A Comparative View of the Senior of Mutiny in Sophocles’
and Jean Anouilh’s Antigone
By:
Faezeh Pipelzadeh
Supervisor:
Mahmoud Daram,Ph.D.
Reader:
Sayyed Rahim Moosavinia,Ph.D
A thesis submitted for the partial fulfillment of the degree of Master of
Arts in English Literature at Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Shahid
Chamran University of Ahvaz
2012
‫دانشگاه شهید چمران اهواز‬
‫دانشکده ادبیات وعلوم انسانی‬
‫گروه زبان و ادبیات انگلیسی‬
‫پایان نامه جهت دریافت درجه کارشناسی ارشد‬
‫مقایسه ی سناریوی طغیان در "انتیگونه" نوشته ی سوفوکلیس و ژان انوی‬
‫دانشجو‬
‫فائزه پی پل زاده‬
‫استاد راهنما‬
‫دکتر محمود دارم‬
‫استاد مشاور‬
‫دکتر سید رحیم موسوی نیا‬
‫‪0331‬‬
Table of contents
Dedication……………………………………………………………………….IV
Acknowledgement……………………………………………………………….V
Abstract….………………………………………………………………………VI
Introduction……………………………………………………………………..1
Literature review………………………………………………………………5
World war two…………………………………………………………….....9
France during World War Two…………………………………………..10
Jean Anouilh’s Unique Adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone……………..15
Divine law and human law Vs Individuality and Power of Ideology…………...22
Divine law Vs Human law: Sophocles’ Antigone and Creon…………….22
Individuality Vs Power of Ideology: Jean Anouilh’s Antigone………….27
Family Vs State………………………………………………………………….28
Challenge between Creon and Antigone………………………………….38
Antigone’s lamentation…………………………………………………....45
The reasons behind Antigone’s lamentation………………………………47
Antigone’s new law……………………………………………………….49
Incest in sophocels antigone………………………………………………55
Hegel………………………………………………………………..56
Lacan………………………………………………………………..58
Incest in Jean Anouilh’s antigone…………………………………………59
Creon’s return to the divine law…………………………………………..60
Creon ………………………………………………………………60
Creon’s Change…………………………………………………..62
Feminine Vs Masculine………………………………………………………78
Feminized france……………………………………………………… 79
Antigone is daring……………………………………………………...82
Creon an anti feminist………………………………………………….86
Live burial: the death Antigone is promised…………………………...89
Live burial in Greek Tragedies………………………………….91
Thalamos to Thalamos………………………………………….94
Hanging the death Antigone Takes…………………………………….95
Hanging: A Feminine Death…………………………………….96
The Reason behind Antigone’s suicide………………………………..97
The Final Verdict…………………………………………………………….101
The Balance Theory: Hegelian Reading………………………………101
Another Perspective: Against Hegel’s Balance Theory……………….106
Creon’s Fall………………………………………………………107
Antigone’s Fall…………………………………………………..108
Twentieth Century Jury………………………………………………..110
End Notes………………………………………………………………………113
Works cited……………………………………………………………………..127
Persian Abstract………………………………………………………………….130
To
Nima Cheraghchi
And My Father
Acknowledgements
First I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. M. Daram, whose insightful directions and
suggestions along the way made the completion of this study possible. I would also like to thank all my
professors specially Dr. S. Hoseini and Dr. S. R. Moosavinia for all the valuable knowledge they thought
me these years.
I am in dept to my only brother, Ehsan, who helped me in searching and finding valuable sources,
without his help this study would have been incomplete. I am very grateful to my father without whom I
would have never accomplished what I have today.
My special thanks go to my husband, Nima, for his patience and support.
Abstract
Student’s surname: Pipelzadeh
Name: Faezeh
Title of Thesis: A Comparative View of the Scenario of Mutiny in Sophocles’ and Jean
Anouilh’s Antigone
Supervisor: Mahmoud Daram,Ph.D.
