Navigation – Sitemap

StartseiteNuméros29Traditions du patrimoine antiqueSophoclean scholarship as a tool ...

Traditions du patrimoine antique

Sophoclean scholarship as a tool to interpret eighteenth-century England

Dr Cressida Ryan
p. 149-160

Zusammenfassungen

Dans cet article, je vais aborder les travaux érudits sur Sophocle parus au xviiie siècle en Angleterre. Je considère que la critique textuelle et l’annotation de Sophocle montrent certains aspects de la relation entre l’érudition, l’esthétique littéraire, la religion et la politique. En cette ère de nouvelles approches de la réception classique, j’examine le texte comme réception, avec une attention particulière pour l’Œdipe à Colone de Sophocle, et indique de quelle manière le texte devient un outil pour penser son propre objet, au-delà de sa fonction d’enregistrement ou de transmission d’une ancienne représentation.

Seitenanfang

Volltext

  • 1 See C. Güthenke, 2009. ‘Shop Talk: Reception Studies and Recent Work in This History of Scholarsh (...)
  • 2 A. Grafton, G. W Most, and S. Settis, 2010. The Classical Tradition. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard Uni (...)
  • 3 See particularly the work of C. Stray, e.g. C. S. Kraus and C. Stray, 2016. Classical Commentarie (...)

1The history of scholarship and the nature of philology are undergoing a reappreciation as parts of this new form of reception1. Clear gaps in this new wave of attention emerge around 1500-1800 scholarship. Text as reception, or tradition, is not a part of Grafton, Most and Settis’ huge Classical Tradition volume, and as Richard Tarrant notes, where Brill and Blackwell companion volumes do include articles on textual histories, Cambridge ones do not2. Work on English scholarship, moreover tends to focus on 1800 and beyond3.

  • 4 For the background to this see C. Ryan, 2010, Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus in eighteenth-century (...)

2This article, therefore, offers a starting point to explore how eighteenth-century Sophoclean scholarship acts as a way to understand the changing political, cultural and religious landscape in eighteenth-century England, and how that landscape in turn affected the next generation of scholarship. I consider various aspects of textual criticism, including accurate ascribing of conjectures, the relationship between conjectural studies and authorial culture, and the usefulness of an apparatus criticus for pedagogical purposes. I focus in particular on Sophocles’ Oedipus Coloneus; this is well-suited to such an analysis because of its sudden increase in popularity in the eighteenth century4. I comment on Sophoclean editions from the anonymous 1722 two-volume edition until Elmsley’s 1823 Oedipus Coloneus, with a focus on those scholars who worked in England and whose work predated Brunck.

  • 5 C. Martindale, 2013. ‘Reception - a New Humanism? Receptivity, Pedagogy, the Trans­historical’. C (...)
  • 6 P. E. Easterling, 2013.‘Perspectives on Antiquity and Tragedy’. Classical Receptions Journal 5 (2 (...)
  • 7 P. Hardie, 2013. ‘Redeeming The Text: Reception Studies and the Renaissance’. Classical Reception (...)
  • 8 S. Butler, 2016. Deep Classics: Rethinking Classical Reception. London: Bloomsbury.
  • 9 J. I. Porter, 2008. ‘Future Reception Studies’. In A Companion to Classical Reception, edited by (...)

3Charles Martindale calls for a new kind of humanism in approaches to classical reception, which allow for transhistorical study that neither historicises nor universalises5. In responding through a discussion of Greek tragedy, Pat Easterling discusses how ancient scholia give us an insight into contemporary reception of the plays6. As Philip Hardie warns, ‘any attempt to construct a framework of contexts will be conditioned by the choices and emphases of the modern cultural or literary historian, which in turn will depend on the state of knowledge and research at the time’7. In turning to a greater contextualisation of the eighteenth-century texts I do not seek to offer some kind of straightforward historicist approach, but to examine their engagement with their contexts as a similarly enlightening form of reception, yet one that both reflects and shapes that context. I take a cue from Shane Butler’s call for a deeper approach to reception studies, appreciating the layering of the discipline and the multiple forms of analysis this requires8. James Porter notes the pressures of realising how time-bound one’s studies are; while accepting this of my own position, I also seek to explore the nature of that contingency at various points in the history of Sophocles9.

4Lloyd-Jones and Wilson exhibit a pessimistic outlook on the value and potential of Sophoclean textual criticism.

  • 10 H. Lloyd-Jones and N. G Wilson, 1997. Sophocles: Second Thoughts. Hypomnemata. Götttingen: Vanden (...)

5The manuscripts contain a great deal of corruption, as even conservative critics can hardly refuse to admit, and the difficulties of the language are such that even if we possessed a text corrected by the author no living scholar could be confident that he could translate it without error10.

  • 11 E. J. Kenney, 1974. The Classical Text: Aspects of Editing in the Age of the Printed Book. Sather (...)
  • 12 Given that my time period lies between the two Acts of Union, and all my examples are English, I (...)

6E. J. Kenney describes how haphazard textual criticism was before the nineteenth century11. Whatever the truth of their pessimism, people continue to try both to ‘improve’ and to understand the text in culturally contingent ways. The Eighteenth Century saw increased attempts to engage critically with the text of Sophocles, culminating in Brunck’s 1786 influential edition, making Sophocles an appropriate case study of the development of textual criticism at that time. Sources include editions with no notes, editions with notes, expanded editions with copious notes such as John Burton’s Pentalogia, miscellaneous notes published independently of texts, points discussed in correspondence, and handwritten marginalia. In this article I focus on various published notes and personal annotations as aids to reading texts and contexts. I approach them in chronological order, with a focus on Burton, whose engagement with Sophocles is the most comprehensive. I reassign and reconsider some conjectures based on reading marginalia in individual copies of texts. I evaluate the use and impact of some paratextual features, and situate textual and literary critical comments in the context of eighteenth-century culture and politics. In so doing I deepen our understanding of Sophocles, and of how eighteenth-century scholarship worked, and offer a paradigm for a kind of scholarship which could be applied more generally to classical texts. I also argue for a relationship between productions of thoughtful scholarly engagements with Sophocles and developments in English political and military conflicts12.

  • 13 S.A. Gurd, 2005. Iphigenias at Aulis: Textual Multiplicity, Radical Philology. Ithaca, N.Y., Bris (...)
  • 14 Ibid. 25.
  • 15 R. Tarrant, Texts, 140.

