Forma Breve

Celebrar Abril sob o signo de Antígona

Carlos Morais — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Sem resumo disponível.

There Are many Ways to Die. Antigone: A Rereading of the Myth in an Anthropological Key. Power, Resistance, and Pain

María Cecilia Colombani — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In this paper we will analyze Antigone, the Sophoclean tragedy, from certain anthropological coordinates present in the tragediographer’s work. In a first segment we will go through the structure of the myth as an operator of meaning. In a second segment we will work on the meaning of the presence of a myth in the framework of the anthropological scenario. In a third one, we will approach Sophocles’ play in order to highlight its content, the dramatic aspect of the piece, its theatrical play, the role of the characters and their insertion in the framework of their historical time and their trans-temporality.

Antigone’s tragic genome: transmission and mutations of the Theban myth

Ana Paula Pinto — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Long before gaining an unequivocal prominence in the production of all the great tragediographers of the Classical Period - who seem to have almost obsessively poured the ominous shadow of contemporary fratricidal struggles into their symbolic flow - the mythical saga of Thebes, based on the unfortunate line of succession of the royal family inaugurated by Cadmus, occurs in multiple narrative allusions, from the primordial poetic testimony of the Iliad and the Odyssey, which will end up being replicated later in multiple allusions by the various archaic poets, and detailed in the narrative sequence of the so-called Theban Epic Cycle. Founded on the symbolic nucleus of a curse, transmitted hereditarily from parents to children, where patterns of deviance and mechanisms of subversion, similar to those of a segregating disease, multiply and worsen, the Theban saga will also occur in textual transmission, sequenced by very diverse narrative versions, marked by recurring inconsistencies. Under this peculiar thematic framework, we therefore set out, like a genetic sequencing exercise, to decode Antigone’s genome, comparatively analysing the ancient textual versions and identifying their deviations and narrative mutations. By comparing the different versions, we try to understand the extent to which the ancient worldview deepens the conviction that a mistake or deviation in behaviour, configured as a subversion of linearity, can become a driving force for tragic action for those in need.

Sophocles’ and Euripides’ Antigone: A model of interlocution

Maria de Fátima Silva — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Sophocles achieved enormous success with his Antigone, not only among his contemporaries, but throughout the millennia. Even today, his 441 BC creation remains the most performed tragedy, with the greatest repercussions in terms of adaptations and rewrites.
Echoing this same popularity, Euripides composed his own Antigone years later, a play that is lost to us, but which was also popular in antiquity. As far as the testimonies and fragments that have been preserved allow us to conclude, Euripides took up the strong lines of Sophocles’ play, but by altering their proportion, he turned a tragedy with a strong political character into a play of a novelistic nature.

Antigone – The Mythical Notion of Justice

Jaa Torrano — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The hermeneutical analysis of the relationship among the episodes and the choral chants, of the episodes sequency and of repetitions in each episod shows that the plot of Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone is organized around and supported by the mythical notion of the connection between “Justice” (Díke) and “Destiny” (or “Portion”, Moîra) and around the tribal notion of collective penal justice. It will be verified that and how, in this tragedy, the plot is a diegetic image of mythical notion of justice – the Justice of Zeus.

Order and Disorder in the Works of Sophocles: Preliminary Considerations Starting from Antigone

Auretta Sterrantino — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The article investigates how Sophocles recorded and reinterpreted the social tensions that traversed 5th century B.C. Athens in his tragedies, through a preliminary analysis conducted on Antigone. The reflection focuses on the idea of order and disorder, examining the use of terms
derived from κοσμ- and their meaning in the contexts in which Sophocles used them within the play, aiming to understand the dramaturgical relevance of these terms within the drama. This results in the possibility of identifying behaviors κατὰ κόσμον and οὐ κατὰ κόσμον, highlighting
how the intentions of the characters in conflict reflect the dynamics of political-social tension ready to revolutionize the established order (kosmos) and transform it into disorder (akosmia). Socio-political equilibrium is achievable only by respecting the deities and through the constant attempt to reconcile the interests of individuals, as part of a community, and to mediate between the remnants of the aristocratic archaic culture and the new democratic direction of the Athenian polis.

Antigone. A fissure in the logos and in the city

Maria Mafalda Viana — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The text of Sophocles’ Antigone may reveal some incipient consciousness of how human mind and logos that «build» the city simultaneously includes an essential fissure. So the chorus says at the very beginning of his praise of the city that there is no other thing δεινότερον than man. The text as a whole shows the duplicity in the adjective – how the wonderful human logos and mind that «build» the city may become terrible.

Aesthetic Elements in Sophocles' Antigone

Madalena Machado — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The course of this research is a critical reading of Sophocles' tragedy Antigone, highlighting the aesthetic elements present in the text through a direct association with classical and contemporary poetics. Our purpose is to visualize a canonical text according to the literary qualities
pointed out in the arguments of authority that we raised. They served as a theoretical basis, Aristóteles (2005, 2008), Horácio and Longino (2005), Steiner (1995), Calvino (2007), Bloom (2010) and Perrone-Moisés (2009).

Antigone and the social weight of ritual. A contemporary staging

Vincenzo Quadarella — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The burial rite of Antigone at the beginning of the tragedy of Sophocles raises a series of interpretative problems that affect both the act itself and the social weight of the denied rite. In fact, it is undeniable that the confrontation between Antigone and Creon is marked by various political, social and religious aspects; it is equally undeniable that the burial rite was perceived as a fundamental step to “let go” of the dead into the afterlife. And precisely this rite marks a border that is at once political, religious and cultural, capable of unleashing the wrath of Creon and the piety of Antigone. The rite by Antigone recomposes the fracture between the living and the dead, and among the living, recomposes justice. Thus, the rite draws the line between the just and the unjust, between the decision in your own name or in the name of the collective, between the living and the dead. The limit, however, although firm, in the case of Sophocles strives to maintain its contours, remains blurred to the eye and, although strongly marked by the rite (fulfilled or not), turns out to be labile. To understand the ritual of the gesture of Antigone in the contemporary scene we will analyze the Antigone with the direction of I. Papas of 2005 in the Greek theater of Syracuse.

The Stone Bed of Antigone and Niobe: a common place (S. Ant. 823-840)

Andrea Navarro Noguera — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In the tragic play Antigone, the young heroine, after learning of her fatal fate, lamentfully compares her unfortunate position with that of Niobe (l. 823-833). The aim of this paper is to analyze these lines along with the consoling response of the chorus (l. 834-838) in order to shed light on the debate about Sophocles’ characterization of Antigone.

Antigone, woman of no

Francesco De Martino — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The women’s “no” are few, but exemplary: to sexual harassment, to husband suitors (Penelope, Danaids, Daunian women) and to husbands (in Lysistrata), to media and censorial power (Penelope, Electra) and to political power like that of Antigone against the lex of Creon, illegal because contra legem.