Reader: Sayyed Rahim Moosavinia, Ph.D.
Degree: Master of Art
Field of study: English Literature
University: Shahid Chamran University of
Faculty: Letters and Humanities
Ahvaz
Graduation Date:
Number of pages: 130
Key Terms: Antigone, Sophocles, Jean Anouilh, Mutiny, Human Law, Divine Law, Family,
state, Femininity and Masculinity
This is a comparative study of Sophocles' and Jean Anouilh's Antigone. This study attempts to
discus and compare the plays from four aspects of structural, social, political and gender roles. It
will show that in spite of the long time gap between the classical Greek antiquity and the
twentieth century France, the Sophoclean model of the ongoing confrontation between “Creon”
and “Antigone”, mirrors the same conflict of human substance and association in the modern
times; i.e., the conflict between an idea and idea, individual and society, family and state, as well
as femininity and masculinity.
Jean Anouilh juxtaposes the paradigmatic conflicts inherent in this classical myth with the
oppression faced by the people of France during the Nazi occupation ad makes witty changes in
his play. Through his changes he enters the political area of his time and uses Sophocles’ play as
a camouflage to criticize the Nazi government and dictatorship which had invaded France.
The main focus of this study is to analyze and compare the plays and discus the changes and the
reasons behind the changes Jean Anouilh has made to make his play specific and new.
Introduction
This is a comparative study of Sophocles' and Jean Anouilh's Antigone. This study
attempts to show that in spite of the long time gap between the classical Greek antiquity and the
twentieth century France, the Sophoclean model of the ongoing confrontation between "Creon"
and "Antigone", mirrors the same conflict of human substance and associations in the modern
times; i.e., the conflict between an idea and idea, individual and society, family and state, as well
as femininity and masculinity. Anouilh's Antigone juxtaposes the paradigmatic conflicts inherent
in this classical myth with the oppression faced by the people of France during the Nazi
occupation.
Studying Antigone in itself is an approach to the phenomenon of dialect and opposition,
as well as authority and challenge. It is based on the subversion of power (ideology), family,
individual, and gender roles. The main conflict between Creon and Antigone is over a corpse.
The new king of Thebes, Creon, seeks to punish the corpse of Polyneices, Antigone’s brother by
leaving it unburied, on the ground that he was an enemy to his city, to his gods, and to his family
and killer of his brother. Antigone on the opposite seeks to honor the corpse by burying it, on the
grounds that Polyneices is her brother, born of the same womb and shares the same blood. The
play draws our attention most emphatically to the action of Antigone because her decision to
bury the corpse of her brother despite the edict that Creon has just issued that anyone who buries
the corpse will be sent to death.
In Sophocles, Antigone is a rebellion who stands against Creon’s edict who he has
forbidden the burial of Polynices. To bury or not to bury becomes the root of their conflict. This
conflict splits them into two opposing sides. Antigone, acts according to the rules of the Divine
Law, as a woman, follows the conventions and tradition of womanhood, and buries her dead
brother regardless of him being loyal or disloyal to the city. Conversely, Creon acts according to
the Human Law. He is a man, the new king, and forbids the burial in order to protect the city. He
places the city above his family. Accordingly, their conflict can be explained as opposition
between the Human Law and Divine Law, family and state, and femininity and masculinity.
The 1940’s were a time of extreme unrest. The effect of World War II was felt to varying
degree across the globe, but for those in the direct line of Hitler’s expansion, the war became a
constant presence. Jean Anouilh, a French writer, could not escape from these prevailing
conditions. Subsequently, in order to criticize the Nazi rule, he used Sophocles’ Antigone as a
camouflage and used the same theme to express his opposition to Nazi occupation. He adapted
Sophocles’ Antigone and found a way to express his views while minimizing the backlash from,
or association with the Nazi movement during the war and post war years. Creon, the tyrant in
Sophocles is changed to a Fascist German who has occupied France. While Antigone, the young
girl, who fights the ruler who forbade the burial of her dead brother changes to a resistant fighter,
fighting for the liberation of France.
