Antigone, Oedipus the King, Electra (Oxford World's Classics) Reissue Edition

These three Greek tragedies by the master, Sophocles, present human issues that have impact and meaning in our "modern" world.Consider Creon in Antigone speaking as the king of a city-state: "...A man who rules a state and will not ever steer the wisest course, but is afraid, and says not what he thinks, that man is worthless". Consider our present "ruler", who is driven by spin meisters and polls, who makes decisions not on the wisest course but out of fear of losing reelection. The wisdom of Sophocles has survived 2500 years and still people are not listening.The translations of these significant additions to Western Civilization are superb and are supported by notes which provide verbatim translations from the Greek which indicate the translator's skill and the original Greek scripting. The choral sections are excellent and clearly show not only the artistic use of the Greek dramatic chorus but also show how Greek tragic drama was presented to audiences and how the chorus was used as an integral part of the dramatic whole.

I purchased this for my daughter who is taking an AP English class. She thought that she would need to purchase the book but, in fact, the school provided it so she had one for school and one for home. I plan to read the book after she is finished since I have never read the book. I am happy with the purchase and feel I got the book for a very good price.

(Kitto edition, Kindle). I am not an expert on translations and don't read the original Greek. But my conclusion is that it is a good idea to not rely on a single translation to get the full meaning. This is not a fault of any one version, since it is impossible (probably) to cover every point. However, I was disappointed in the some aspects of the Kitto translation and the editor's notes. For example,in the famous Chorus' Ode to the Human Being in Antigone, the human being is apparently described by the Greek word "deinon" which has (apparently) the double meaning of both wonderful and terrible, so the praise is ambiguous, but this crucial point doesn't really come out in the Kitto. But then I assume Kitto does other things right that others don't.

Nice copy, never have complaints with the folks over there at Oxford, always very academic.

This is one of the textbooks that my daughter needs for our last semester of undergraduate education. I hope that she uses it for good and it brings her an A in the class.

Excellent condition! This edition is also very informative and helpful when it comes to understanding the writing

Great

The translation was fine. However, the Kindle version which I downloaded was missing several blocs of text, showing only the first letter or two of each line. (So far I have read only "Electra"--not sure if the problem is the same in the other two plays.)