Tragic and comic tactics for confronting power: Antigone and Lysistrata

Luisa S. Buarque de Holanda — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Antigone and Lysistrata, the protagonists who give their names to the famous tragic and comic pieces, have tactics for confronting power that can perhaps be characterised as antagonistic. The first goes tenaciously and consciously towards death, fulfilling the task that seems right to her and at the same time reaping the glory that will accompany her deed (Antigone, v. 502): the success of her enterprise is inseparable from her own sacrifice. The second dribbles past the representatives of power with strategic planning and guile; her endeavour is successful and crowned with a comic feast. The first has confrontation (anti-, against) inscribed in her name, the second liberation (lysis-, the action of untying, releasing). On the one hand, both can be seen as representatives of their literary genres: the first going against power and deliberately perishing as a result; the other cleverly dissolving, in a stroke of wit with doses of absurdity and comicality, the obstacles that stand in her way. On the other hand, both can also be seen as representatives of the same feminine gender, and in this sense there are many themes that bring them together: the opposition between the logic of political power and the logic of the family and the oikos; the disastrous consequences that male warfare causes in the feminine sphere; the privileged relationship of women with philia and marriage are some of them. The aim of this paper is to compare the tactics of the two heroines in terms of how they use their feminine status to confront the prevailing masculine power.

Greek Myth and Christian Mystery

Alex Villas Boas — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This text aims to present how the relationship between myth and the narrativity of the Christian experience associated with the question of the Mystery of God has had different forms of interpretation in contemporary times. This difference sometimes brings together and sometimes distances these elements of narrative. A work of great importance is precisely Hugo Rahner’s “Mythes grecs et Mystère Chrétien”, as it became better known in its French version in 1945. However, the various ways of relating myth and Christianity, as well as myth and rationality, end up obfuscating the contribution of the Austrian Jesuit’s work, which is why the aim here is to recapture some of his important insights.

Antigone’s Contests: Pasts and Presents in Scholarship and Performance, ancient and modern

Lorna Hardwick — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In modern times, the figure of Antigone has become an emblem in the struggle for liberty from oppression. It provides a fitting focus for a conference that celebrates the 50th anniversary of the carnation revolution in Portugal. This paper starts by identifying and analysing some of the contexts and performance styles in which contemporary concerns have shaped interpretation, translation, adaptation and performance of Sophocles’ text. The main part of the discussion then poses the question of whether ‘present’ concerns have appropriated the play in ways that marginalise or even excise some aspects of Sophocles’ text. ‘Presentism’ has often been used by classicists as a term of disapprobation in order to criticise subsequent receptions of ancient texts, sometimes with the implication that there is a fixed meaning to be discovered if the ancient text is considered philologically and in terms of the context of its composition and performance, and that ‘presentist’ interpretations subvert this. The paper then argues that: (i) there is a variety of ‘presentist’ perspectives. Some are inevitable in scholarly work as well as in the creative processes attached to performance and spectating. The ‘present’ (any present) is one node in a network of mediations and receptions. The concerns, life experiences and cultural and ethical hinterlands of the practitioners and scholars working with Sophocles’ Antigone inevitably have a shaping role in their agency because their life experiences and socio-cultural orientations are not confined to those of ancient Greece. The same is true of readers and spectators who, wittingly or unwittingly, relate the play to their own ‘present’. These ‘present’ concerns can generate a positive engagement with the ancient text and context. They only become negative if they are unacknowledged and if they close down meaning. (ii) Philological and performative analysis of Sophocles’ play demonstrates that the tragedian himself was engaged in a form of ‘presentist’ activity. The narratives associated with Antigone and her family were adapted and augmented through a lens that reflected the social, religious and political urgencies of fifth-century Athens, especially the contested relationships between funerary traditions and social cohesion and the transfer of power from aristocratic families to the polis. The concluding section of the paper argues that analysis of the relationship between ancient and modern ‘presentisms’ enhances both scholarly commentary and critique of tragedy in performance. Sophocles’ play provides a site of temporal and metaphorical space that promotes and provokes engagement between ancient and modern, to the benefit of both.

Antigone under the universe of intertextuality: literature, female, freedom

Flavia Maria Corradin — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The dramatic text Antes que a noite venha (1992), by Eduarda Dionísio, has as its theme the speeches of Juliet, Antígona, Inês de Castro and Medea, historical-mythological characters marked by love, but who meet a tragic destiny. Based on the conception that concrete time – the night – becomes mythical time, the space in which these characters will inhabit, we will focus our attention, this time, on the lines dedicated to Antigone. We intend to start from the dialogue that the Dionysian character has with the mythical Antigone, considering aspects such as the specificities of dramatic writing. Furthermore, we must examine the discussion about the female condition, which crosses the diegesis, and the character’s relationship with the Portuguese context at the end of the century, since the text is from 1992, but also with the current moment in which the 50th anniversary of the recovery of freedom. Such a concept that must always be remembered so that we never forget that without freedom we are nothing.

Antígona Gelada: A gnostic manifesto

Telmo Alexandre Ferreira — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The present study aims to observe the points of connection between Sophocles’ Antigone and Armando Nascimento Rosa’s Antígona Gelada in light of a Gnostic understanding of the myth. This analysis is supported by an interview conducted with the latter author (January 2021) and by the study of works on Greek tragedy, science fiction, and Gnosticism. Noting that the play Antígona Gelada stems from the same archetypal nature as Sophocles’ Antigone, the first is analyzed as a dramatic reception of the Sophoclean myth in the light of a radical Gnosticism, as outlined by Harold Bloom in his various works on the subject.
It is concluded that the Gnostic influence in Antígona Gelada reveals, through the protagonist’s archetype, an ontological discourse on the inadequacies of the human condition. Despite indicating a departure from the materialist interpretations of the Antigone myth in the modern period, this influence makes Antigone confront the polis with an alternative concept of empathy, one not inscribed in the ideological apparatuses of a democratic state, thus maintaining a political discourse.

Hermínia Silva’s New Antigone: a socio-political parody (1946 and 1976)

Nuno Simões Rodrigues — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In 1946, during the height of the dictatorial regime, Hermínia Silva played the role of Anti- gone in Sempre de Pé!, a parody of Júlio Dantas’ play, which had premiered that same year at the National Theatre. This performance earned the actress the National Theatre Award in 1947. The choice of the character Antigone for this parody primarily served as a response to Dan- tas’ play, which had been staged by the Robles Monteiro-Rey Colaço Company and featured the debut of the young actress Mariana Rey Monteiro. Sempre de Pé! challenged the restric- tions of censorship by
delivering subversive messages through creative means, and thus the “New Antigone” became a symbol of defiance in the face of oppression. Thirty years later, in 1976, in the revue play Afinal como é?, Hermínia Silva reprised the New Antigone from 1946, this time to critique the new political landscape emerging in Portugal. Two years after the April Revolution, Antigone was once again employed as a means of reflecting on the political climate and the regime of the time. This essay focuses on analysing Hermínia Silva’s perfor- mance, her influence on the portrayal of resistance to the dictatorship, and the significance of revue theatre in the broader context of the fight for freedom. Additionally, it explores how f Antigone provided a foundation for conveying these ideas, this time through the forms forms of comedy and parody.

