Irony in Sophocles Antigone Essay -- Antigone essays

Frank Jevons in In Sophoclean Tragedy, valet Create Their Own Fate comments on Sophocles raillery In this affiliation we may consider the irony of Sophocles. In argument irony has umpteen forms That which best illustrates the irony of Sophocles is the method by which the ironical man, putting ostensibly innocent questions or suggestions, leads some person from one preposterous affirmation to another, until, perhaps, the subject of the irony realizes his situation and discovers that when he thought he was most brilliant of impressive, then he was really most absurd. . . .(62). Let us explore the irony, in Sophocles tragedy Antigone, and see if we dont pause that, as it applies to King Creon it brings quite the same result as in Jevons stated situation. In Sophocles The Theban Plays E. F. Watling comments on Sophocles usage of hammy irony in his dramas . . . that powerful and subtle weapon of dramatic irony which Sophocles utilize with especial skill, whereby the audience can judge every speech and achieve of the play in the light of their previous knowledge of the situation (12). M. H. Abrams defines dramatic irony as a situation wherein the audience or reviewer shares with the author knowledge of present or future circumstances of which a character is ignorant in that situation, the character unknowingly acts in a way we recognize to be grossly inappropriate to the actual circumstances, or expects the opposite of what we know that fate holds in store, or says something that anticipates the actual outcome, scarcely not at all in the way that the character intends(137). This graphic symbol of irony is commented on by Thomas Woodard in the Introduction to Sophocles A Collection of Crit... ...dings on Sophocles, edited by Don Nardo. San Diego, CA Greenhaven Press, 1997. Segal, Charles Paul. Sophocles compliment of Man and the Conflicts of the Antigone. In Sophocles A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Thomas Woodard. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966. Sophocles. Antigone. Translated by R. C. Jebb. The Internet Classic Archive. no pag. http//classics.mit.edu/Sophocles/antigone.html Sophocles In Literature of the Western World, edited by Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. NewYork Macmillan Publishing Co., 1984. Woodard, Thomas. Introduction. In Sophocles A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Thomas Woodard. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966. Watling, E. F.. Introduction. In Sophocles The Theban Plays, translated by E. F. Watling. New York Penguin Books, 1974.