter how much you try to avoid fate, it will catch up to you. In fact the only way he could meet his fate was by Oedipus and his father trying to avoid it in the first place. Well that's what I got from it

>>8098526

Backing Fathers & Sons. Or is this not where one votes? Will there be a strawpoll or whatever?

>>8108399
Yeah strawpolls running until friday.

>>8108403
What the duck is a strawpol

>>8108403
How do I use straw poll

>>8107956
Yes, this is true, however, what I am trying to say is that before Sophocles the heroes of the tragedies were reluctant to rebel against the prophecies to try and avoid them. Here we see the first instances of someone actually attempting, even though unsuccessfully to avoid the fate, to take life into his own hands.

#####POLL IS UP#####

You are allowed multiple choices so select all that apply.

http://www.strawpoll.me/10368312

>>8108695
Oh I thought you were trying to say that he did take his life into his own hands not that he just tried. So since I'm new to Greeks all the backstory about him and dad trying to escape their fate was a newidea and that normally when there was a prophecy they just went ahead and did it because there was no chance of stopping it?

>>8110382
Yes, that was the case with Aeschylus, as I said in the previous thread, with him what happened in the tragedies was likely the cause of a deeds of a predecessor, the sins of which were carried on to the entire family. With Sophocles the main thing is the sinful acts of the hero himself.

>>8110382
>>8110500

Another thing is that fate or providence is the will of the gods. To defy fate is to defy the gods themselves. When you look at it this way, characters have been defying the Gods in many Greek stories and they always pay for it.

>>8110500
So in your eyes he was punished for killing his father and rapturously emptying his nuts into his mother by doing the very deeds that he is being punished for? I hope this makes sense

>>8111057
He wasn't punished for anything. His destiny was to kill his father and bed his mother. Both his father, and himself tried to change the course of destiny, but they could not escape it.

Oedipus Rex is not about justice. There is no justice in this cruel prophecy. Oedipus was fated to live a sad existence since the day he was born. He tried to fight fate, but he could not escape the will of the gods. I believe it was mentioned in the play, that he was born to suffer.

>>8111078
But you said in your previous post, or the person I was talking to, that Sophocles made the deeds of the hero the reason for the shitty fate not the deeds of sinful predecessor s as is normal in Greek mythology. So my point to that person was he is doing the deeds he is simultaneously being punished for? Which in my eyes is Fucking supershit. I loved the plays but pretty good considering how old they are. On a different note the last one was disgustingly close to Romeo and Juliet wasn't it?

>>8111397
Punished with*

>>8111397
It's a closed circle, this is the fate of Oedipus and he cannot avoid it. He carries his own burden that has been put upon him by faith and not by the actions of another person. One example for a scenario where an entire House has been marked due to the sins of the past members is House Atreus. The first member of the House - Tantalus, fed his son to the Gods, Demeter ate a part of his shoulder. After finding out what he did, the Gods threw him into the underworld and cursed him. The son was resurrected and the bone in his shoulder was replaced by ivory, which became the mark that the Gods placed upon this family. The way the curse affects the future members of the house is shown by Aeschylus in The Oresteia.

>>8106658
Read other shot then when you want to book club again read the shot we voted on last time and catch up or wait. Same thing as voting for 2 books.

>>8111834
What

>>8113284
Just talking shit to keep the thread alive

i hope these threads catch on

>>8098520
I have to go to work soon, but I'll offer more of a response regarding content afterwards.

>Did the Greek chorus stand still while they sang or did they dance and sing?
They would dance; the Strophe going in one direction, the Anti-strophe doing the same dance in another, if I'm recalling correctly.

>Did Sophocles purposely end each of his plays with destiny prevailing over free will because he would have been lynched by the audience otherwise?
That's hard to say, since the other plays that these three belong to are missing; surely we see a kind of resolution at the end of Aeschylus's trilogy, but we might feel differently if we only had the first two parts. The situation might be similar with these plays.

My own question:

In Creon's first speech in Antigone, his very first line has a curious structure:

ἄνδρες, τὰ μὲν δὴ πόλεος ἀσφαλῶς θεοὶ

Where we have the words "men" and "gods" bracketing "city", as if the placement of the words suggested something about the relations between these things, perhaps in the mind of Creon, though I wonder if it's ironic if it stands to mean something for the play (or set of plays) about politics. But I guess I wanted to ask what the meaning of the placement is first; are we to understand the city as the locus of men and gods? Or as some site that puts them into a relation at all? I suppose a further question would be whether we see the idea (however we come to interpret it) reflected in any of the plays, but especially Antigone.

>>8114071
Can't read Greek wish I could. So was the chorus just a bunch of randoms on stage or was it actors in the play? Didn't understand what was going on at first while I was reading.

>>8114966
The chorus is a group of singers and dancers who sing, speak and dance in unison. Sometimes one person from the chorus is also an actor who steps out of the chorus to say things and then returns.