Antigone at school. Female characters from antiquity in Ana Cristina Oliveira’s didactic theatre

Adriana F. Nogueira — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 18:27:52 +0000

In this paper, I aim to answer some questions that were raised by the work of Ana Cristina Oliveira, a philosophy teacher, playwright, director, and actress, in the school theater group she founded, Tapete Mágico (Magic Carpet), particularly regarding her choice of female characters from antiquity in the plays she writes for – and with – the students. I intend to understand how antiquity is received by young people, how the themes of Greek tragedians’ plays can relate to the concerns of today’s youth, and the relevance of these issues and the new questions they raise.

Antigona in the air

Carmen Morenilla Talens — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The play Antigone by Sophocles is one of the best known and most representative tragedies of its author, but the reading that emerges from it makes it a subversive work at certain times. For this reason it has been censored. In the radio broadcasting in Spain in the second half of the 20th century, it was replaced by versions of this tragedy that were able to overcome the hard censorship of Franco’s regime.

Three Antigones and one author: Guillermo Heras Antígona en la frontera, Hantígona and Ardiente Antígona

Carmen González-Vázquez — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Spanish actor, director, critic, cultural manager, teacher and playwright Guillermo Heras, although he is an international reference in contemporary drama and its staging, was also interested in Greek mythology and the classics, publishing texts inspired by the figures of Phaedra,
Andromache and Antigone. We look at the three titles that have come from the pen of Heras, one published (Ardiente Antígona) and two of them unpublished (on loan from the author to me), composed months before his death in 2023. Interested in very different characters, located in dissimilar spaces and times, under disparate moral codes, but facing the same problems both in fiction and in reality, dominated by passions that make them seem more and more human, I am interested in determining how his Antigones are projected in successive dramatic variations, but with the same purpose: to awaken the spectator’s lucidity about the world that welcomes them.

The two divergent tales of Antigone (Sophocles/Hyginus) present in 18th century opera

Helena Guzmán García — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The mythical story of Antigone is well known. She returns to Thebes after the death of Oedipus at Colonus at the time of the confrontation between her two brothers. After Eteocles and Polyneices have killed each other, she disobeys the law decreed by the sovereign Creon and performs funeral honors on the corpse of her brother Polyneices. After this infraction, the mythical story has two versions: in the first -whose main source is Sophocles- Antigone is locked up alive and kills herself, causing the subsequent suicide of her fiancé Haemon and her mother. In a second version, found as a complete source in Hyginus, it is said that Antigone did not die, but rather fled from Thebes and had a son. This article demonstrates how these two versions of the classical world will also appear represented in opera librettos as examples of Classical Reception. Two operas performed in the second half of the 18th century are taken as an example, both titled Antigona: the first, performed in Rome in 1751, with text by the librettist Gaetano Roccaforte and music by the composer Baldassare Galuppi, in which a woman is shown on stage, Antigone mother; and the second, performed in Saint Petersburg in 1772, which follows the Sophoclean version, with text by Marco Coltellini and music by Tommaso Traetta.

Tragic Depictions of Political Resignation: Ismene and Chrysothemis in Galician Dramatic Literature

Iria Pedreira Sanjurjo — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The reworking of the themes, characters and motifs from Greek-Latin mythology is a verified trend in contemporary Galician drama since the second half of the 20th century to the present day. Many of the playwrights who remake these myths for Galician drama know the original Greek or Latin texts and usually engage in a dialogue with their current situation through the canonical paradigm of the classic, being tragedy and the tragic sense of drama the preferred ways of all the authors who approach that dialogue. For this reason, there are many tragic characters who stand as a model and reference for a certain political reading of ancient texts, highlighting those figures of tragic heroism who do so in a positive sense. However, for this paper, we will try to offer a critical and analytical reading of the characterization of two of the most reviled secondary characters of the ancient tragic imaginary in the Galician theater that reworks them: Ismene (daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta and sister of Antigone) and Chrysothemis (daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra and sister of Electra). Their recharacterization will be reviewed in the Galician plays in which these characters appear, paying attention to the reference of the Greek hypotexts and highlighting the main differences and concomitances found in the comparative reading of the texts, without neglecting the different reinterpretations in a political and social key that underlie the reworkings of the Galician authors.

Creón, Creón. La Antígona distópica de Rodríguez Pampín

María Teresa Amado Rodríguez — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In the 1950s, Galician literature began to show signs of recovery after having practically disappeared during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). The efforts of the Galaxia publishing house, founded in 1950 by a group of Galician anti-Francoists, to translate texts from the European avant-garde and the Ribadavia Theatre Exhibitions encouraged the creation of dramatic texts by authors who had not previously cultivated the genre. This is the case of Rodríguez Pampín, who in 1975 published his first play, Creón, Creón, a futurist rewriting of Antígona, which we will analyse in this paper.

Tragic Justice in Suso de Toro’s Non volvas

Marta Mariño Mexuto — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The novel Non volvas (2000), by Suso de Toro, tells the story of a woman who returns to the village where she grew up in search for answers about her identity. What she finds out there about herself –like a tragic anagnorisis– also affects the previous generations and leads her to accomplish a terrible vengeance. This act purifies her in a certain way and re-establishes justice. Similar to Antigone, a character that the author himself references in his text, the protagonist feels compelled to commit an unorthodox action that is out of the man-made laws, in order to obey a superior, transcendent law. In this work, we analyse the parallels between Sophocles’ heroine and Encarnación, the protagonist of Non volvas, paying special attention to the achievement of a form of justice that goes beyond herself and that defies the established limits.

Antigone, Madame Royale

Corrado Cuccoro — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In the history of Antigone’s reception, an ancient French play, which apparently only survives in a unique manuscript preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, has been overlooked, or even ignored, by scholars: it is dedicated, under the title of Antigone. Tragédie En 5 Actes, by a self-styled Vicomte of… (the specification is omitted), to an unnamed Son Altesse Royale Madame la Dauphine. This paper is intended to be a contribution to a desirable critical edition of that tragedy, not only because of its inherent quality, but also in that it is a part of a distinguished tradition and an evidence of the theatrical tastes of Ancient Régime as well.

Antigone, by Walter Hasenclever – To die for what ideal?

Maria de Fátima Gil, Maria António Hörster — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In 1917 Walter Hasenclever wrote to Albert Ehrenstein, shortly after completing his Antigone: “I only know the Sophoclian Antigone superficially – the whole plan will persuade you that it is my work and that this really is an Antigone of 1917.” In our paper we will evaluate the correctness of these statements, for which we will begin by tracing the historical-social framework and the literary context that gave birth to the drama, then seeking to ascertain the relations of intertextuality with Sophocles’ Antigone and to highlight the specificity of this rewriting.

