CLAS 2100/WMST 2100: Women in Ancient Greece

University of Colorado, Fall 1998

Instructions for second writing assignment

The second writing assignment is due in class Monday, November 16, and will not be accepted late except by prior arrangement.

Your writing should be typed or printed from a computer. The required length is 3 pages, double-spaced and with reasonable margins.

Please write a succinct well-organized essay on the following topic: would an ancient Greek audience have judged Sophocles’ Antigone a "bad woman"? Note that the label "bad woman" appears in quotation marks for a reason: you are meant not simply to judge Antigone from your (late 20th century American) perspective, but to enter into a discussion (whose participants include Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood and Helene Foley, as discussed in class) on the specific features of Sophocles’ play that may have affected the original audience’s evaluation of Antigone’s character and actions.

It may help to focus your essay if you select two or three of the features debated in class and develop them, through analysis, argument, and supporting evidence (whether from Sophocles’ play or other ancient Greek sources). You are free but not required to consult any primary or secondary texts you wish. If you do, be sure to document your use of these sources with accurate page references and quotation marks if appropriate.

Optional bibliography, on two-hour reserve in Norlin Library:

Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood, "Sophocles’ Antigone as a ‘Bad Woman’," in Writing Women into History, ed. F. Dieteren and E. Kloek, Amsterdam (1990) 11-38.

Helene Foley, "Tragedy and democratic ideology: the case of Sophocles’ Antigone," in History, Tragedy, Theory: Dialogues on Athenian Drama, ed. B. Goff, Austin (1995) 131-50. [primarily a response to Sourvinou-Inwood]

Helene Foley, "Antigone as moral agent," in Tragedy and the Tragic: Greek Theatre and Beyond, ed. M. S. Silk, Oxford (1996) 49-73. [takes the discussion in a new direction and includes a response by Michael Trapp entitled "Tragedy and the fragility of moral reasoning: response to Foley," pp. 74-84]

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