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Middlemarch vocabulary
10 mythology vocabulary words
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Antigone
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tags: [mythology]
► definition
Definition:the daughter of Oedipus and his mother Jocasta. [...]she attempts to secure a respectable burial for her brother Polynices. Oedipus's sons, Eteocles and Polynices, had shared the rule jointly until they quarrelled, and Eteocles expelled his brother. In Sophocles' account, the two brothers agreed to alternate rule each year, but Eteocles decided not to share power with his brother after his tenure expired. Polynices left the kingdom, gathered an army and attacked the city of Thebes in a conflict called the Seven Against Thebes. Both brothers were killed in the battle.[...]Antigone is brought before Creon, and admits that she knew of Creon's law forbidding mourning for Polynices but chose to break it, claiming the superiority of divine over human law, and she defies Creon's cruelty with courage, passion and determination.Sophocles' Antigone ends in disaster. Creon orders Antigone buried alive in a tomb. Although Creon has a change of heart and tries to release Antigone, he finds she has hanged herself.text from Wikipedia, licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike
image: By Nikiforos Lytras, 1865, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3921262
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Uses:
The rest of her life was hack-work; by that, she could at least earn a living for Dolores. Her "Antigone, for the Use of Ladies' Schools" still holds its own at Girton and Somerville.
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A new Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in daring all for the sake of a brother's burial
George Eliot. Middlemarch
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