«Elle retourne au pays des sources» Ecopoetics of revolt in some contemporary Antigone(s)

Paolo Dias Fernandes — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

While the idea of revolt fills, if not dominates, the narrative space of these more or less faithful rewritings of the Antigone myth, the landscape, despite being the setting and backdrop, seems to vanish. The elements that evoke the landscape in these texts are few and far between, but they are always strongly connoted and symbolically charged. If the landscape is an image of the country, in other words of the setting, the context, what does the literary picture of a revolt with an elusive landscape tell us? This paper proposes to analyse, through the prism of ecopoetics, the literary representations - and non-representations - of landscape in four rewritings of Antigone’s revolt: Jean Cocteau’s (1928), Marguerite Yourcenar’s short story ‘Antigone ou le choix’ (1936), Jean Anouilh’s famous dramatic rewriting (1944) and Sophie Deraspe’s movie : Antigone (2019).

Antigone in Troy: The Women of Troy, by Pat Barker

Maria José Ferreira Lopes — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Few figures from Greek mythology have aroused such a profound and creative fascination over time, and particularly in modern times, as Antigone, seen as a heroine of resistance to oppression following Sophocles’ founding play. At the same time, the myths surrounding the Trojan War constitute one of the most productive foundations of the Western imagination, also the object of constant analysis and rewriting. In the novel The Women of Troy (2021), the second in her recent Trojan trilogy, the English writer Pat Barker transplanted to the post-fall of Troy the conflict resulting from the prohibition of performing the rituals due to the dead. In this case, it is Priam who takes the place of Polynices, and Amina, a fragile but stubborn young Trojan girl, who takes the role of Antigone. The trigger for the events is an unexpected Creon: the still-teenaged Pyrrhus, physically imposing and prone to violence, marked by the disregard with which he is viewed simultaneously by Greeks and Trojans, and by the unattainable aura of his father. It is precisely the negative comparison with Achilles suggested by Priam that leads Pyrrhus to kill him, in an excruciating manner, a scene witnessed by the then unknown Amina. The humiliation that the existence of this witness entails for Pyrrhus leads him to kill her after being caught making a second attempt to bury Priam, who had been exposed to the elements for a long time like Polynices and Hector. In the constant process of interaction and deconstruction of the classics, Briseis, the young queen who became Achilles’ slave after the capture of her home city, plays a central role. Pregnant by the dead hero, she had been married by him, shortly before his announced death, to one of his lieutenants, for future protection. Briseis, who continues to perform household chores common to the other prisoners of the Greek masters, behaves as a compassionate and supportive protector of the Trojan slaves – and even of the hideous Thersites – and ends up assuming the role of a prudent Ismene, but is also overwhelmed by her affection for Priam. Much of the narrative is presented from her perspective, which allows for a constant analysis of the subordinate and precarious condition of women in general, and especially of war captives, who are silenced and victims of a terrible abuse, seen as part of war. Underneath Amina’s insistence on defying Pyrrhus’ orders is precisely her refusal to submit to this violence and her purpose of maintaining her dignity intact. The aim of this text is to explore the way The Women of Troy uses and deconstructs the Theban and Trojan cycles, highlighting the enormous relevance of the characters and the episodes they experience.

The dramatization of a collective guilt: Aris Alexandrou’s Antigone and the Greek Civil War as a trauma

Philippos Karaferias — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article examines how Aris Alexandrou’s adaptation of Antigone (1951) functions as both a critique of ideological absolutism and a meditation on collective guilt. By analysing its structure, thematic content, and performance history, this study demonstrates how Alexandrou disrupts the binary narratives of victimhood and complicity, challenging both leftist and rightist historiographies of the Greek Civil War. It explores how Alexandrou’s deviation from the traditional Sophoclean narrative serves as a political and ethical commentary on ideological violence, exile, and national identity. By presenting Antigone as a complex, ideologically driven figure, Alexandrou critiques both fascist and communist authoritarianism, highlighting the moral ambiguities of resistance. Additionally, the article examines the 2003 stage production by Victor Ardittis, arguing that its reception underscores the challenges of addressing historical wounds in public discourse. Through a close reading of the play’s structure, themes, and performance history, this study positions Alexandrou’s Antigone as a crucial work in the reception of ancient tragedy in modern Greece.

Antigone “outsider” in Creon’s democracy: analysis of a contemporary reinterpretation of the Sophoclean myth1

Marco Zanelli — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

My paper analyzes four contemporary rewritings of Sophocles’s Antigone: the novel Home Fire (2017) by Kamila Shamsie, the Canadian film Antigone (2019) by Sophie Deraspe, and two British dramas: Aaliyah (After Antigone) (2021) by Kamal Kaan and Antigone (2022) by Inua Ellams. These works present an original vision of Antigone as an Islamic girl (Pakistani, Algerian or Bangladeshi) whose family has emigrated to a Western democracy (Britain or Canada). In this reinterpretation as a foreigner, Antigone takes on traits traditionally typical of Medea. Although Antigone is well socially integrated, the situation of one or both of her brothers (terrorism, delinquency or political opposition) leads her to reveal the condition of racism, intolerance and marginalization faced by minorities in a theoretically democratic, libertarian and inclusive country. At the same time, the characterization of Creon also undergoes a profound change, compared in particular to the Brechtian interpretation: he (or she, in Kamal Kaan’s drama) is not a violent dictator, or a politician who came to power in an exceptional situation, but a legitimate leading exponent of a democratic Western government, who (except in Deraspe’s film) shares the same foreign origins as Antigone’s family, but precisely for this reason must be even tougher in order not to lose the consensus acquired among the nation he governs, a consensus obtained also by denying part of his/her own native culture and satisfying the people’s need for order and security. This new interpretation thus allows the myth of Antigone to be used as a very current tool for social denunciation, not only of the failed integration of minorities in the great Western democracies, but of other problematic aspects of contemporary “civilized” countries, such as the populist tendencies of politics or the use of (social)media, through which, for example, the choruses are rendered in some rewritings.

Empathy and resistance: Antigone in plays of contemporary female wrighters

Tobias Brandenberger — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The figure of Antigone - like all the mythemes of the Oedipal family, reformulated so many times up to the present day - presents different lines of conflict derived from problematic regimes in the family, philosophical-moral and socio-political domains. There are several theatre texts that outline the premises and consequences of the search for a fair ethical and emotional path in dilemmatical situations; and they elaborate them in multifaceted configurations that at the same time are symptomatic of the conditions and concerns of literary writing, and very specifically of the textual production of male and female authors. In our contribution, we examine how three Ibero-Romanic female playwrights from recent decades deal with the possibility of essentially human empathy becoming political contestation We discuss the particular dialectics in which the plays develop the question of the legitimacy of such a form of resistance, sometimes vindicating it, sometimes questioning it. We focus on Griselda Gambaro’s Antígona furiosa (Argentine, 1986), Hélia Correia’s Perdição (Portugal, 1991) and Itzíar Pascual’s Antígona (Spain, 2018) to find out how natural right reacts to the power and authority of the judicial law in these plays, why it succumbs, and what the specific implications of the gender category are in conflicts of this nature.

