Sophocles’s Antigone presents the audience with a serious political question — whether law is capable of resolving fundamental questions of right and wrong or whether it is merely a self-legitimizing discourse in which power is reduced to rhetoric and persuasion and nothing more. Sophocles poses that question and cleverly casts the audience in the role of a jury, asking them to pass judgment on a question that subversively threatens the claim that justice transcends language.

This groundbreaking new English translation offers an authoritative reading of the Greek play as a work of legal literature. It seeks to convey the language of law and the spirit of litigation in the play, which are critically important for understanding the conflict and the motivations of the key characters. It is accompanied by a series of essays serving to guide readers through the play’s legal issues.

The translation offered here — in accurate but idiomatic English free verse — provides a reliable and essential foundation for discussion of the legal themes of the play. This book will appeal to students, academics, lawyers, and anyone with an interest in law and literature, legal theory, or the study of legal discourses in a courtroom setting.

Roger S. Fisher teaches in the Department of Humanities at York University, Toronto, Ontario. He has a B.A. in classics from the University of Ottawa, an M.A. in classics from McMaster University, and a Ph.D. in ancient history from McMaster University (with study at the American Numismatic Society in New York and at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Greece). He also has a J.D. from Osgoode Hall Law School and is a barrister and solicitor licensed by the Law Society of Upper Canada. He has published articles and taught courses that deal with law, literature, and culture from classical antiquity to the modern world. He is an honorary lifetime member of the Classical Association of Canada and a recipient of a teaching award in the Department of Humanities at York University.

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