The main focus of this study is to discuss and compare the roles played by both Creon
and Antigone as presented in Sophocles, the Greek play writer of fourth century BC, and the
twentieth century French play writer, Jean Anouilh. The question of how subtly Anouilh
reflected each of Sophocles' ideas in his play and what changes he made to make his work look
specific and new will also be tackled. This study attempts to show that despite a large time gap
exists between the two plays and obviously many changes has taken place but still there are
many similarities. That is all because Antigone is originally taken from a myth. “Myths deal with
unchangeable problems because men and women do not change.”1 This is the reason that
Antigone has tenaciously held its place in the theatrical canon for years.
This study begins with the comparison of Sophocles and Jean Anouilh’s Antigone in
respect to their plot and structure. In the first chapter, it will discuss the similarities and
dissimilarities between these two plays, in respect to the plot and settings of the plays. What
changes Anouilh made in his play to make his work unique will be discussed. Then, on the
second chapter, it will elaborate on the main conflict between Creon and Antigone, the nature of
conflict on the idea of the burial. In both plays Polyneices is condemned to death by Creon. His
corpse should be left in a field "for the birds and dogs to tear, an obscenity for the citizens to
behold!"(230)2. The beast will tear his flesh apart as Polyneices once tore his family and his
home. Antigone disobeys the rule and buries him. Hegel defines the mutiny between Sophocles’
Creon and Antigone as a conflict between Human Law and Divine Law; however, looking from
Hegel’s perspective such conflict does not exist in Jean Anouilh’s Antigone. Anouilh, has
removed both the Divine Law and the Human Law, and created a disfigured tragedy.3 Anouilh is
not interested in the classical values; he simply uses Sophocles’ Antigone as a vehicle to express
his rebellion. In Antigone’s person, Anouilh seems to envisage disobedience as the highest moral
law.4 The classical conflict between the Human and the Divine Laws is replaced by a conflict of
an individual against the power of the dominant ideology. In this chapter, we will fist define
Creon and Antigone’s actions from the Athenian perspective, as classified by Hegel and then
will compare their actions from the twentieth century perspective.
In Sophocles’ Antigone the clash takes a form of conflict between family and state. When
we first meet Creon and Antigone, it becomes clear that the main conflict is between the state
and the family. Creon, in his first speech, presents his case as the spokesman of the polis. He
clearly announces his interest in the city when he gives out his edict and forbids the burial of
Polyneices’ body. Antigone, on the other hand, also, at the very beginning of the play, makes it
clear that she is devoted to the family and utterly indifferent towards the city. The third chapter
will focus on this aspect of the mutiny of Antigone against Creon. In Antigone’s view the family
is not merely a collection of individuals who are loving to one another, but rather a community
that binds its member’s bodies and souls. By burying her brother, Antigone is acting on behalf of
her family. In Jean Anouilh, in reality Antigone is not interested in the family ties and her
insistence to bury her brother is merely a tool to show her rejection of Creon’s authority and
leadership. She uses Polynices as a camouflage in order to show Creon that she rejects his
dictatorship and tries to make him understand that she will never accept the conditions which he
has created for her and her family.
The fourth chapter of this study will cover the third aspect of the conflict between Creon
and Antigone, the conflict between gender roles. When Antigone stands against Creon’s edict
she acts against the conventions and the role of women. Everyone in the play assumes that only a
man would dare to challenge the king, since, it is presumed, only a man would have the daring to
confront Creon's soldiers or face the torture with which Creon threatens his enemies. Ismene
suggests that, since they are women and hence naturally weaker than men, they cannot win in an
open, violent conflict with the mighty king. But Antigone fights like a man. Antigone breaks the
conventional position of feminine and acts manly. Through her rejection she challenges Creon’s
masculinity. Creon through his punishment tries his best to preserve his masculinity, but this
does not turn out as he had hoped so, and he seems to be more feminine than masculine. In this
chapter there will first be a discussion of Antigone’s daring. We will study her actions and
compare it with what is expected from her within the Athenian culture and then we will discuss
how Creon has subverted Antigone’s female rights. This will be followed by the discussion how
Antigone tries to maintain her female role.