7Sean Gurd argues that a study of the process and history of textual criticism is vital for well-grounded literary study, and describes his form of reading a pluralist literary philology as ‘radical philology’13. Gurd outlines how this idea of trying to study texts in their original context is akin to Winckelmann’s style of Classicism, viewing Greece as a lost region of ideal unity; he notes how such an approach, viewing text as if an outsider with a bird’s eye view, fails to appreciate that the texts have been produced divorced from their original context14. As Tarrant discusses, an apparatus criticus and edited text can be a useful tool in finding out more about the culture in which it was produced, beyond its use in establishing an authoritative text.15 Consequently, I now turn to each of the English editions of Sophocles produced 1722-1786, and discuss not only the nature of the engagement with Sophocles in each, but also their contribution to the developing political and aesthetic atmosphere in eighteenth-century England.

The Texts

Two anonymous versions published in London by Tonson and Watts, 1722 and 1747.

  • 16 See P.J. Finglass, 2009. ‘Unpublished Conjectures at Leiden on the Greek Dramatists.’ GRBS 49, 18 (...)
  • 17 [Sophokleous Oidipous Epi Kolōnōi] = Sophoclis Oedipus Coloneus. Sophoclis Oedipus Coloneus. Oxon (...)

8A modern apparatus criticus names the editor’s choice of material referring to the sources of different conjectures and emendations16. This becomes far harder when the source is anonymous. Two anonymous editions of Sophocles were published by Tonson and Watts in London, in 1722 and 1747. These are not identical, although they share much in common and would appear to be the product of the same unknown editor. The text itself has not been changed, but a number of footnotes have been added, numbering between twenty and sixty per play. Both editions are mentioned from Elmsley’s 1823 Oedipus Coloneus (claiming to follow Brunck) through to modern apparatus critici as both print a number of conjectural readings17.

9Editions from at least Heath (1762) onwards, including both Lloyd-Jones and Wilson’s Oxford Classical Text and Dawe’s Teubner, attribute up to four readings to the 1747 edition.

44 ἀλλ’ ἵλεῳ μὲν τὸν ἱκέτην δεξαίατο – τὸν editio Londiniensis a. 1747 τὸνδ’.

865 θεῖέν μ’ ἄφωνον τῆσδε τῆς ἀρᾶς ἔτι – τῆς ed. Londiniensis a. 1747 γῆς codd.

1109 δυσμόρου τε δύσμορα - γε ed. Londiniensis a. 1747 τε codd.

1402 τοιοῦτον οἷον οὐδὲ φωνῆσαί τινι –τινι ed. Londiniensis a. 1747 τινα codd.

10None of these reading appears in the 1747 edition. (i), (ii) and (iv) are, however, present in the 1746 Johnson edition published in Oxford. (iii) remains more elusive. Elmsley prints a note:

Δυσμόρου γε δύσμορα.] [Legendum] δυσμόρου γε. REISK. Legendum cum editore Londinensi δυσμόρου γε. MUSGR. Perperam libri omnes δυσμόρου τε. BRUNCK sic omnes MSS. nostri.

  • 18 Bentley’s notes to the Stephanus (transcribed by T. Kidd) is to be found in the Cambridge Univers (...)
  • 19 Tyrwhitt’s copy was bequeathed to the British Library and deposited there on his death in 1786 (6 (...)

11The eighteenth-century polymath Richard Bentley owned a copy of Stephanus’ 1568 edition of Sophocles18. A later hand annotating this attributes the conjectures to Tyrwhitt, confirmed by Tyrwhitt’s own marginalia in his copy of the Stephanus (discussed further below)19. As Patrick Finglass demonstrates, once a reading has been misattributed, this misattribution is likely to be perpetuated; if we disregard the details of eighteenth-century scholarship, we risk misrepresenting the history of the text, but also overlooking and misunderstanding the relationship between text and context.

Johnson, London, 1746.

  • 20 See G. Goodwin and P. Carter. n.d. ‘Johnson, Thomas (D. 1746)’. Oxford Dictionary of National Bio (...)
  • 21 They are first published as such by J. Burton 1758, Pentalogia Sive Tragœdiarum Græcarum Delectus (...)
  • 22 See E. Hall and F. Macintosh, 2005, Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre, 1660-1914. Oxford: Oxf (...)

12In 1705 Thomas Johnson brought out an edition of Ajax and Electra; in 1708 one of Antigone and Trachiniae. It was not until after his death in 1746 that the remaining three plays were published as a group20. The three Theban plays were not published as a trilogy21. The complete plays were brought out in 1745, and reprinted frequently, notably in 1758. His edition prints the text with very little annotation, but includes Latin endnotes discussing some aspects of the text, and the Triclinian metrical scholia. The notes cover matters of textual variants. He provides cross-references to other ancient works, and to English literature22. Comments such as at p. 531:

317 Στείχουσαν ἀσσον ἡμῶν, Αἰτναίας ἔπι Spondaeus in pede quarto. Malim ἧμιν, ultimâ brevi, vel si vis, ἡμῖν, neque enim de accentibus litigebamus.

(A spondee in the fourth foot. I prefer ἧμιν with a long final syllable, or if you want ἡμῖν, for we are not bothered about the accents).

  • 23 Johnson taught in Ipswich, at Eton, in Middlesex and in Essex (Chigwell).

13further demonstrate that metrical issues were a concern. A schoolmaster, it seems his edition was produced for use in schools, where discussion of the text itself was not the prime objective23. The edition was widely disseminated and was used in a range of schools. The reader is presented with an uncontroversial text to read, disguising the inevitable construct which any printed text offers.

Burton, Oxford, 1758.

  • 24 G. Highet, 1967, The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature. Repr. (...)
  • 25 Burton is mentioned at D. K. Money, 1998, The English Horace: Anthony Alsop and the Tradition of (...)

14John Burton’s 1758 text takes a different approach, with similarly pedagogical aims. His contribution to Sophoclean scholarship has not generally been reckoned of enormous value: it featured on the Eton Greek syllabus from the 1760s. The lack of reprints after 1801 suggests a less than favourable reception, and it was quickly supplanted by those such as Brunck, Elmsley, Dindorf, and Hermann. Burton is not mentioned by Highet; Sandys mentions him only to comment disparagingly on Thomas Burgess and his 1778 commentary24. I discuss the edition not in order to claim that it is particularly erudite or influential, but to appreciate some of the ways in which it reflects contemporary conceptions of scholarship, yet also strives to reconfigure these25.

  • 26 J. Burton, Pentalogia, 54-5.
  • 27 In 1758 Burton also published De litterarum graecarum institutionibus dissertatio critica, a lett (...)