Myth anda memory in Pedreira das almas and Rasto atrás, by Jorge Andrade

Luiz Gonzaga Marchezan — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In the literary creative process, according to Jorge Andrade (1964, p. 22): “No one invents anything.
Everything is around us, living and being imposed in different ways.” The meanings already
established by culture, for writers, enable world literature, through new content, reconstituting
situations and human types of tradition that move forces of truth taken on by new literary
creations. Mariana, the main character of Pedreira das almas (1958), fights, like Antigone, for
a dignified burial for her brother. Vicente, the main character of Rasto atrás (1967), seeks, like
Oedipus, his father’s recognition. The two works, as in the myths of Antigone and Oedipus,
are involved with family dramas in the face of both city and divine laws in the dispute with two
great cells of power: that of the State and that of the Family, without ignoring the patterns of
thought reflected by the playwright’s guiding classical myths in the plays under consideration.

The myth of Antigone in "As Confrarias", by Jorge Andrade

Claudiomar Pedro da Silva, Agnaldo Rodrigues da Silva — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper proposes to present an analysis of the theatrical text As Confrarias (1970), by Jorge Andrade. The focus of the research is on the resignification of the myth of Antigone, by Sophocles, as well as investigating how the characters react to the individual freedom to bury their loved ones, confronted by the oppression imposed by those in power. This relationship will be delineated through the figuration of myth in the aforementioned plays and the harmony between the Greek play and the aesthetics of one of the renowned playwrights of modern Brazilian theater.

Antígone América: resistance and prefiguration of the Brazilian dictatorship

Adriane da Silva Duarte — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Throughout the 20th century, Antigone became a symbol of resistance against oppression and injustice, of the strength of the individual against the State. Since then, Sophocles’ tragedy has received countless adaptations and re-readings in which its heroine catalyzes reflection on contemporary dilemmas. In Brazil it was no different and, among the reconfigurations of Oedipus’ daughter on the American continent, I will highlight Antígone América (1962), a play that marks the debut of Carlos Henrique Escobar (São Paulo, Brazil, 1933 – Aveiro, Portugal, 2023) as a playwright. Although it was conceived and produced before the military dictatorship that was installed in the country for two decades (1964-1985), Antígone América presents a diagnosis of the social and political tensions that led to the military coup. It is interesting to discuss the transposition of the Sophoclean character to the Brazilian context at the time and how Escobar’s play contributed to making Antigone a critical voice of the dictatorship, given that the Greek tragedy will be reenacted on more than one occasion during this period. Two productions were especially significant, both from 1969, the year that marked the intensification of the dictatorship, manifested in widespread censorship, torture, and arbitrary arrests, Ato sem Perdão, directed by José Renato, and Antígona, by João das Neves, respectively in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

The Reception of Antigone in Brazil through Guilherme de Almeida’s Translation

Marcelo Tápia Fernandes — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The translation of Sophocles’ Antigone by Guilherme de Almeida (1890-1969) – or “transcription”, as the translator preferred to call it, originally published in 1952 – is an achievement whose scope can be glimpsed by an observation about its reception by experts in the Greek language and literature. Conceived for the theater, the modernist poet’s Antigone was presented at the Teatro Brasileiro de Comédia on August 21, 1952; with a cast of actors renowned in Brazil, the play was a great success with the public by the standards of the time. The communicability of the translated text, demonstrated since its appearance on the scene, resists today, as I intend to demonstrate in this article, due to its qualities related to the prioritization of a rhythm constructed from a path of familiarization with the original text.

With Antigone: The Struggle for Mourning in Two Contemporary Brazilian Narratives

Luciana Paiva Coronel — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

O mito fecundo de Antígona tem sido evocado no espaço literário brasileiro contemporâneo, tanto no âmbito da criação, quanto no da crítica, sobretudo no interior da série literária identificada com a elaboração ficcional dos danos decorrentes da violência da ditadura civil-militar (1964/1985). O trauma dos desaparecidos políticos, identificado com a interdição aos atos fúnebres e decorrente privação do luto a familiares, tem motivado ficcionistas e estudiosos do século XXI de meu país a atualizarem o gesto com que a irmã de Ismene confronta os poderes constituídos de Tebas na tragédia de Sófocles em nome do direito inalienável ao sepultamento do ente querido. Se em Portugal a contestação de Antígona é lembrada para celebrar os “50 anos de abril”, no Brasil, o sentido de justiça que a move atende contrariamente nos 60 anos do nosso abril, quando um golpe de Estado ceifou a ordem democrática, abrindo feridas ainda não cicatrizadas no tecido social do país. Proponho uma leitura crítica de sentido político dos romances K., relato de uma busca (2011), de Bernardo Kucinski, e Antes do passado: o silêncio do Araguaia (2012), de Liniane Haag Brum, segundo a qual ambos os escritores imitam o gesto de amor de Antígona e realizam uma forma simbólica de túmulo através das palavras para seus respectivos desaparecidos, a irmã do primeiro e o tio da segunda autora. Tomando por fundamento o conceito de “poética restitutiva” (Vecchi, 2014), analiso nas narrativa a peculiar tessitura ficcional de fraturas e lacunas do discurso histórico que faculta à literatura, por meio dos recursos que lhe são próprios, compor fragmentos da memória social de crimes de um passado que permanece recalcado no imaginário nacional, e por isso retorna como fantasma a assombrar a vida política no tempo presente.

“This madness must stop”. Testimony and Resistance of Milo Rau’s Amazonian Antigone

Stéphanie Urdician — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“Esta locura debe parar”. “Dejemos de ser Creonte, seamos Antígona. Porque cuando la anarquía se convierte en ley, la resistencia se convierte en deber”. Estas son las palabras de Kay Sara, actriz y activista indígena elegida por el director suizo Milo Rau para interpretar a su Antígona amazónica. En su nueva creación multilingüe (inglés, portugués, tucano, flamenco y francés) Antigone in the Amazon (2020-2023), Milo Rau toma como punto de partida la masacre de campesinos sin tierra de Eldorado do Carajas, el 17 de abril de 1996, para denunciar la injusticia y la represión que perduran desde hace siglos. Al asociarse con el Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (MST), el director y videasta construye una nueva Antígona que lucha por otro mundo posible mediante colectivos alternativos. A través de vídeos en tres pantallas, la escenografía acoge el canto trágico del coro, formado por miembros del MST y activistas indígenas supervivientes de la masacre, en diálogo con los actores y músicos brasileños y flamencos en escena. Este trabajo propone descifrar las modalidades de transposición de la Antígona de Sófocles en el estado brasileño de Pará, en los confines de la Amazonia, donde la agroindustria brasileña saquea y destruye tanto la selva como los pueblos. Esta nueva Antígona de la resistencia reactiva el enfrentamiento entre la ley divina tradicional y el Estado moderno racional de la tragedia griega en un choque entre orden liberal global y cosmología holística indígena.

