The Figure of Antigone in Premodern Literature

Abstract

The article examines the figure of Antigone in European literature from antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages. After the period of classical Greek tragedy (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides), Antigone as a literary figure undergoes the most significant adaptation in the Roman era, in Seneca’s tragedy The Phoenician Women and Statius’s epic Thebaid. In both works, Antigone is marked by Stoic determinism despite her rather active role. In the Middle Ages Antigone was a rather marginal literary figure. She is encountered mainly in the more or less free adaptations of Statius’s Thebaid, such as the medieval Irish prose work Togail na Tebe (The Destruction of Thebes) and the French epic Roman de Thèbes. Sporadic mentions of Antigone are also found in Dante, Boccaccio, and Christine de Pizan. The article notes that in medieval literature the thematization of Antigone is often characterized by an interweaving of two mythological figures (and traditions), the Theban and the (much less well-known) Trojan Antigone. Such literary contaminatio (contamination) of the two Antigones is most prominent in Chaucer’s epic Troilus and Criseyde. Finally, the discussion touches on the humanist reception of Antigone and draws attention to the hermeneutical problem of the literary reception of Antigone in general.