[Lecture One] Eight Great Plays as Literature and as Philosophy
by Dr. Leonard Peikoff
Total Time: 1 hour, 56 minutes
Course summary: In this course, Dr. Leonard Peikoff selects eight great plays from Western literature to analyze. He examines the literary and philosophic qualities of each play and indicates how the drama concretizes certain ideas from a variety of philosophies. Peikoff masterfully situates each play in its historical period, both from the world events and philosophic context, as he discusses them. Peikoff builds the whole course around a demonstration of how to arrive at objective esthetic judgments about art. Read more »
In this lecture: This lecture is a discussion of Antigone by Sophocles.
Q&A Guide
Below is a list of questions from the audience taken from this lecture, along with (approximate) time stamps.
| 1:47:47 | I noticed that your statement of the plot theme of Antigone consists of three key elements: 1) the protagonist, 2) the central value the protagonist is pursuing, and 3) the central conflict she runs into. Does every plot theme have these three essential elements and did you deliberately choose the order in which these three elements appear in your statement of Antigone’s plot theme? |
| 1:49:51 | You say that Sophocles believes that morality is divine, but it certainly could have been a more religious play. And you say that the main conflict over morality in this is between the Sophists and God. What is Sophocles’s attitude toward the Sophists and a more secular morality? |
| 1:56:29 | A lot of the things that you mentioned today just went over my head. When I was reading the play, I didn’t get any of the stuff about the chorus or follow the progression. If I were watching the play, it would have gone over my head. The complexity of the play… I’m wondering how accessible this is to someone who is actually watching it to catch all these things? |
| 2:02:16 | I was struck by the applicability of your discussion of the development of a plot theme in literature to music and the basic set-up, development, and resolution. Both music and literature are experienced temporally in a specific structure. Have you thought about applying some of the analysis you’ve given to plays to great music? Would there be similarities? |
| 2:04:11 | Could you explain in more detail please how most of the characters were determined if Antigone had free will? |
| 2:06:41 | Would you care to comment on the esthetic value of Antigone only scattering a light amount of dust over the body as opposed to what the author’s other options were in giving him a full burial or something? I found that a particularly nice touch. |
| 2:08:28 | Was the fact that Antigone shrugged off her sister Sophocles’s way of trying to tell us that ethical decisions are not shared, that it’s an individualist experience? |