The Tropes of the Dictator in José Watanabe’s Dramatic Work “Antígona”

Carlos Dimeo — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 17:09:41 +0000

This paper focuses on studying the images and tropes of the dictator that appear in the Greek tragedy Antigone by Sophocles, as seen through its reinterpretations, particularly that of José Watanabe. In the original play, animals are used symbolically and metaphorically to explore key themes such as justice and law, as well as to illustrate Antigone’s moral conflict. For example, the chorus compares Antigone to a bird that defies the orders of the dictator Creon in the name of her brother, reflecting her bravery and her defiance of human laws in favor of divine ones. This issue gains significance in Latin American reinterpretations, where the connection between animals and the figure of the dictator is intensified. Some adaptations portray dictators as predatory beasts that threaten the freedom and dignity of the people, using animal imagery as an allegorical tool to criticize authoritarian regimes. This association between animals and the dictator enables a powerful critique of oppression and abuse of power while highlighting the struggle of individuals for justice and freedom, in alignment with Antigone’s character in the original play. In summary, this study will explore how the representation of animals in Antigone guides us through the depiction of dictators in Latin American reinterpretations, offering a rich and meaningful metaphor for analyzing issues of power, justice, and resistance in different cultural contexts. Animals, whether as symbols of bravery or representations of dictatorial oppression, enrich dramatic literature and allow for a critical reflection on the nature of power and the struggle for freedom in both ancient and contemporary settings.

Antigone as a Spokesperson for Historical Memory Tragedy and Identity

Silvina Díaz — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 17:40:22 +0000

In the debate, always ongoing in Latin America, on the role of historical memory in the configuration of our collective identity, theatre acquires a fundamental importance for its ability to propose transformative readings of the present and the past that emphasise the processual character, in permanent reconstruction, of memory. If Griselda Gambaro’s Antigone furiosa, through allegory and parody, takes on the claim of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo until she herself becomes a disappeared person, Marianella Morena’s Antigone Oriental re-semantizes the sophochlean tragedy based on the real experience of former political prisoners, daughters and exiles of the Uruguayan military dictatorship. From the parameters of
the so-called “documentary theater”, and from a profoundly moving experience, the latter puts theater in link with the notion of “history” through experience, document and testimony. The Theban heroine appears, in both cases, as the spokesperson of a counter-hegemonic memory, constructed by multiple voices: that of the absent, that of the survivors, that of the witnesses. Voices that question and deconstruct the institutional discourse of history, which unifies and totalizes
the experience of the past. But at the same time it assumes a fierce struggle against the suppression of memory and against complicit silence, appealing to the same society that cries out “never again” and demands justice. The classic myth, traversed by a traumatic historical event, such as state terrorism in Latin America, unfolds new meanings and territorialized readings. We will investigate the ways in which both pieces address the problem of the disappeared, repression and institutional violence, as well as their aesthetic treatments and poetic conceptions.

Teatralidad política y emoción estética. Dispositivos dramatúrgicos del “efecto de distanciamiento” en cuatro versiones de Antígona

Aldo Rubén Pricco — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 18:12:48 +0000

The classical tragic canon has been considered as a paradigm of intertextuality conducive to constructing theatrical discourses linked to historical situations and phenomena of political-social conjuncture from different eras through the dynamics of a “controlled anachronism” (Loraux, 2008). This is attested, in the particular case of Sophocles’ Antigone, by the numerous rewritings, which, based on the scheme of the opposition between human-divine law and that of the State, are based on the notorious applicability of the topic to civil wars, to struggles for justice, to the tension between freedom and oppression, to the role of women and their possibilities of influencing public life and, even, to readings from the perspectives of Lacanian psychoanalysis (about the “dysfunctionality” of the Oedipus family or death), among other possible meanings. In this paper, we will refer to the notion of “aesthetic emotion” (Damasio, 2010) within the framework of political theatricality (Dubatti, 2003; 2014; Castri, 1978; Rancière, 2005; Boal, 1980; 2004), in order to determine possible modalities of the “alienation effect” (verfremdungseffekt) and the operation of its dialectical relationship with “expectatorial empathy” (Sofia, 2015; Stern, 2010). To this end, we resort to a succinct analysis and commentary on the dramaturgical and scenic devices of Antigones by Brecht (1948), Gambaro (1989 [1986]), Folini (1998) and Watanabe (2009 [1999]). In regards to this foursome, we aim to propose not only a literary but also a scenic point of view, through the description of basic rhetorical procedures of stage
management, aimed at the “cenesthetic contagion” of the spectator and its critical correlate.

Ciudad, Teatro e Historieta. Dos heroicos personajes: Antígona y Lisístrata

Rómulo Pianacci — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Out of the numerous rewrites of these myths in contemporary theatre and starting at the variants of these myths, generally it has been stressed on the development of the conflict that the characters contextually assume. The opposition of freedom to oppression, central subject of this congress, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Carnations Revolution, compels us to a new approach from a different point of view. The City was chosen as the unavoidable start, besides the two examples of new supports and genres to which contemporary artists employ.

The Chilean Antigones: rewritings of the myth in contemporary Chilean theater (2000-2010)

Maria Morant Giner — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper is part of a research on the use and rewriting of Greek myths in Chilean drama in the 1990s and 2000s. In this period there is a notable increase in the theatrical reworking of the Greek legacy. In 2001 the first Chilean adaptation of the myth was written and premiered: Antígona, (historia de objetos perdidos) by Daniela Cápona. A few years later, El thriller de Antígona and Hnos. S.A. La maldición de la sangre Labdácida by Ana López Montaner and Antígona en el espejo by Juan Carlos Villavicencio were released. Thus, the purpose of this work will be to offer a first approach to the three plays, framing their reading and analysis within the tradition of Latin American Antigones.

“My Heart Tells Me…” Antigone in a Movie by Sophie Deraspe

João de Mancelos — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In the movie Antigone (2019), Canadian screenwriter and director Sophie Deraspe subverts Sophocles’s homonymous theater play (411 B.C.). In this paper, I intend to examine the mechanisms used to achieve this adaptation, which is as imaginative as radical. To do so, I compare both texts regarding the four narrative categories: space, time, characters, and plot. To support my study, I resort to the director’s statement and to essays by several theater and film critics.

Antigone with a Cape Verdean voice in the poetry of Vera Duarte

Susana Marques — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The universal and versatile nature of Greco-Latin myths is shown by their constant revisitations by various contemporary authors. This heritage, so often reinterpreted, is capable of ‘telling’ of present realities, in permanent, ongoing dialogue across eras, spaces, sensibilities, and purposes. This is the case among several Portuguese-speaking African writers, who often evoke figures such as Antigone to articulate specific and contemporary African experiences. This contribution focuses on the significance of the memory of Oedipus’s defiant daughter in the poetic works of Cape Verdean writer Vera Duarte, whose writing gives women particular prominence.

A Chinese Reading of the Myth of Antigone

Ana Cristina Alves — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Firstly, the author seeks to analyze in this paper the Eastern/Chinese influences on Greek thought through the conduct of Antigone, brought to us by Sophocles’ tragedy. Secondly, will be presented the idea of freedom via the conflict experienced by the tragic heroine, expressed in the opposition between nomos and physis, and finally the ideas of freedom in China and West will be examined.

Qiu Jin: the poetics of revolt of a Chinese Antigone?