15The edition opens with the longest introduction of any eighteenth-century edition: twenty-two pages outlining the history of the edition and its pedagogical outlook, a list of the texts used in compiling it26, sixteen pages summarising the plots, ninety pages of δευτέραι φροντίδες in the 1801 edition, and some addenda. A variety of features bear witness to Burton’s pedagogic aim27. In his preface, he wrote:

‘Non cupimus, id quod esset plane infinitum, Criticorum hominum fastidiis satisfacere, sed juventutis literarum Graecarum studiosae utilitatibus prospicere;’

(‘We don’t want, what is clearly never-ending, to please the fastidiousness of critical men, but to work towards something youthful for young men studying Greek literature’.)

16Pages 14-19 of his praeloquium discuss the use of Latin in the book. Latin is used throughout; he included a lexicon at the end of the book, saving his readers the trouble of looking up words elsewhere. The lexicon is also in Latin; Burton may have tried to help his younger readers, but even they were expected to understand a reasonable amount of Latin.

17Throughout his commentary, he explains points of criticism, accidence and syntax, for example:

Oedipus Coloneus 29 Νῶϊν] Μονοσυλλάβως, hic legitur per synizesin

Oedipus Coloneus 87 ἐξέχρη] Tertia Persona Singularis Imperfecti Activi (ut videtur) verbi ἐκχράω. Fit autem secundum Atticam formationem, qua α ex contractione natum in η mutatur.

Oedipus Coloneus 336 Τἀμὰ δυστήνου κακὰ] Pro τὰ ἐμοῦ δυστήνου κακά. Pro Substantivus enim Genitivi casus ponere solent Graeci Adjectiva Possessiva.

  • 28 T. Charles-Edwards and J. Reid, 2016, Corpus Christi College, Oxford: a history. Oxford: Oxford U (...)

18Such comments suggest a range of readers may be expected. Parsing notes help the beginner, stylistic notes the more advanced; this edition may appeal less to the advanced scholar, as such comments may be found patronising. Yet, significant scholarship has gone into its preparation, suggesting that to some degree Burton used this edition to attempt to demonstrate his own scholarly credentials. This befits someone who wore the mantle of both a school teacher at Eton, and a scholar at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.28

  • 29 “ is printed at the start of the phrase and any following lines.

19One of the other features of the Pentalogia is that Burton tagged a number of lines with inverted commas29.

Play

Total no. lines

according to Burton

Lines marked “…

%

Oedipus Tyrannus

1529

26

1.79

Oedipus Coloneus

1779

41

2.30

Antigone

1353

119

8.80

Phoenissae

1795

94

5.27

Septem

1086

10

0.92

  • 30 See 150-53 in R. Cressida, 2017, Camerarius and Sophocles, in T. Baier (ed.) Camerarius Polyhisto (...)
  • 31 See A. A. Long, 1968, Language and Thought in Sophocles: A Study of Abstract Nouns and Poetic Tec (...)

20Such paratextual markers are common in contemporary texts. In my 2017 article on Camerarius and Sophocles I discuss the history of these markings more thoroughly30: derived from the diple, they can perform a number of functions. In this instance, these lines appear to be sententiae, perhaps for transcription into commonplace books, offering a further didactic steer. Footnotes also mark some of these lines. Antigone 181-189, for example, is marked and has a footnote: ‘Totum hunc locum, usque ad vers. 196. recitat Demosthenes in Orat. περὶ Παραπρεσβείας p.331. edit. Franc….’. Burton noted that this passage was quoted by Demosthenes, but does not quote the whole passage himself. His use of quotation marks thus becomes harder to understand. Most are only short passages; the longest continuous quotation is Phoenissae 548-59; the only dialogue is Oedipus Coloneus 800-2, a good example of Sophocles’ philosophical thinking, going some way towards justifying the play’s inclusion in the volume31. The didactic function of the text is further expressed in the opening notes, where Burton gave a list of sources discussing the play, covering Valerius Maximus, Cicero Cato Maior de Senectute, Macrobius, Apollodorus, Homeric Scholiasts and Pausanias.

  • 32 Oedipus Tyrannus, Preface iv, quoted at M. L. Clarke, 1945, Greek Studies in England, 1700-1830. (...)

21Pentalogia was intended as an educational text; its lexicon, commentary and marking of sententious lines bear witness to this aim. It contains the most comprehensive set of textual notes of any eighteenth-century English edition of Sophocles. Burton attempted to make transparent the sources of his text and the possible variations on it. Elmsley’s description of him as ab omni critica disciplina alienissimus demonstrates that this was not an entirely successful way to promote confidence in his abilities as a critic32. It does, however, represent the first attempt at a reasonably comprehensive Sophoclean apparatus criticus; Burton sensed a need to engage critically with the text of Sophocles and lay the issues before his young readers.

Burton and Aristotle

  • 33 For a summary of the play’s first thousand years of transmission, see P. E. Easterling, 2006, ‘So (...)
  • 34 J. Burton, Pentalogia, 4-5.
  • 35 For example, he refers to Rhetoric iii.6 at his commentary on Oedipus Tyrannus 1194 (1801:216-7), (...)
  • 36 On the development of the ‘Aristotelian’ Unities, see S. Halliwell, 1986, Aristotle’s Poetics, Lo (...)
  • 37 See T. C. W. Blanning, 2002, The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture: Old Regime Europe, 16 (...)

22Pentalogia was also the first time that the Theban plays were collected in this way33. Burton gave an explanation for his choice in his introduction, couched in Aristotelian terms (e.g. describing an effectus morales, κάθαρσις τῶν παθημάτων)34. He quotes Aristotle extensively throughout the edition, describing him as Auctor gravissimus35. Despite his clear attention to the Greek, however, his reasoning demonstrates that he is following the sixteenth and seventeenth-century conception of the ‘Unities’ developed by Castelvetro.36 A key contemporary codi­fication of the unities was Boileau’s 1674 L’Art Poétique, and English aesthetics had reacted against them in part as a reaction against such French criticism37. Dacier’s 1692 edition of Aristotle’s Poetics, however, remained an important influence on English aesthetics, and Burton had read his work, referring to it in his commentary on Oedipus Tyrannus 1316.

Burton and the sublime

  • 38 Lucretius’ role in the development of Burke’s sublime with reference to Sophocles is discussed in (...)
  • 39 Oedipus Tyrannus v.1402, 1045; Oedipus Coloneus 1458; Septem title page, 42, 45 (x3).
  • 40 Modern editors do cite the reading of Oedipus Tyrannus 1405, but not the one of Septem45.

