REINHARDT, K.,
Sophocles. Translated by H. Harvey and D. Harvey. With an introduction by H. Lloyd-Jones.
Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1979. XXVIII,279p. Cloth wrps. Copy offered for review by Basil Blackwell. (Rare thus).'Karl Reinhardt's magistral 'Sophocles', now published in an excellent English translation, is a must for all libraries. (...) Reinhardt analyses the plays of Sophocles one by one with a gaze directed not so much on questions of plot, character, and dramatic technique as on the relationships here displayed of man to man and man to the gods. He emphasizes the gulf in the plays between man and god - a gulf which ordinary men can bridge but not the Sophoclean hero, which is emprisoned in the isolation of his tragic fate. Sophocles' approach, however, according to Reinhardt is not static but develops from play to play; at first the characters tend simply to present their own points of view in language often bejewelled with imagery, without being able to communicate effectively with each other; but in the later masterpieces a person's ideas may be affected by what others tell him, and the language is more taut and spare. The argument about development rests on the foundations of Reinhardt's idiosyncratic chronology (...). One of the most important books on Greek tragedy ever written. Hugh Lloyd-Jones provides a useful introduction on Reinhardt's place in modern scholarship.' (W. GEOFFREY ARNOTT in Greece & Rome, 1980, pp.85-86). From the library of the late Professor W. Geoffrey Arnott.
€ 69.50
(Antiquarian)