Sophocles: Four Great Tragedies

Greek tragedy has a timeless quality. As Virginia Woolf writes in her essay On Not Knowing Greek, ‘the stable, the permanent, the original human being is to be found there. . . . In the Electra or the Antigone we are impressed . . . by heroism itself, by fidelity itself.’

Revenge, betrayal, lust, murder— but also courage, compassion, honour: Sophocles shows the heights and depths of human emotion. We are moved today by the tension between reason and emotion, fate and free will, law and individual conscience, just as people were in classical Athens.

This LitSalon study will go deep into the world of Sophocles as we read Oedipus Rex, Antigone, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus.  And we will explore the philosophy of tragedy with Aristotle’s Poetics and A. C. Bradley’s essay Hegel’s Theory of Tragedy.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Seven meeting live online study led by Sean Forester
• Sundays, 17 May – 28 June 2026, 4.00-6.00 pm (UK time)

  • 17  May –   Oedipus Rex
  • 24  May –   Oedipus, Aristotle’s Poetics
  • 31  May –   Antigone   
  • 7  June. –   Antigone, Hegel on Tragedy   
  • 14 June –   Philoctetes 
  • 21 June –   Oedipus at Colonus
  • 28 June –   Oedipus at Colonus, Tragic Painting and Sculpture

• £245 for seven meeting study on Zoom

REDUCED COSTS: we are committed to making our studies as affordable as possible. We have a fund in place to support anyone who would like to register for a study but finds the cost difficult to afford. We can’t promise to help, but please email us at litsalon@gmail.com in confidence if you would like to request a reduction in the cost of a study.