Oriane Chevalier — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Qiu Jin 秋瑾 (1875-1907) was a Chinese revolutionary poet and feminist. Beheaded after a failed attempt to overthrow the imperial power of the Qing, she is now considered a national martyr, having sacrificed her life for the freedom of the Chinese people and for equality between men and women. This article examines the poetics of revolt in Qiu Jin’s work by comparing it to the figure of Antigone, both heroines sacrificing their lives to protest against tyrannical power. Like Antigone, Qiu Jin adopts an ambivalent position within the family structure, abandoning husband and children while defending filial piety and sisterhood, and seeks to redefine the place of women in Chinese society. Although she dips her pen into the oppression of the Chinese people by condemning the Qing dynasty and the Western powers, Qiu Jin’s poetics of revolt is not confined to a descriptive function: it has a performative function, aiming to unify the nation while working towards the emancipation of women. This poetics draws on baihua, the Chinese vernacular, while appropriating literary forms traditionally associated with women, such as tanci, and defining new female models. Handling both pen and sword, Qiu Jin projects herself as a modern nüxia, while following in the footsteps of legendary heroines she has met through her reading. Nevertheless, it seems that the poetic ethos that Qiu Jin forges for herself influences her own destiny by taking on a programmatic function. This article sheds new light on Qiu Jin’s poetics, showing that the poetess is gradually invaded by the sacrificial ethos she has constructed in her poems.

Aaliyah: Antigone the voice for British South Asian Muslim Communities

Lottie Parkyn — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

As with most Greek tragedies, the appeal of these ancient texts is their ability to continually talk to our sense of humanity and ask ‘what would you do?’. They specifically lend themselves well as case studies to civic discussions; therefore, it is not surprising that during a number of key moments in British history, we see revivals of certain plays. Sophocles’ Antigone is such a production which has had a lengthy performance history in Britain, however, with the introduction of Anouilh’s (1949) and Brecht’s adaptations (1967) to the London theatre scene we see Antigone subsequently used as a vehicle for politically charged discussions surrounding current affairs, in particular anti-war messaging and criticism of government policy. While Britain has been multicultural for a lot longer than some would like to accept, the demographic producing and creating adaptations of Greek tragedy were, and in many ways continue to be, predominantly white British, and rarely reflect the diversity within British society. However, there are a number of playwrights and authors outside of this cohort who are utilising the plays and mythologies of the Greco-Roman world to vocalise their lived experiences within the UK. This is seen notably in adaptations of Sophocles’ Antigone since 2017. This paper will focus on how the tragedy of Antigone has been utilised to discuss the moral dilemmas that multicultural Britain faces, particularly from the perspective of British-Pakistani and British-Bengali Muslims. It will explore how the success of Kamila Shamsie’s novel Home Fire (2017) opened the door for new interpretations leading to the productions of Aaliyah (After Antigone) in 2021 and Inua Ellams’ Antigone in 2022. The core of this paper will discuss how these adaptations use the tragedy to explore the question of what it means to be a British Muslim today.

Chilon and the Opposition to Tyranny in the Tradition of the Seven Wise Men

Delfim F. Leão — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Through the mouth of Demaratus, Herodotus presents Chilon as being the sagest among the Spartans (7.235.5), thus paving the way that would lead to the inclusion of Chilon among the stable group of Seve Wise Men. However, this note is relatively discrete. More information is provided by the anecdote narrated earlier by the same Herodotus (1.59.1-3), depicting a meeting between Chilon and Hippocrates, the would-be father of the future tyrant Peisistratus. The anecdote reveals a basic animosity against tyranny, which will hang as a conceptual background in the tradition of the sophoi — despite the fact that some of the figures included in the group had exercised tyrannical rule. The historicity of this encounter of Chilon and Hippocrates must, understandably, be perceived with a good deal of skepticism. This does not prevent, however, that Chilon’s premonitory warnings contributed to establishing an authoritative terminus a quo for the tradition of Spartan opposition to tyrannical governments, which would become a distinguishing trait, as can be seen e.g. in Herodotus (5.92.1-2), Thucydides (1.18), Aristoteles (Pol. 1310b-1311b), Plutarch (Mor. 859C-D), and Polybius (4.81.13). A papyrus from the 2nd century BC (P. Ryl. 18 - FGrHist 105 F 1) even maintains that, during Chilon’s ephorate, the Spartans would have waged a systematic campaign against the tyrannies then existing in Greece. It is the goal of this paper to analyze how this opposition to tyranny became more broadly part of the Seven Sages tradition, takings as reference mainly the testimonies of Herodotus, Plato, Plutarch and Diogenes Laertius.

By a female’s hand: Judith, the Jew

Rui Miguel Duarte — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Tyrants and tyrannies were a common theme among the Declamators and Hellenistic and Byzantine school rhetoric. Among the cases dealt with was that of a woman who had gone up to a tyrant’s bedroom to kill him, claiming afterwards the due reward. In Antigone, the autocrat imposes his will as law, in a state where no woman would ever make laws. In Israel, at a fictional time when references to empires that never coexisted are mixed, a respected Jewish noblewoman and widow comes out from the shadow with a plan to execute Holofernes, the Assyrian commander, whose forces are on the verge of destroying Israel. Like her Theban emulous, she does so on her own initiative and constrained by religious piety. Unlike this one, her move obeys the impetus for an existential struggle of his nation, a struggle which is for the freedom, identity and preservation of his people and the religious cult homeland, in the land they had for their own, against the risk of extermination by the ferocity of an impious and oppressive foreign horde. Judith assumes the personal design of tyrannicide. The book celebrates the courage of a woman who is the feminine hand of the God who wrought the liberation of his people. A woman becomes a national hero in a world where men had the preeminence. There is a mixture of qualities generally attributed to men, such as the prudence and courage in councils, with virtues considered as properly female. She is not a participant in armed struggle. She is exalted for her female seduction ability, which leads to deception a man who is the type of the proud and lustful. Finally, there is the modest and temperate life that she kept in widowhood, as an example for his fellow citizens.

Myth in fiction: around A cidade de Ulisses

Alleid Ribeiro Machado — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article presents an analysis of the novel A cidade de Ulisses, by Teolinda Gersão (2017), aiming to understand how recent Portuguese fiction has revisited both past and current history through its founding myths. It examines how the reconfiguration of the myth of Ulysses is carried out in this narrative authored by a woman, presupposing that such revisitation becomes an opportunity to, on the one hand, highlight a discussion around the woes caused by colonization and its ramifications (Real, 2012), and on the other hand, to address the condition of women. In order to trace the myth’s traces and ascertain its update in relation to what was described, it first undertakes a theoretical journey around the definition of myth, as proposed
by Eliade (2000) and Pimentel (2008). Secondly, as in Teolinda Gersão’s narrative, the myth is reconfigured within the city space where personal and collective memories intertwine, bringing into discussion issues related to geographical and symbolic space, as well as memory, identity, and power, according to authors such as Candau (2021), Febvre (2009), and Foucault (2007).