23Burton’s use of Aristotle is not novel in the context of eighteenth-century aesthetics, but in using the term sublimius in his justification for his work he above refers us to the concept of the sublime, suggesting that he was engaging with the growing eighteenth-century interest in Longinus. This is seen in his choice of example texts in his commentary; commenting on line 30 of Phoenissae, he cited Lucretius De Rerum Natura II.6, an important passage in the development of the concept of the (Longinian) sublime (De Rerum Natura II.1-6)38. Burton explicitly cited Longinus seven points in the text39. Textually, Longinus preserves two variant readings, Oedipus Tyrannus 1405 and Septem 45, neither of which Burton prints. Longinus may be useful in interpreting the spirit of the piece, but not its letter. Burton continued to draw on the textus receptus for his readings, demonstrating the way in which eighteenth-century scholars went about their textual criticism, and it is to this aspect of Burton’s text that I now turn40.

  • 41 In his praeloquium Burton writes at length in a positive analysis of Markland’s academic abilitie (...)

24In treating Burton’s approach to the text qua text, I deal first with Phoenissae, given its particularly complicated textual history. In the Appendix Coniecturarum of his (1988) Teubner edition of Phoenissae Mastronarde notes twelve conjectures found in the two editions of Pentalogia. Most of these are anonymous, but three are credited to Markland41. This list of conjectures from Burton raises a range of issues about the status of the critical text in the Eighteenth Century. My particular focus here is on Burton’s engagement with other scholars. I cite below the noteworthy examples.

3.) Line 194 ποθοῦσ’ Markland apud Burton, Pental
7.) Line 596
βεβηκῶς Reiske 1754 (deinde etiam Markland [apud Burton 1758] et Musgrave 1778)
8.) Line 598
οὐδεν’ var. lect. (vel anonymi coniectura?) apud Barnes; etiam coni. anonymus apud Burton, Pentalogia

  • 42 M. L. Clarke, Greek Studies, 51. In the dedication to his Supplices Markland wrote: ‘What profit (...)
  • 43 In the preface to his book, Burton says the book had been conceived long before but had taken a p (...)
  • 44 J. Burton, Pentalogia, 6-7. See P. J. Finglass, Leiden, on the unpublished conjectures found in L (...)
  • 45 J. Burton, Pentalogia, 8.
  • 46 J. Burton, Pentalogia, 143-4.

25Conjecture 7 suggests that the anonymous conjecture was made independently by both Reiske and Markland (apud Burton)42. The entry for this conjecture in Burton does not credit Reiske. His 1754 Anthologiae Graecae and the first volume of his Animadversiones (1757) could both have influenced Burton, but the latter does not appear to have used his work. The first edition of Pentalogia took a long time to prepare, but the second edition could have incorporated material initially overlooked43. It is not the case that he was simply oblivious to continental philology; in his introduction he mentions an edition from Leiden that he is using, for example44. This presumably pertains to Valckenaer, about whose worked Burton expresses mixed feelings, describing his commentary as parcius45. In his apparatus criticus and commentary, Valckenaer is not mentioned at any point. The δεύτεραι φροντίδες mention him just twice, parcius indeed. Bearing in mind that this is a school book, Burton may have been concerned that Dutch philology was beyond his school audience. The Addenda vel Corrigenda, however, include 39 entries under ‘Conject. et Emendat. e Valkenario’46. In an attempt to retain scholarly credibility, Burton did use Valckenaer’s edition, however little he may have wanted to admit it and however well he hid the evidence.

  • 47 R.C. Jebb, 1885, Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments. Part II, The Oedipus Coloneus. Cambridge: Un (...)
  • 48 On Scaliger’s scholarship see P. J. Finglass, Leiden.

26Conjecture 8 mentions Barnes, who provides a good counter-example of a more positive engagement with contemporary scholarship on Burton’s part; Burton included his conjecture, taking his work seriously. One of the most frequently noted scholars is Scaliger, whose use by Burton Jebb summarises disparagingly47. Even if Burton did not engage with Scaliger or Stephanus as critically as Jebb would like, he did at least draw on multiple textual traditions in an attempt to give an overview of the situation, in contrast to his predecessors48.

27The nature of his textual criticism can be discerned further from a careful reading of both the text and notes. He printed readings that he noted were not perfect, such as at line 992 (Oxford Classical Text 998) he noted: ‘‘γὼ rectius putat Hen. Stephanus. Tu, Lector, expende, an tam feliciter conjecturam fecit vir doctus’. This entry invites the reader to engage with the process of textual criticism, perhaps also pointing towards a pedagogical outlook for the text. At other points in the commentary, he made comments about readings he does, or does not like, and gave short opinions of other editors, but this is all buried in his greater notes, and does not usually affect the text printed.

  • 49 J. Burton, Pentalogia, 305-6.
  • 50 See R. Tarrant, Texts, for more on this, especially Chapter 7, and 135.

28The lacunae in the Oedipus Coloneus form my final example. At 184-187 Lloyd-Jones and Wilson print a lacuna for the sake of responsion within the kommos. 1718-19 is also printed as a lacuna, and 1733. In Pentalogia Burton marks only one of these lines as a possible lacuna, 1716 (= Oxford Classical Text 1718), in order to match his reading of 1686-90. He did, however, introduce his own lacuna, for metrical reasons, at 1567, with the note: ‘Quartus hic Antistrophes versus debet esse Anapaesticum, Dimeter, Brachycatalectus. Impressi omnes hic erant…’49. This makes it clear that he was interested in the metrical aspects of the play. His note on Oedipus Coloneus 29 states the monosyllabic nature of the word, and such an interest in scansion is continued in notes such as that to 47: ‘πόλεως] Duarum syllabarum’. We might therefore expect metrical considerations to colour his readings of textual problems, but this is not straightforwardly so. Burton at least tried to use some concept of metrical responsion in order to justify his text; eighteenth-century scholars were not devoid of metrical awareness. The inclusion of Triclinius’ metrical scholia in many of the printed editions suggests that those working on Sophoclean textual criticism could be more aware of the potential contribution of metrical analyses than would those working on other authors; it may also hint at an incipient maximalist approach to textual criticism, partly used to shore up credibility in both editor and text.50

29The first edition to print a large range of textual notes, Burton’s edition was novel. He may not have changed the text very much, and posterity may not have remembered his edition, but it marks a decided turning point in the history of Sophoclean scholarship. Its dissemination throughout the schooling world will have influenced the boys who went on to shape the editions, scholarship, politics and artistic culture of the future.

