The Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy.

KNOX, Bernard M.W.

Item Number: 122577

Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964.

First edition of this work on Sophocles. Octavo, original cloth. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “For Alice Roosevelt Longworth with constant admiration, Bernard Knox 1965.” The recipient Alice Roosevelt Longworth was the eldest child of President Theodore Roosevelt, was an American writer, socialite and celebrity. She led a delightfully unconventional and controversial life and was known as a rule-breaker at a time when women were under great pressure to conform. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket.

The first two chapters of this book isolate and describe the literary phenomenon of the Sophoclean tragic hero. In all but one of the extant Sophoclean dramas, a heroic figure who is compounded of the same literary elements faced a situation which is essentially the same. The demonstration of this recurrent pattern is made not through character-analysis, but through a close examination of the language employed by both the hero and those with whom he contends. The two chapters attempt to present what might, with a slight exaggeration, be called the "formula" of Sophoclean tragedy.