Alice Moderno, the “Antigone’s daughter” discreetly emancipated

Rui Tavares de Faria — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In 2011, Hilary Owen and Cláudia Pazos Alonso published, under the auspices of Bucknell University, Antigone’s Daughters? Gender, Genealogy and the Politics of Authorship in 20th Century Portuguese Women’s Writing, a volume that deals with the way in which six female Portuguese writers of the last century – Florbela Espanca, Irene Lisboa, Agustina Bessa-Luís, Natália Correia, Hélia Correia and Lídia Jorge – can be considered “Antigone’s daughters”, for having shown insubordination, through socio-professional action and through literary work, in the face of political, social and artistic values imposed by the patriarchy then in force, which affected the most varied domains. In the same way that Antigone faced Creon and human laws, these Portuguese women will also have assumed a similar conduct, defying society, and male figures of power. Taking into account this premise and the study published by those Anglo-Saxon scholars, we propose to increase the number of female writers who, in Portugal at the end of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, would have dressed, in some way, the skin of Antigone and here it is important to suggest and attribute “the same filiation” to Alice Moderno (1867-1946), a discreetly emancipated figure at a time when the female voice was silenced by the male gaze and in a restricted and cramped space, such as the Azorean island of S. Miguel. Her life, marked by a social conduct clothed with a certain boldness and dedicated to noble social causes and values, is of interest as an example of the role of Portuguese women as mobilizers of forms of liberation, especially in the island territory.
of Portuguese women as mobilizers of forms of liberation, especially in the island territory.

Legend and Myth: Lucretia and Daphne, Virtue and Victory

Elaine Cristina Prado dos Santos — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

It’s always hard to describe a myth, according to Simone de Beauvoir (2016); it is by times so fluid and contradictory that some connections are not perceived, at first: the woman is, at the same time, Pandora and Athena, Eve and the Virgin Mary. She is the source of life, the elementary silence of truth, the man’s prey and also his loss. From these statements on the female universe, this article aims to proceed a study about the legend of Lucrece, depicted in the ancient book History of Rome, by Titus Livius, meaning to establish historical, mythical and thematic relations, as the myth of the ideally virtuous woman, assaulted in the domus area, with the mythical female figure Daphne, from the Metamorphosis, by the Latin poet Ovid, persecuted by the god Apollo and metamorphosed into a laurel. Having as a parameter the myth the myth of the ideal virtuous Woman and as a basis works from Barthes, Mircea Eliade, Simone de Beauvoir and de Sant’Anna, we mean to question if this Roman ideal of women can still be portrayed in contemporary society and which sense of voice women in the 21st century have acquired.

Phryne and the Violence of the Exposed Body: A Tool for Women’s Liberation or an Instrument in Service of Men?

Joana Pinto Salvador Costa — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 12:18:59 +0000

The present study aims to understand the reason behind the use of Phryne’s female body to obtain the defendant’s acquittal in the speech of Hyperides. Using the trial of the courtesan as a starting point, we will attempt to uncover, through behavioral analysis, what might have led to the inevitability of the act of nudity, and in turn, the reactions it triggered among the judges. Through an interdisciplinary approach, we propose a gender study that links the criminal act to the necessity of the display and reception of the image of this naked body. To what extent can this decision be considered a form of female liberation? Or, on the contrary, does it embody masculine ideals masked by the unpredictability attributed to the feminine?

Realpolitik: A Political Reading of Alexander Zeldin’s The Inequalities Trilogy

Bruno Henriques — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 12:11:31 +0000

In The Inequalities, Alexander Zeldin shows how injustice, the result of a violent process of capitalist exploitation, arrogantly governs the lives of those struggling to survive in England over the past decade: a dehumanizing dystopia carried out by the Conservative Party. Obliterated by labor, economic, social, political, and ontological precarity, the starving day laborers find, in Zeldin’s theatre, an opportunity to forge a communal voice of resistance — which is to say, a voice of political awakening. Zeldin, however, rejects this adjective; he feels it as a label from which he tries to free his theatre, because in his view, Beyond Caring, LOVE, and Faith, Hope and Charity stage heroes and heroines, not ideas or ideologically driven programs. In this paper, I will attempt to understand and question the reasons underlying Zeldin’s resistance. Alexander Zeldin is a playwright/ theater maker I consider deeply political.

About the hunt and the hunter: from Machado de Assis to Sérgio Bianchi

Francisco Topa — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The paper analyses Machado de Assis’s short story “Pai contra mãe” and reflects on the vision of the slave world that serves as its context, also interrogating the way in which freedom and its limits are represented in the text. Secondly, it briefly studies the free adaptation of the narrative made by Sérgio Bianchi in 2005 in the film Quanto vale ou é por quilo?.

A double-edged sword: the question of power in the dramatic work of Abdulai Sila

Martin Neumann — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 11:14:54 +0000

One of the central aspects of the myth of Antigone revolves around the question of who holds power and how it is used. This problem urgently manifests itself in the current situation in Guinea-Bissau, a country that has experienced a succession of 17 presidents and 32 prime ministers since its independence in 1974, along with at least six coups and counter-coups, to sum up, political instability mainly driven by personal vanity. It is well known that political power, despite not being inherently negative, carries the risk of becoming autonomous, inevitably seducing its holders to use it unscrupulously for purely private economic gain. In the first three plays of Guinean author Abdulai Sila, As orações de Mansata (2007), Dois tiros e uma gargalhada (2013), and Kangalutas (2018) the acquisition and use of power are crucial issues, demonstrating that the specific historical situation of Guinea-Bissau is perceived as the greatest problem of contemporary society. When it comes to ruling and enriching oneself, almost everyone ends up betraying the revolutionary ideals of the past. Thus, both As orações de Mansata and Dois tiros e uma gargalhada depict scoundrels fighting and slaughtering one
another to gain power. Fortunately, in both plays, these (self-)destructive tendencies are counterbalanced by a pronounced pragmatism that transcends political partisanship and ideological biases, a constellation that repeats itself with exclusively female protagonists and similar outcomes in Kangalutas. Sila recognises the issues of power abuse and acknowledges that the mechanisms governing this process are, on the one hand, human; however, on the other, they are not unavoidable. The three plays highlight the appropriate strategies for eschewing this deleterious effect, showcasing individuals who know how to resist the seductions of power. The wise elders, with their ancestral knowledge, and the younger generation, with their faith in a better future, can come together to overcome the immense problems that currently plague Guinean reality

The Struggle for Women in firminia Literature

Paulo Bogéa, Algemira de Macêdo Mendes — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 10:45:04 +0000

The role of women in society has always been undermined by patriarchal power, so that men do not lose their supremacy in dictating social rules. Lélia González (2020) emphasizes that Latin American women have been subjected to male power for a long time, but when they realize that they are the protagonists of their history, they raise their voices (hooks, 2019) and echo the liberating scream. From this point on, we will analyze the novel Úrsula (1859), by Maria Firmina dos Reis, to understand the importance of female characters in the process of liberation of women in XIX century Brazil. Because Ursula, Luísa B., mother of Tancredo, mother of Túlio, Preta Susana and Adelaide, are different from the standards of the time, because they are not just representing the social roles of daughter, wife and mother. Therefore, our research follows a literary-sociological line, since they are closely related, especially when it comes to a narrative set in the colonial period, in which female roles were imposed and were no more than a framework for engendering their identities.