Cut and dried : Seamus Heane's the burial at thebes' appropriation of Sophocles' Antigone

Abstract EN

Sophocles’ Antigone is a dramatic text that has stood the test of time since its first production in 441 BCE.

It has also perpetuated a grandiose position in the history of western literary canon because of its openness and liability to emblematic interpretation.

Antigone’s defiance to the civil law initiates the conflict with the king.

Seamus Heaney’s The Burial at Thebes (2004), is a retelling of Antigone with an unpronounced intention to shed more light on Irish and world reality.

In fact, Heaney shares an acknowledged tradition of classicism appropriation with other fellow Irish writers which emerged early in the twentieth century.

Though this version is untransparent to particular political occurrences, the idiom sounds particularly Irish.

Further, despite the fact that Heaney’s text celebrates the enduring value of Antigone, it does not wholly acquit her of playing havoc with hearts and home for scattering a handful of dust over the corpse of her unfaithful brother.

Heaney’s text leaves the audience with an ambiguous feeling that she is as unyielding and as menacing in her way as Creon.

In spite of the fact that Heaney’s text is a re-visitation of the classical play, one can claim that it is an innovative derivation of the adapted text.

Furthermore, it meets Linda Hutcheon’s three qualifications of creative adaptation; recognition of the informing text, groundbreaking and interpretative relevance to a different temporality, and finally an intertextual dialogue with the initial text.