Tyrwhitt – personal annotations.

30Thomas Tyrwhitt (1730-1786) worked on Chaucer, Euripides, Plutarch, Babrius, Strabo, Aristotle, Isaeus, Euripides and Aristophanes. Tyrwhitt is not known to have published on the textual criticism of Sophocles but in his correspondence with Brunck he made a range of conjectures and emendations, which were printed by Brunck in his 1786 edition, attributed to Tyrwhitt. Eighteenth-century editions of Sophocles suggest that Tyrwhitt was making more of a contribution to the history of the Sophoclean text than previously imagined. In Bentley’s copy of the Stephanus edition, a later hand has written a series of notes in the margin attributing various conjectures and emendations to Tyrwhitt. For the Oedipus Coloneus, there are twenty-seven such marginal notes, with a further three comments made on the printed notes. Tyrwhitt’s own copy of the Stephanus also contains a range of marginal notes but these are not identical to the ones attributed to him by the Bentley copy. Tyrwhitt’s copy contains two notes not found in Bentley’s (on lines 1259 and 1365), while Bentley’s copy contains three not found in Tyrwhitt’s (on lines 1169, 1213 and 1661), and three comments on the text of the notes. It is not surprising that Bentley’s copy should not include all the notes found in Tyrwhitt’s own copy; the transcriber might never have seen Tyrwhitt’s copy, or might not have deemed it necessary to transcribe every alternative reading offered there. It is more surprising that the Bentley edition includes a total of six comments not found in Tyrwhitt’s own work. They suggest that the transcriber was misattributing his notes, or that he had a separate, previously unknown source. The quality of the notes is not as relevant as the fact that there is a historical trail behind them which invites exploration, and which also demonstrates the path eighteenth-century scholars and scholarship was taking. It is, therefore, worth examining each note and its context.

Oxford Classical Text: ὠ φίλτατε, σχὲς οὗπερ εἶ.
Stephanus:
ὠ φίλτατε, ἐπίσχες οὗπερ εἶ
Note:
ἴσχες Tyrw.

31Tyrwhitt was not the first to propose this reading. According to Lloyd-Jones and Wilson in the Oxford Classical Text, it is found in Lrz, that is, in the manuscripts L, R, Q, Zn and Zo. Burton prints ἐπίσχες, but includes a note on the issue. Field prints ἐπίσχες οὗπερ εἶ (v.1164).

  • 51 P. Elmsley, Sophocles, vi claims to be following Burton here.

32Tyrwhitt may, therefore, have been the first eighteenth-century English editor to make use of this reading, even if it was not his own conjecture51.

Oxford Classical Text: ζώειν, σκαιοσύναν φυλάσσων
Stephanus: ζώειν σκαιοσύναν αἰεὶ φυλάσσων
Note: αἰεὶ, delet. Tyrw.

33This deletion is also not new. The Oxford Classical Text does not print αἰεὶ, but notes that it is an addition from Triclinius. Burton did not print it, but included a note about what might be needed to maintain the meter, with reference to Stephanus, Turnebus, and Canter, again, demonstrating the extent to which metrical concerns did influence eighteenth-century textual criticism. Again, Tyrwhitt’s reading was not new. This time there was also a precedent in print.

Oxford Classical Text: ἀλλ’ ἢ τις ἐκ θεῶν πομπός, ἢ τὸ νερτέρων
Stephanus: ἀλλ’ εἴ τις ἐκ θεῶν πομπός, ἢ τὸ νερτέρων
Note: L.Tyrw.

34In the Oxford Classical Text, Lloyd-Jones and Wilson do not provide a provenance for this reading, nor does Dawe in his Teubner edition. Burton printed ἤ τις, with the note:

Ald. Franc. Col. Flor. Turn. Cant. ἤ τις, ut nunc est in textu, exhibent: edit. Steph. C. εἴ τις, puto minus bene.

35Again as a control, Burton has not taken this over from Field, who printed εἴ (v.1656). Again, we see that Burton invested his comment with a personal voice. Again, Tyrwhitt did not make a new conjecture, but perpetuated an existing reading.

36None of these three, then, can be attributed to Tyrwhitt as genuine emendations or conjectures. There remains one reading for which Tyrwhitt must be cited, that of Oedipus Coloneus 1109. The source for this remains unknown, but it demonstrates the heightened engagement with matters of textual criticism that the last quarter of the eighteenth century, and Brunck’s edition, brought. The Bentley copy passed through a number of hands and reveals a consequent layering of the text and emendations to it. Tyrwhitt’s own book does not attribute his comments, but it also does not explicitly claim them as his own. The origins were not his concern. This was his private book and he annotated the text as he thought fit. Tyrwhitt may not have been the first to make these points, but the fact that they can be credited to him demonstrates the extent to which his contribution to the development of the text of Sophocles was valued, and the extent to which people were not paying that sort of heed to the editions that preceded him.

  • 52 R. M. Ogilvie, Classics, 71.

37Tyrwhitt was, moreover, also the scholar credited for unmasking Chatterton’s Rowley forgeries, and then Macpherson’s Ossian ones, using the rigour of textual criticism to unmask gothic pretensions52. The aesthetic philosophy of the age and the technical procedures of scholarship are linked, with a Sophoclean scholar at the heart of proceedings. Textual criticism may not have been immune from the pretensions of the romantics, but it did play a role in unpicking some of them.

Wakefield, Cambridge, 1785-59, and Toup, London, 1760-64.

38Two further eighteenth-century scholars deserve mention for their Sophoclean criticism and place in contemporary cultural politics. I discuss each only briefly, but each contributes something to our overall understanding of the contemporary intellectual, artistic and political climate.

  • 53 J. E. Sandys, History, 430. See Silva critica: sive in auctores sacros profanosque commentarius p (...)
  • 54 Post-Brunck, his line numbers are in line with modern conventions. He does cite Brunck, whose tex (...)
  • 55 See D. Gibson, P. Wilkinson, and S. French. 2008, Thomas Gray: Elegy in a Country Churchyard. Lat (...)
  • 56 I use Gothic in its ‘neo’-Gothic sense, that is, referring to the eighteenth-century refashioning (...)