Finally in the fifth chapter, each of the characters is taken to the court to hear the final
verdict. Since Sophocles’ and Jean Anouilh’s Creon and Antigone are presented at different
times and places they will be judged by their own juries. A different file will be opened for each
character and they will be judged accordingly.
Literature Review
Since its first production at the festival of Dionysus in 441 B.C5, Antigone has been a
fixture in the western theater. Throughout the centuries there have been numerous version
dramas from Sophocles play and also his play has attracted many critics and analysis, each
discussing his play from different perspectives. Performed around the world almost continuously
since 1863, it has been distinguished as being the most widely covered of all Sophocles play.
Antigone has seen thirteen different translations alone, not to mention its innumerable
adaptation and allusions to it through the history of literature. In some adaptations the story
remains fundamentally the same as Sophocles’ play, while in other playwrights, such as Jean
Anouilh, has taken liberation by adding their own unique perspective to the original text.6 There
are many writers and critics on this behalf.
Antigone is a powerful play. George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the immensely influential
German philosopher, says that “The Antigone seems to me to be the most magnificent and
satisfying work of art” Hegel approaches the question of Antigone in three separate discussions.
He in Aesthetik proposed that the sufferings of the tragic hero are merely a means of reconciling
opposing moral claims. The operation is a success because of, not in spite of, the fact that the
patient dies. According to Hegel's account of Greek tragedy, the conflict is not between good and
evil but between goods that are each making too exclusive a claim. The heroes of ancient
tragedy, by adhering to the one ethical system by which they molded their own personality, must
come into conflict with the ethical claims of another. It is the moral one-sidedness of the tragic
actor, not any negatively tragic fault in his morality or in the forces opposed to him, that proves
his undoing, for both sides of the contradiction, if taken by themselves, are justified.
Accordingly, each character is right of itself.
Jacques Lacan in The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis discuses
the problematic role of ethics in psychoanalysis. Delving into the psychoanalyst's inevitable
involvement with ethical questions and "the attraction of transgression," Lacan illuminates
Freud's psychoanalytic work and its continued influence. Lacan explores the problem of
sublimation, the paradox of jouissance, the essence of tragedy (a reading of Sophocle's
Antigone), and the tragic dimension of analytic experience. His exploration leads us to startling
insights on "the consequence of man's relationship to desire" and the conflicting judgments of
ethics and analysis.
Judith Butler in Antigone's Claim: Kinship between Life and Death, redefines Antigone's
legacy, recovering her revolutionary significance and liberating it for a progressive feminism and
sexual politics. Judith Butler's new interpretation reconceptualizes the incest taboo in relation to
kinship and opens up the concept of kinship to cultural change. Antigone, the renowned
insurgent from Sophocles' Oedipus cycle, has long been a feminist icon of defiance. What has
remained unclear is whether she escapes from the forms of power that she opposes. Antigone
proves to be a more ambivalent figure for feminism than has been acknowledged, since the form
of defiance she exemplifies also leads to her death. Judith Butler argues that Antigone represents
a form of feminist and sexual agency that is fraught with risk. She considers the works of such
philosophers as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Jacques Lacan, and Luce Irigaray, and she asks
how psychoanalysis would have been different if it had taken Antigone – the "postoedipal"
subject – rather than Oedipus as its point of departure.
Samual A. Chambers in his article entitled “Kinship Trouble: Antigone’s Claim and the
Politics of Heteronormativity” focuses on Butler’s politicization of kinship structure in her
reading of the figure of Antigone he argues that since Butler sees the incest taboo as a social
force that maintains heteronormativity by producing a particular configuration of the family
Butler advances the critique of heteronormativity.