The chorus outdates the actor, greek theatre started with only a chorus on the stage, people telling a story by singing and dancing in a group.

>>8114071
Why look at it as man and god wrapping around the city? It could be a progression, an order of things, with man coming before city, and city coming before god. Sophocles was an Athenian, and these plays were performed in Athens, even though they take place in Thebes. It would make sense to place men before city, as that was the Athenian way. But as to why the gods come after the city, well I suppose the gods always came after everything. Somewhere in the Greek consciousness, the gods were still the highest authority.

>>8109032
ovid is leading the polls right now.

that's gonna be painful.

>>8116430
It doesn't seem like there is many people voting. Does anyone have an estimate on how many people use /lit/? Is it just 12 of us going around in circles commenting on the same shit and waiting hours for a reply while continuing the slow circle around the bored aimlessly hoping for new content on something that interests us.

>>8115094
>It could be a progression, an order of things, with man coming before city, and city coming before god. Sophocles was an Athenian, and these plays were performed in Athens, even though they take place in Thebes. It would make sense to place men before city, as that was the Athenian way. But as to why the gods come after the city, well I suppose the gods always came after everything. Somewhere in the Greek consciousness, the gods were still the highest authority.
I guess I'm not clear then on what kind of progression it would be, or in what way something is being said to come "before" or "after"? One simple progression, temporal, would suggest that gods can only arrive on the scene after civic life develops, which would be peculiar (I suppose we can't write off a notion because it might seem blasphemous to Sophocles' audience tho', eh?), though that would in some way make sense to a modern view (the key to that reading would be explaining the necessity of the city as step in the progression). If we're speaking of a progression or ordering of beings of greater and lesser importance, then it seems that you wouldn't be able to hold on to *both* the views that the Athenians place men before the city, or that the gods come afterwards in having greatest esteem (if that's what you mean by that?).

My question was after less a view of man and gods wrapping around the city, but rather the city being the locus place of gods and men, which might have some bearing (if we may move away from claims regarding Athenian views) on Cleon's behaviors and beliefs, *if* it ends not being additionally an ironical structure. So I suppose I'm wondering, at least on the basis of Cleon's speeches, what that belief might amount to, and what kind of claim about the city it is?

(A further question, that may only stand once the prior question is dealt with, is whether Antigone shares or disputes that view? That she disputes with Cleon over a specific practice is obvious, but that doesn't necessitate a dispute on whatever his broader view might be. It's maybe worth noting that Cleon focuses on Zeus while Antigone focuses on Hades?)

>>8109032
The fact that I wasn't the first to vote for my suggestion makes me happy.

>>8116877
It's probably not 12, more like 200-300 active users, some lurkers and a couple of people who just visit from other boards.

Bump for further life and discussion

>tfw it's the 3rd and I'm out of town for another 3 days
>tfw have to start next week
oh well

>>8109032
Tied between Ovid and Milton. I'm leaving the poll up until 8-9 tonight. I will be back later to try and liven the thread up a bit.

>>8109032
47 votes and there are around 5 people actually trying to discuss the book. This will become good only if you make it, please, try and participate in the discussion. Just asking simple questions and putting down your thoughts will also help, we don't need critical academical analysis.

>>8118498
Which world time is this. I'm in aus

Did anyone rate this as pretty good? I definitely liked the first one the most. But never having read anything like this before I had a bit of trouble understanding at the start. Got better though

I was surprised by how much I liked the plays. Is there something special about these plays compared to the ones before?

>>8119855
These three plays are like a package, because they all have a continuity, they have similar themes, and similar characters.

>>8117289
Well I mean that's what I was try to say, I can't read Ancient Greek, but if what you're saying is true, and the sequence of the words is man, city, gods, then it reflects the order of things in Creon's mind which is man is least important, god is most important, with the city being more important than man but less important than the gods. I was arguing that maybe Creon may have implying a sequence of importance by the order he listed the three things. I think progression might have been the wrong word for me to use there.

I can't really speculate on what Creon is thinking in that scene. All I can really say is that the gods (really only one god: Apollo) are only alluded to as makers of fate and provedence, and don't really have an active role in the plays for me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Antigone wasn't fated to die, nor was Creon's son. The prophecy concerned the sons of Oedipus. Antigone is about man vs city, and man vs. family and I just feel the gods don't figure enough into it to go into that sort of reading.

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>Unironically reading anything other than Plato/Kant

>>8119855
They are the first plays to utilize 3 actors I think, they also used the chorus as a separate actor with it having some actual character development, especially in Antigone. Also in here the chorus is made of 15 people, instead of 12 like it used to be before. Those are the most meta changes.

>>8109032

Looks like Paradise Lost has overtaken the Amores by a single point. It's 8:30 est now. Official discussion of Paradise Lost begins Monday but right now is the rollover period where you can talk about either of the books chosen.

Although I guess there's no reaosn to ever stop talking about previous readings from the bookclub.

to reiterate

>Paradise Lost has won, our new OP on Monday will change to reflect that.

that's really all it is.