39Gilbert Wakefield (1756-1801) published a series of volumes of ‘interesting points’, his Silva Critica in 1789-95, of which Sandys writes: ‘A passion for tampering with the texts of the Classics pervades all the five parts of his Silva Critica…’53. The work remains of interest as a product of its time and of a remarkable man. In it he discussed a range of topics, including both the Oedipus Coloneus and Longinus’ Peri Hupsous. He made just one change to the text of the Oedipus Coloneus, at lines 1720-154. His engagement with the text is not extraordinary, but the critics and texts with which he engaged are indicative of the changing tide of scholarship and its relationship with contemporary culture and politics. Wakefield was a strong political activist. Imprisoned in the 1780s for his views on the French Revolution, he also campaigned against slavery in Liverpool in 1779, which may have brought him into contact with the young William Roscoe, who was to lose his parliamentary seat in 1807 for voting in favour of the abolition of slavery, and who became patron to Henry Fuseli. In 1786 Wakefield published an edition of the poetry of Thomas Gray. This would have brought him into contact with the Rev. William Mason, who had inherited Gray’s papers after his death in 1776 and published the first literary biography of him. His interest in Gray is also seen in his two Latin translations of Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard, both published in 177655. This poem, well-known across England, is credited as one of the founding texts in the Gothic movement56. One of the most well-known artists in this movement was Henry Fuseli, whose two paintings of the Oedipus Coloneus demonstrate a close engagement with the text of Sophocles. Biographical investigation demonstrates how scholarship and the creative arts form two aspects of the same process of the reception and appropriation of Britain’s Greek heritage.

  • 57 J. Toup, 1760. Emendationes in Suidam: In Quibus Plurima Loca Veterum Graecorum, Sophoclis et Ari (...)
  • 58 Toup, Emendationes, 673.
  • 59 J. E. Sandys, History, 418 says of this edition that it ‘gave Porson the first impulse to classic (...)

40Jonathan Toup (1713-1785) made some comments on the Oedipus Coloneus in his 1760-66 Emendationes in Suidam. He comments in doubt on the hill of Demeter mentioned at Oedipus Coloneus 1596 by the messenger, in response to the Scholiast’s note57. In choosing the note about the hill on which to comment, Toup demonstrates how important the topography of the Oedipus Colonus is to its interpretation. He also emended line 67358. This is from the Colonus Ode (668-719), another locus of important topographical detail, and religious awe, vital to the play’s interpretation. He published an edition and (Latin) translation of Longinus in 1788, which further links his comments on the Oedipus Coloneus with the aesthetic of the sublime which informed all readings and uses of the Oedipus Coloneus in the eighteenth century59. Toup provides a good example of the scholar who may not have published a ground-breaking edition, but whose work is indicative of the prevalent academic practices and cultural milieu.

Conclusion

  • 60 S. Said, and C. Biet, 1996, ‘What Lies behind the Notes: The Translations of the Antigone of Soph (...)
  • 61 Note that it was still in use at Eton in 1906, when it was mentioned in Etoniana (July 3rd 1906, (...)
  • 62 I discuss this further in C. Ryan, forthcoming. ‘Colonus in England’s Green and Pleasant Lands’. (...)

41The publication of Brunck’s text in 1786 marked a turning point in the study of Sophocles60. This progress should not, however, inevitably consign the work of other eighteenth-century scholars to the dustbin. The editions and commentaries reflect the academic aims, cultural concerns and pedagogical propensities of the age; careful criticism of these reveals something of the time, a greater awareness of how our own text has come to be where it is and the effect the processes have on our interpretation of it. I am not aiming at a simple rehabilitation of Burton as a scholar who has been maligned by the history of scholarship; Pentalogia is in many ways a careless and confusing text. I would argue, however, that this edition in particular both reflects and provokes interesting developments in the eighteenth century’s attitude towards Greek drama, ancient scholarship and philosophical and literary criticism in general61. Its initial publication coincided with Thomas Francklin’s translation (1758) and closely with the publication of Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry (1757); it demonstrates clear engagement with a range of material concerned with the sublime. It coincided with Mason’s Caractacus (1759) (based on the Oedipus Coloneus), which was an attempt to reconfigure the authority and power of Greek literature and history for the emerging state of Britain62. This coincidence between philosophical, critical and creative literature continued over the following few years. Benjamin Heath’s Notae Sive Lectiones in 1762 comes between Macpherson’s Ossian (1761), Walpole’s Otranto (1764) and Kant’s Observations on the Feeling of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1764). After 1764, there seems to have been something of a hiatus in England. The next published reworking of the Oedipus Coloneus comes in the form of Mason’s Caractacus receiving its first staging in 1776, the same year as Henry Fuseli began work on his painting Oedipus Cursing his Son Polynices. At this point, the scholarly editions and translations again begin to appear, such as Thomas Burgess’s notes to Pentalogia (1778), and the second edition (1779).

  • 63 E. Hall and F. Macintosh, Greek Theatre, 184.

42There is a link between scholarly publication and creative publications and productions related to Greek drama and thought in eighteenth-century England, and both areas appear to have broken off between 1764 and 1776. I suggest that it is not coincidental that this period corresponds exactly with a period of relative international political calm but domestic turbulence for England. The Seven Years’ War (1756-63) covers the first period of texts I discuss, and ends the year before Walpole and Kant’s texts. The American declaration of Independence was made the year before the material began to be produced again; the link between the two events is strengthened when we note that Mason’s Caractacus was recited at a Shropshire Whig meeting in 1776, urging liberty for the colonies63.

43Far from prohibiting scholars from having the time or resources to be productive, political turmoil in mid-eighteenth-century England appears to have coincided with periods of great inspiration. I suggest that Blanning’s thesis on the dynamic relationship between culture and power goes some way towards explaining this phenomenon. Editions take time to produce, indeed Burton comments on the time taken in his preface. Nevertheless, it is striking that the publication and public consumption of these ideas coincide with these moments of political and cultural revolution. The reception of Sophocles reveals a set of critical approaches which are also relevant to the greater cultural sphere. Thinking about Sophocles has far greater application than just developing a text for modern scholars to read. The production of this text informs our reading of it. Contextualising the production of the text, and its producers, more carefully, also suggests new ways in which classical scholarship and the wider community interact.

Seitenanfang

Anmerkungen

1 See C. Güthenke, 2009. ‘Shop Talk: Reception Studies and Recent Work in This History of Scholarship’. Classical Receptions Journal 1 (1), 104–15 for a helpful review article, pointing in particular to J.M. Hunt, R.A. Smith, and F. Stok. 2017. Classics from papyrus to the internet: an introduction to transmission and reception Austin: University of Texas Press.

2 A. Grafton, G. W Most, and S. Settis, 2010. The Classical Tradition. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press Reference Library; Belknap. R. Tarrant, 2016. Texts, editors, and readers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 27.