Kerry Elizabeth Hanlon in Antigone’s Wake: the legacy of live burial in Victorian
literature she follows Antigone’s wake out of the ancient Greece to the nineteenth century
England. Her focus is on live burial, she discusses that live burial is not a tragic end but she sees
live burial as an entrance to another world.
Robert Scott Hubbard, examines Hegel’s’ ideal philosophy and tragedy. He describes
Greek tragedy, both Hegel’s appropriation of it and in its own terms. He does this in order to
evaluate both the merits and the sins of Hegel’s vision of Greek tragedy.
Lilian Tsappa in Renunciation of Political Power as an Element of the Tragic, examines
the relation between political responsibility and tragic conflict by introducing the action of
renunciation of political power as an element of the tragic. In her second chapter entitled
“Antigone vs. Creon: A Case of Resistance vs. Individual Consciousness,” she examines the lack
of renunciation of Creon as a non tragic character in Jean Anouilh’s Antigone. She discusses the
renunciation of Anouilh’s Antigone as a case of sacrificial political martyrdom. Here she focuses
of the character of Creon, as one who abuses political power for the sake of law and order and
against the better interest of the collective well being, of particular importance in the
confrontation between Creon and Antigone from the twentieth century adaptation of Antigone,
by Jean Anouilh. She analysis their confrontation in terms of Hegelian dialects and shows that
the actions of each rival energy are justifiable positive values, each reflecting the philosophical
tendencies and soci -political ideologies of World War Two Europe.
Gerald Spandling, in Sophocles Antigone: An Exploration of Modern and Contemporary
Version, studies six version of Antigone to demonstrate how recent playwrights have used
Sophocles’ rendition of the ancient Greek myth as a vehicle to express their own congruent but
dissimilar ideas. He discusses that The Burial of Thebes by Seamus Hennery and Antigone by
Jean Cocteau retells Sophocles play. The two versions of Antigone one by Jean Anouilh and
another by Bertolt Brecht uniquely adapt Sophocles play while still following the frame work of
his dramatic action. Athol Fugard’s The Island and A. R. Gurney’s Another Antigone uses
Sophocles’ Antigone as inspiration from which they create their own unique stories.
W.D Howarth, professor of Classical French literature in University of Bristol and well
known as an authority on the golden age of French theater, wrote in an essay entitled "Anouilh".
He here shows a fine sympathy for the most technically gifted of modern French dramatists Jean
Anouilh.
Leonard Cabell Pronko in his book entitled The World of Jean Anouilh he examines two
aspects of Anouilh's plays: the dramatic theme and their expression. He argues that theses two
aspects are not mutually exclusive. As in the classics, the structure, the characters and the style
are so closely bound up with the themes that it is impossible to discuss one with out another. The
second part of Pronko's study, is entitled " Dramatic Values," stresses the way in which Anouilh
has handled themes that bear a more direct relation to his dramatic art: the theater as life and life
as theater, the meaning of realism in the theater, the function of the characters, and the use of
myth.
A.J.A.Waldock in Sophocles the Dramatist has a chapter entitled Romantic Tragedy: The
Antigone in which he takes a psychological view over Antigone's love towards Polyneices and
her hatred to Creon. He discusses that Antigone is someway "peculiar". She is rather a
qeerperson, obsessed, psychologically twisted and abnormal.
This study will not be too far from these critics and writers. Although each have argued a
different point of view of Antigone but they have become handy in obtaining my aim. This
study will gather all the points of view from Hegel, to Lacan and to Judith Butler in order to
show that although a large time gap exists between Sophocles’ Antigone and Jean Anouilh’s
Antigone, there are many similarities between them. Both plays are structured around the same
conflicts and mutiny but the characters underlying reasons and intentions are very different.
