Between Antiquity and modernity: the reception of Sophocles' Antigone in the theater of the Francoist Spain

Abstract

This project aims to study the reception of Sophocles' Antigone in two plays of the Spanish theater dating from the years of the Francoist Spain (1939-1975): José María Pemán's Antígona: adaptación muy libre de la tragedia de Sófocles (1945), and María Zambrano's La tumba de Antígona (1967). Set in a post-civil war scenario, the Sophoclean tragedy's core is both the disobedience of Antigone to Creon's edict, her uncle and now king of Thebes, who forbids funeral honors to the city's enemies, including the protagonist's brother, Polyneices, and the actions of this tragic heroine when she suffers the consequences of her rebellion. I intend to discuss the points of contact between Sophocles' text and the two modern plays through analyzing the Civil War as a formal construction and as an allegorical representation, taking into account the ways in which the Sophoclean composition of the dispute for Thebes remained and was transfigured in the course of its reception.