Refashioning Antigone.

Abstract

In this thesis I present selections from my novel Annie Rose, along with a critical introduction discussing my borrowing, refashioning, and sometimes returning to Sophocles' Antigone as an inspiration for the novel. The original vision of the novel was one in which an Antigone character would be rescued from the cave. Although originally determined to give the myth a feminist slant, I found that neither the character nor the story lend themselves to such a viewpoint as easily as they might first seem to do, nor do feminist scholars necessarily consider any patriarchal myth rewritten a feminist work. Finally, the demands of a novel took over as characters inspired by the play took on new, modem forms, and these characters pushed the story in its own direction. Yet the structure of the Sophocles play always cast a shadow, and often the greatest alterations in my novel were exact inversions of key factors in the original drama. For instance, one of the most significant alterations was that the Ismene character, here transformed from a sister into a friend. Although the ending did lean towards the more life-affirming direction I'd originally planned, disastrous events, brought on by stubborn and polarized characters, took place in the community created in Annie Rose, just as they did in Sophocles' play. The selections from the novel include chapters and summaries of them describing how I have borrowed and refashioned character and plot from Sophocles' Antigone.