This is all because they take place in a different time and situation.
World War Two
Before comparing the two plays, it seems noteworthy to look back and describe the
condition that prevailed in France during World War II and how France was occupied and what
devastating situation its people were facing during the German occupancy. This will help us to
understand of the reasons that Anouilh used Sophocles’ Antigone in the midst of world war in
occupied France.
The Second World War began ostensibly in Eastern Europe in March and April 1939 and
was triggered by a quarrel concerning national minorities. It was not, in strict sense, a world war,
although the entry of the commonwealth made it affect, to some degree, every continent in the
world. It was essentially a European war- a contest to restrain the Nazi dictatorship of Germany
from dominating the continent of Europe.7
The Germans proclaimed to bring in “new order” in Europe, which she forthwith began
to implement in the occupied countries, ensured that the war in Europe, now became one for
national survival against a regime of domination of the master race. 8The issues during this phase
were clear enough, German treatment of the Poles, who were treated as slaves and as an inferior
race, to be subjected utterly to the needs and interests of the Germans, and of the Jews, whose
extermination was an essential goal of the Nazi ideology, made it a war for nationalism against
racialism.9 The establishment of a single party puppet regime in most of the occupied countries
made it a war for democratic freedoms against fascist tyranny.10
France During World War II
During world war two, France was defeated and it was left with few options. According
to the armistice terms, Germany occupied two-thirds of the nation, including the entire Atlantic
coast, Paris, and the north.
Not only its land, but also its people were divided. It was a potpourri of resisters and
collaborators, anti- and philo-Semites.11 So within this conflicting situation, that insiders and
outsiders were unknown, it was not clear who is on Frances’s side, and who was with the
Germans. No one dared to disobey; stand against the situation, and their only weapon was
silence. They had to be silent to live.
France had lived under the mask of silence. Silence in the streets, silence in the home; silence
because the German army parades at midday in the champs-Elysees, silence because an a enemy
officer is living in the next room, silence because the Gestapo has spices everywhere, silence
because the child dares not to say that he is hungry, because the execution of parties every
evening makes each new morning another day of the national mourning.12
The German occupiers had taken control of most of the French lives. 13 The Germans
controlled what Parisians read and watched.14 There were many restrictions on the theater.15
Within this devastating situation that German occupiers had taken France‘s land, caused
division between its people and even worse had taken control of their lives Anouilh takes
Sophocles' play, stripes to the core and waves a different version of Antigone. He uses Sophocles'
rendition of the ancient Greek myth as a vehicle to criticize the Nazi government and
dictatorship.
Jean Anouilh’s Unique Adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone
Jean Anouilh's Antigone, written in 1942, first appeared in his self classified collection,
Pieces noires or "black plays"16, and was performed two years later in Paris during the Nazi's
occupation.17 The twentieth playwright Anouilh saw in the story of the rebellious princess of
Thebes a wonderful parable of patriotism and self sacrifice and appropriate role model to inspire
and encourage European resistance movements in their struggle against German occupation and
fascist expansionism.18 Murry Sachs also says that for Anouilh myth became a vehicle, for
political satire against French empire and his extremely corrupt court.19
If the play had been performed under normal circumstances his play would have been a
literary event, but since it was performed during the Nazi occupation and a political nature was
given to it, it became an event of heightened significance.20 Due to these unique circumstances
Anouilh had to take greater precautions with his adaptation; therefore, he made many changes to
the Sophocles' play.
First of all, Anouilh employed Brechian devices and disconnected his audience from the
action of the play. In having the character of the Prologue21 deliver a three page history of each
character, including their back ground and their relationship with one another, Anouilh suggests
that the Antigone portion is a meta- play, thereby establishing a safe distance between his
audience and his play.22
By distracting his audience from the very beginning of the play Anouilh is not simply
retelling the traditional Antigone myth, but his play preserves the basic frame work of the
original myth, and in order to convey the different world view he even adds new scenes.