Overview

Like other classical Greek tragedies, Sophocles' Philoctetes is an extraordinarily timely and timeless play. Dramatising the efforts of people who had wronged him to bring the play's hero, Philoctetes, to join the Greek forces in their war against Troy, it traces the moral and emotional development of the young Neoptolemos as he struggles between the values of honesty and deceit, honour and expedience. This is an introduction to the play for students and lay readers. The well focused chapters on Greek theatre and performance, the mythical background, and the literary, intellectual, and political context in which the play was written and first performed illuminate the issues with which the play grapples. Its persuasive analyses of the characters and plot shed light on the play's complexities and ambiguities. All in all, the book makes Sophocles' great play more accessible, enjoyable, and meaningful to modern readers who want to know more about the world of classical Greek tragedy.

Full Product Details

9780715633847

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Author Information

Hanna Roisman is Professor of Classics and Chair of the Department at Colby College, Maine. She is the author of the following books: Loyalty in Early Greek Epic and Tragedy (1984); The Odyssey Re-Formed, with F.M. Ahl (1996), and Nothing is As It Seems: The Tragedy of the Implicit in Euripides' Hippolytus (1999).

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