3 See particularly the work of C. Stray, e.g. C. S. Kraus and C. Stray, 2016. Classical Commentaries: Explorations in a Scholarly Genre. Oxford: Oxford University Press, and C. Stray, 2010. Classical Dictionaries: Past, Present and Future. London: Duckworth. In other geographical areas the focus is mainly pre 1500, and is well covered by e.g F. Ciccolella, 2008. Donati Graeci: Learning Greek in the Renaissance. Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition. Leiden: Brill; L. D Reynolds and N. G Wilson, 2013, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature. Fourth Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press; N. G. Wilson, 2016, From Byzantium to Italy: Greek Studies in the Italian Renaissance. Second Edition. London: Bloomsbury; F. Ciccolella and L. Silvano, 2017, Teachers, Students, and Schools of Greek in the Renaissance. Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History. Leiden: Brill.

4 For the background to this see C. Ryan, 2010, Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus in eighteenth-century England and France. Unpublished PhD these, University of Nottingham. This article has its origins in chapter 2 of that thesis.

5 C. Martindale, 2013. ‘Reception - a New Humanism? Receptivity, Pedagogy, the Trans­historical’. Classical Receptions Journal 5 (2), 169–83, esp. 179.

6 P. E. Easterling, 2013.‘Perspectives on Antiquity and Tragedy’. Classical Receptions Journal 5 (2): 184–89, 186.

7 P. Hardie, 2013. ‘Redeeming The Text: Reception Studies and the Renaissance’. Classical Receptions Journal 5 (2), 190–98, 194.

8 S. Butler, 2016. Deep Classics: Rethinking Classical Reception. London: Bloomsbury.

9 J. I. Porter, 2008. ‘Future Reception Studies’. In A Companion to Classical Reception, edited by Lorna Hardwick and Christopher Stray, 469–81. Oxford: Blackwell, 470.

10 H. Lloyd-Jones and N. G Wilson, 1997. Sophocles: Second Thoughts. Hypomnemata. Götttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 9.

11 E. J. Kenney, 1974. The Classical Text: Aspects of Editing in the Age of the Printed Book. Sather Classical Lectures. Berkeley: University of California Press, 4.

12 Given that my time period lies between the two Acts of Union, and all my examples are English, I refer specifically to England and the English rather than Britain and the British.

13 S.A. Gurd, 2005. Iphigenias at Aulis: Textual Multiplicity, Radical Philology. Ithaca, N.Y., Bristol: Cornell University Press, ix, x. See C. Güthenke, Shop Talk, 110-111 for a review of Gurd’s methodology, including an appraisal of the effort it requires.

14 Ibid. 25.

15 R. Tarrant, Texts, 140.

16 See P.J. Finglass, 2009. ‘Unpublished Conjectures at Leiden on the Greek Dramatists.’ GRBS 49, 187–221; 2011. ‘Unpublished Conjectures on Sophocles by Jeremiah Markland’.GRBS 51 (2), 232–38, for example, on the importance of reattributing conjectures to their rightful proposers.

17 [Sophokleous Oidipous Epi Kolōnōi] = Sophoclis Oedipus Coloneus. Sophoclis Oedipus Coloneus. Oxonii: E typographeo Clarendoniano, v. His list of editions includes Burton, but not Johnson.

18 Bentley’s notes to the Stephanus (transcribed by T. Kidd) is to be found in the Cambridge University Library (Adv.b.52.10). The later hand is probably Andrew Downes (1549-1628), see R. M. Ogilvie, 1964, Latin and Greek: A History of the Influence of the Classics on English Life from 1600 to 1918. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul; 32, J. E. Sandys, 1903, A History of Classical Scholarship. Cambridge: University Press. 336-7.

19 Tyrwhitt’s copy was bequeathed to the British Library and deposited there on his death in 1786 (653.c13). This particular error is repeated at Philoctetes 730, which is misattributed to the 1747 edition but is another example drawn from Johnson’s 1746 one.

20 See G. Goodwin and P. Carter. n.d. ‘Johnson, Thomas (D. 1746)’. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/14920. Last accessed 10 June 2018.

21 They are first published as such by J. Burton 1758, Pentalogia Sive Tragœdiarum Græcarum Delectus.: Sophokleous Oidipous Tyrannos Oidipous Epi Kolōnō Antigone. Euripidou Phoinissai. Aischylou Hepta Epi Thebais. Oxonii: Ex typographeo Claren­doniano. Prostant apud J. Fletcher, Bibliop. Oxon. & J. Rivington & J. Fletcher, Lond. The first translation of the play as a trilogy was Storr’s 1916 Loeb. The first instance I have found of the Theban play trilogy performed as such is 1872 production in Germany.

22 See E. Hall and F. Macintosh, 2005, Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre, 1660-1914. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 12-14, and J. Morwood, 2008, The Tragedies of Sophocles. Greece and Rome Live. Exeter, UK: Bristol Phoenix Press, 115-119.

23 Johnson taught in Ipswich, at Eton, in Middlesex and in Essex (Chigwell).

24 G. Highet, 1967, The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature. Repr. with corrections. Oxford Paperbacks. Oxford University Press: London, Sandys History 105.

25 Burton is mentioned at D. K. Money, 1998, The English Horace: Anthony Alsop and the Tradition of British Latin Verse. British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship Monograph. Oxford: Oxford University Press 91, 205, 331n.5 for his Latin verse, and his place alongside such other writers as John Jortin. See R. Tarrant, Texts, Chapters 3-6 on different kinds of approach to editing a text.

26 J. Burton, Pentalogia, 54-5.

27 In 1758 Burton also published De litterarum graecarum institutionibus dissertatio critica, a letter originally written to his nephew in 1751.

28 T. Charles-Edwards and J. Reid, 2016, Corpus Christi College, Oxford: a history. Oxford: Oxford University Press, deal with Burton as alumnus more thoroughly.

29 “ is printed at the start of the phrase and any following lines.

30 See 150-53 in R. Cressida, 2017, Camerarius and Sophocles, in T. Baier (ed.) Camerarius Polyhistor. Wissensvermittlung im deutschen Humanismus NeoLatina, 147-167.

31 See A. A. Long, 1968, Language and Thought in Sophocles: A Study of Abstract Nouns and Poetic Technique. University of London Classical Studies. London: Athlone Press, for discussion of how Sophocles’ use of abstract nouns demonstrates his engagement with late fifth-century philosophical thought. J. C Opstelten and J. A. Ross, 1952, Sophocles and Greek Pessimism. Amsterdam: North-Holland Pub. Co., provides a detailed discussion of Sophocles as a supposed pessimist.

