Basic Information .3 - Muskegon Community College

old and powerful citizens of the city who watch and comment on the action. It interacts with
the actors, and in Antigone the Chorus intercedes at a crucial point near the end of the play.
Consistent with the norms of Greek drama, Antigone is not divided into acts or scenes. The
action flows uninterrupted from beginning to end. However, time elapses in non-naturalistic
fashion: at certain points, from reports of what has happened offstage, it is clear that a great
amount of time is meant to have passed even though only a few minutes have passed for the
audience. In general, as noted by Aristotle, the action of most Greek tragedies is confined to
a 24-hour period.
In his influential Poetics, Aristotle sets guidelines for the form of
tragedy using Oedipus the King as his ideal model. Tragedy is
usually concerned with a person of great stature, a king or
nobleman, who falls because of hubris, or pride. There are
unities of time, place, and, most importantly, action. Action may
be thought of simply as motive or "movement of spirit": in
Oedipus the King the action for most of the play is "find Laius'
killer and stop the plague in Thebes." The action in Antigone is
"preserve rightness and order in Thebes." Antigone is a strange
case because the "movement-of-spirit" arguably comes from two
directions: Antigone and Creon are both championing what is right,
but they define rightness through different sets of values. Key
elements include the moments of reversal and recognition,
although not every tragedy has these moments. Reversal means a
great and unexpected turn in events when the action veers around
and becomes its opposite. Antigone experiences no reversal, but
Creon does: at the Chorus' prodding, he finally backs down and
listens to the advice he has been given, turning against the
preservation of the kind of order he cherishes. Recognition means
that a character gains sudden and transformative understanding of
himself and the events he has experienced, moving from ignorance to knowledge. In
Antigone, Creon finally recognizes that he has been misguided and that his actions have led
to the death of his wife and son. Ideally, according to Aristotle, the reversal and the
recognition hit at the same instant, as they do in Oedipus the King. While the Poetics are
indispensable for the student of Greek drama - and, indeed, drama in general - Aristotle's
theories should not be a straitjacket. Aristotle's guidelines make it difficult to appreciate the
genius of Euripides, and by the standards of the Poetics, the great tragedies of Shakespeare
would be failures. Aristotle is writing from a particular time and place, and he is also speaking
from a very specific artistic sensibility. He may be the first word on Greek tragedy, but he is
not the last.
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