>>8120442
Funny - both times now it's been something I had just read after putting it off for a long time.

When can we start [REC]ing?

>>8121115
recs are always open my man.

>>8121160
Rec for next book. Not specifically but something a bit newer like cancer ward to mix it up

>>8119951
>Well I mean that's what I was try to say, I can't read Ancient Greek, but if what you're saying is true, and the sequence of the words is man, city, gods, then it reflects the order of things in Creon's mind which is man is least important, god is most important, with the city being more important than man but less important than the gods. I was arguing that maybe Creon may have implying a sequence of importance by the order he listed the three things. I think progression might have been the wrong word for me to use there.
Gotcha. That might function in some way for Creon, insofar as individual people seem either unimportant or even dangerous to Cleon, the unity and well-being of the city being the primary focus.

>I can't really speculate on what Creon is thinking in that scene. All I can really say is that the gods (really only one god: Apollo) are only alluded to as makers of fate and provedence, and don't really have an active role in the plays for me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Antigone wasn't fated to die, nor was Creon's son. The prophecy concerned the sons of Oedipus. Antigone is about man vs city, and man vs. family and I just feel the gods don't figure enough into it to go into that sort of reading.
I'm not so sure about that; the gods, while they certainly don't appear as characters (as they do in, say, Euripides's Hippolytus), they're still deeply on the mind of the characters, at the least, and in a way as seems to direct their understanding of their selves. That first line of Cleon's speech, apart from the striking ordering of important words, grammatically says that the gods were responsible for shaking up the city *and then* setting the city aright. And again, while both Antigone and Cleon refer to a bunch of divinities, there is something certainly striking in that Antigone speaks much more of Hades and Cleon of Zeus, which might have some bearing on the political conflict, namely the difference in worship of chthonic deities and the heavenly deities. It also seems important that Zeus is *the* political god, being the ruler of the gods, while Hades is, well, something else.

This is really just to say that I think there's more there, but one would have to keep track of the references to the gods. I suspect a close reader could find something really striking if they payed attention to something of that sort.

Okay, let's give discussion another shot:

So an initial reading of Antigone in particular might suggest that it's about a dispute between man's custom and the customs of the gods. That seems fruitful, and partly true, but some other element shows up that really confounds me: eros. Antigone at a certain point onward keeps using "eros" to characterize her feeling toward her dead brother, instead of the expected "philos" (the difference would be one of erotic love and the love one might have for friends and family). Now, there's a certain way in which this makes sense, if we see how it connects with the problem of her father, Oedipus she too ends up feeling some eros towards a family member. But Oedipus did that in ignorance, and Antigone declares it (and in fact seems to ignore her other dead brother almost entirely, making the situation stranger). Does anyone else have a view towards what's happening here? Why does this shift from what seems to be a simpler matter of a conflict between customs transform into a strange lust for one's dead brother?

>>8124144
Well I can't read Greek but sounds like your onto something.

>>8124144
Antigone Complex. It's like Oedipus complex, but not officially recognized. From what I remember it was something along the lines of a girl doing everything in her power to support her fatherly figure and being nothing more than an extension to him. With Antigone the father is gone, so she substitutes him for the brother.

>>8126476
Sure, but what does it mean in the play? Specifically, why are we shown the transformation of what initially seemed to be a political conflict into a matter of eros? And why does the latter situation intrude back in upon the political, RE: the deaths of Creon's son and wife?

/lit/izen that's been in exile and just stumbled into this thread, here. Nice to see something like this. Did /pol/ finally leave? Is there actually lit in my /lit/ again?
>>8120442
I just finished a class on Milton, I'll contribute what I can to discussion.

>>8127104
That I do not know, however, the question is extremely interesting so I would love it if someone provides a good answer.

God I'm fucking tired of these clubs always being about the same fucking basic books.

Why can't we read something different for once?

There's a particular line at the end of Fagles translation where Creon refers to being 'crushed by the ship of state', which I think is a clear reference to Oedipus fate.

Are there any more allusions to the overriding themes of Oedipus in Antigone as well? I think Sophocles is clearly trying to make a point in linking these plays thematically together, but I can't fathom why. Still very interesting to ponder though.

Something else: The role of the Chorus in Antigone.

The Chorus in Antigone is shown as very grovelling and in agreement with Creon, which is a far cry from the usual role of the Chorus in greek tragedy - look at Aeschylus' Agamemnon + Libation Bearers, for example, where the Chrous is on the side of the protagonist, not the evil tyrant figure.

Also Antigone being sealed in a cave is an very good example of Sophocles irony I think; for protesting her brother's burial, she herself is buried.

>>8128246
That's actually an oddity of the three plays; all three belong to separate trilogies, meaning they functioned against a different horizon almost entirely lost to us now.

>>8128286
The chorus is also made up of the elders of the city; perhaps their age leads them to appreciate elements of his rule that younger generations don't?