Product Description

This is one of the seven plays of Sophocles in the full editions by R.C. Jebb, all of which will be reissued under the BCP imprint. They have occasionally been reprinted but never before in affordable paperback versions. In this set, each volume contains a foreword by P.E. Easterling, concerned with Jebb and his contribution to Sophoclean scholarship; there follows an introduction by a noted Sophoclean scholar dealing with Jebb's treatment of the individual play and its value for - and contrast with - subsequent interpretations, for which a select bibliography is included.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1164351 in Books
• Published on: 2004-02-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 312 pages

About the Author
Richard Clavarhouse Jebb, Regius Professor of Greek and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, was one of the foremost classicists of the Victorian era. His editions of Sophocles' plays appeared in the last fifteen years of the 19th century. They are distinguished by the sensitivity of Jebb's literary and dramatic interpretations, and the neat translation facing the Greek text. They have had a profound influence on subsequent Sophoclean scholarship. P.E. Easterling, editor of this series and author of the new Foreword to each volume, is Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Newnham College. She is general editor of the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series. Barbara Goward, who provides the new Introduction to this volume, teaches Greek and Latin at the City Literary Institute, London. Her publications include 'Island Transformations: metabole and metagnoia in Shakespeare's Tempest and Sophocles' Philoctetes' in Homer, Tragedy and Beyond (London 2002) and Telling Tragedy (Duckworth 1999; ppr ed. 2002).

Customer Reviews

A monument
Sir Richard C. Jebb was arguably the foremost classicist of Victorian England. His commentaries on Sophocles, written more than a hundred years ago, are still indispensable today to all those seriously engaged with the texts. These works of historical as well as of practical value are now re-edited for the general public under the direction of Professor Easterling, accompanied by an essay on Jebb the scholar and the man (by Easterling) and individual introductions to particular plays by recognised Sophoclean specialists. The introductions are useful tools for bringing Jebb's work up-to-date where needed. An absolute must for every classicist, and indeed every undergraduate.

A major event, then and now
Jebb's commentaries were the characteristic child of Victorian England, yet barely can anyone who works seriously on Sophocles in the 21st century ignore them. The re-publication of Jebb's series of seven works under the general supervision of Professor Pat Easterling is a major event, which is bound to spark fresh interest in the 'most Homeric' of the Greek tragedians. Recommended to everybody, layman or specialist.

Truly necessary
Professor Easterling's initiative to supervise the republication of Sir Richard Jebb's classic Victorian commentaries on the plays of Sophocles (still indispensable today to all specialists and first-comers) is truly commendable and should be imitated with other hard-to-find or too expensive works as Fraenkel's Agamemnon. The re-edition comes complete with a general preface by Easterling and individual introductions to the individual plays by leading Sophoclean scholars, who bring Jebb's commentary up to date with more modern approaches. A fascinating and absolutely fundamental project.