Sophocles, The Trachinian Women

A close literary and philological analysis of one of the most remarkable and perplexing of all Greek tragedies. While this has traditionally been one of the most neglected of Sophocles’ tragedies, it is a drama of extraordinary force and beauty and the issues that it explores – husband and wife, parents and child, sexual violence, myth and temporality, divinity and humanity, suffering and transcendence – are ones that are both of permanent interest and of particular relevance to our present concerns. The poetic text, in its many dimensions, will offer more than adequate material for classroom analysis and discussion, but some attention will also be directed to the reception of this play.