The subjects of his plays were drawn from mythology and legend. Each play contains at least one heroic figure, a character whose strength, courage, or intelligence exceeds the human norm - but who also has more than ordinary pride and self-assurance. These qualities combine to lead to a tragic end.Loeb Classical Library, #21. Volume 2 of 3 of the Loeb Classical Library Sophocles.Volume II contains Oedipus at Colonus (the climax of the fallen hero’s life), Antigone (a conflict between public authority and an individual woman’s conscience), The Women of Trachis (a fatal attempt by Heracles’s wife to regain her husband’s love), and Philoctetes (Odysseus’s intrigue to bring an unwilling hero to the Trojan War).

    This "Columbia Critical Guide" starts with extracts from Melville's own letters and essays and from early reviews of "Moby-Dick" that set the terms for later critical evaluations. Subsequent chapters deal with the "Melville Revival" of the 1920s and the novel's central place in the establishment, growth, and reassessment of American Studies in the 1940s and 1950s. The final chapters examine postmodern New Americanist readings of the text, and how these provide new models for thinking about American culture.

    A book which should appeal to both literary theorists and to readers of the novel, this study invites the reader to consider how the plot reflects the patterns of human destiny and seeks to impose a new meaning on life.