32 Oedipus Tyrannus, Preface iv, quoted at M. L. Clarke, 1945, Greek Studies in England, 1700-1830. Cambridge: University Press, 230.

33 For a summary of the play’s first thousand years of transmission, see P. E. Easterling, 2006, ‘Sophocles: The First Thousand Years’. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 49 (S87), 1–15.

34 J. Burton, Pentalogia, 4-5.

35 For example, he refers to Rhetoric iii.6 at his commentary on Oedipus Tyrannus 1194 (1801:216-7), and quotes Poetics 13 at length on Oedipus Tyrannus 1202 (1801: 217-8)

36 On the development of the ‘Aristotelian’ Unities, see S. Halliwell, 1986, Aristotle’s Poetics, London: Duckworth.

37 See T. C. W. Blanning, 2002, The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture: Old Regime Europe, 1660-1789. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 311.

38 Lucretius’ role in the development of Burke’s sublime with reference to Sophocles is discussed in C. Ryan, 2010. Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus in Eighteenth-Century England and France. University of Nottingham. For a history of the Lucretian sublime see J. I. Porter, 2007, ‘Lucretius and the Sublime’. In The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, by P. Hardie and S. Gillespie, 167–84. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

39 Oedipus Tyrannus v.1402, 1045; Oedipus Coloneus 1458; Septem title page, 42, 45 (x3).

40 Modern editors do cite the reading of Oedipus Tyrannus 1405, but not the one of Septem45.

41 In his praeloquium Burton writes at length in a positive analysis of Markland’s academic abilities, 9-10.

42 M. L. Clarke, Greek Studies, 51. In the dedication to his Supplices Markland wrote: ‘What profit is it if an education in letters instead of making us, as it professes to, gentle, upright, simple, frank, modest and kindly towards all men, renders us fierce, virulent, cunning, arrogant, malignant and implacable towards all who presume to differ from us even in trifles?’ This moral aspect to eighteenth-century pedagogy must be borne in mind more generally.

43 In the preface to his book, Burton says the book had been conceived long before but had taken a particularly long time to reach publication. He does not specify how long the volume has taken to be finished, but the long gestational period and multiple editors makes it hard to ascertain to which contemporary scholars Burton could refer; there is also a fragmenting effect on the text, which lacks consistency in the ways it refers to people and texts.

44 J. Burton, Pentalogia, 6-7. See P. J. Finglass, Leiden, on the unpublished conjectures found in Leiden editions.

45 J. Burton, Pentalogia, 8.

46 J. Burton, Pentalogia, 143-4.

47 R.C. Jebb, 1885, Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments. Part II, The Oedipus Coloneus. Cambridge: University Press, liv.

48 On Scaliger’s scholarship see P. J. Finglass, Leiden.

49 J. Burton, Pentalogia, 305-6.

50 See R. Tarrant, Texts, for more on this, especially Chapter 7, and 135.

51 P. Elmsley, Sophocles, vi claims to be following Burton here.

52 R. M. Ogilvie, Classics, 71.

53 J. E. Sandys, History, 430. See Silva critica: sive in auctores sacros profanosque commentarius philologus: concinnavit Gilbertus Wakefield (1789) typis academicis excudebat J. Archdeacon, ubi veneunt apud J. & J. Merrill. Cantabrigiæ.

54 Post-Brunck, his line numbers are in line with modern conventions. He does cite Brunck, whose text came out just three years earlier (e.g. 164).

55 See D. Gibson, P. Wilkinson, and S. French. 2008, Thomas Gray: Elegy in a Country Churchyard. Latin Translations 1762-2001. Orpington: The Holden Press, 68. On Gray’s contribution to the scholarly circles on Cambridge see J. E. Sandys, History, 417.

56 I use Gothic in its ‘neo’-Gothic sense, that is, referring to the eighteenth-century refashioning of the term and not to its original historical, architectural context.

57 J. Toup, 1760. Emendationes in Suidam: In Quibus Plurima Loca Veterum Graecorum, Sophoclis et Aristophanis in Primis, Cum Explicantur Tum Emaculantur. Scripsit Io. Toup, Londini: prostant venales apud J. Whiston & B. White, 172. On Toup’s academic background see Sandys, History, 417-8.

58 Toup, Emendationes, 673.

59 J. E. Sandys, History, 418 says of this edition that it ‘gave Porson the first impulse to classical criticism’. Thus we see the work of a lesser scholar inspire a greater one, and Longinus play an indirect role in motivating the production of great textual scholarship.

60 S. Said, and C. Biet, 1996, ‘What Lies behind the Notes: The Translations of the Antigone of Sophocles in the 18th Century’. In Sophocles: The Classical Heritage, edited by R.D. Dawe, 55–72. New York: Garland, 59. See also N. G Wilson and H. Lloyd-Jones, 1990, Sophoclis Fabulae. Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis. Oxonii: e typographeo Clarendoniano, 1.

61 Note that it was still in use at Eton in 1906, when it was mentioned in Etoniana (July 3rd 1906, p. 105); given the predominance of Etonians in English public life, its influence has perhaps been more far-ranging than might have been expected.

62 I discuss this further in C. Ryan, forthcoming. ‘Colonus in England’s Green and Pleasant Lands’. Translation and Literature; but see E. Hall and F. Macintosh, Greek Theatre ch.8 for an introduction.

63 E. Hall and F. Macintosh, Greek Theatre, 184.

Seitenanfang

Zitierempfehlung

Papierversionen:

Dr Cressida Ryan, Sophoclean scholarship as a tool to interpret eighteenth-century EnglandAnabases, 29 | 2019, 149-160.

Online-Version

Dr Cressida Ryan, Sophoclean scholarship as a tool to interpret eighteenth-century EnglandAnabases [Online], 29 | 2019, Online erschienen am: 14 April 2021, besucht am 19 April 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/anabases/8875; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/anabases.8875

Seitenanfang

Autor

Dr Cressida Ryan

Faculty of Theology and Linguistics,
University of Oxford
Gibson Building, ROQ 598
Woodstock Road
Oxford
OX2 6GG
cressida.ryan@theology.ox.ac.uk

Seitenanfang

Urheberrechte

CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

Nur der Text ist unter der Lizenz CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 nutzbar. Alle anderen Elemente (Abbildungen, importierte Anhänge) sind „Alle Rechte vorbehalten“, sofern nicht anders angegeben.

Seitenanfang
Suche in OpenEdition Search

Sie werden weitergeleitet zur OpenEdition Search