Oedipus Cycle

Sophocles' immortal Oedipus plays personify both the cosmic and the all-too-human forces that wreak emotional and physical mayhem upon the lives of a stricken royal family. This title presents a translation of the entire "Oedipus Cycle". The most celebrated plays of ancient Athens in vibrant new translations by award-winning poet Robert Bagg Sophocles' three great masterpieces, gathered here in one volume, dramatize the inexplicable animosity directed at three generations of Thebes' royal family by Apollo, the inscrutable god who terrifies and deceives his victims into acts of incest, betrayal, and kin murder. These fifth-century BCE family dramas—Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Kolonos, and Antigone—are fraught with horrific crises, confrontations, and excruciating choices, all of which still rivet theatergoers and readers in the twenty-first century. Bagg's translations are modern in idiom while faithful to the Greek. They preserve the complexity of Sophocles' characters and their dialogue (whether searingly raw, subtly inflected, or infused with humor) and render Sophocles' choral odes in resonant poetry. The three plays of The Oedipus Cycle, already proven stageworthy, refresh and clarify Sophocles' narratives for a new generation about to discover timeless sources of pleasure and illumination in classical Greek drama. Sophocles' immortal Oedipus plays personify both the cosmic and the all-too-human forces that wreak emotional and physical mayhem upon the lives of a stricken royal family. The three plays have continued to strike a chord with audiences throughout every era of history - yet their effectiveness today depends not only upon enduring themes but upon translations that will resonate, intellectually and emotionally, with a contemporary readership. Aristotle praised Oedipus the King as the finest single example of Greek tragedy; now, award-winning translator Robert Bagg presents the entire "Oedipus Cycle" in a vivid, dynamic, and eminently readable new translation that revitalizes the ancient classics for a new generation of readers.