Ratski Posted August 24, 2009 Report Share Posted August 24, 2009 Our class was required to read the three theban plays (Antigone, Oedipus) as well as parts of the Bible. We basically had to create a "dictionary of archetypal material from Sophocles' Three Theban Plays" and include the hero journey, the monomyth, the roles of women, the trilogy of time, and connections you see to stories in the Bible. My question: What do they mean by "the trilogy of time"? I'm not sure what this archetype means so if anyone could give me a definition or perhaps an example of it from a different story that would be great.Thanks. Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sweetnsimple786 Posted August 24, 2009 Report Share Posted August 24, 2009 Well archetypes are different from "include the hero journey, the monomyth, the roles of women, the trilogy of time, and connections you see to stories in the Bible." If I'm understanding it correctly, since the hero's journey and the allusions don't have anything to do with the archetypes necessarily, I think that there might be some progression of time in the works you're reading. Maybe it's as simple as identifying circular and linear plots. However, I've never heard of the term "trilogy of time," which leads me to believe it might be specific to what you're studying. Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sandwich Posted August 24, 2009 Report Share Posted August 24, 2009 Possibly the trilogy of time relates to a characteristic of plays, very particularly Sophocles' plays (the man more or less invented it) but it can be found in various plays throughout history since the Greeks where you have what are often referred to as the "three unities". Time, action and place. More or less, everything happens in the same time, there is only one main plot of action with no real subplots and everything happens in the same place. For instance in Antigone, it follows the ideal of the three unities because we're only told about all action off-stage i.e. it all occurs in the same place, everything in the play contributes to the main plot and it all happens over the period of a day.I may be wrong, I've actually never heard the phrase "triology of time" before, but if you're doing Sophocles' plays, you should really know about the three unities anyway, so it's not totally useless! EDIT: also weren't all those plays written pre-Bible? Definitely they were pre-Christianity! Unless you're studying religion instead of A1, or if it's just some kind of entertainment exercise to see if anything matches up, finding biblical allusions would be something of a waste of time, to my reckoning. I mean, even if you found some, they'd be chance, I think it's physically impossible for Sophocles to refer to the Bible unless there's some kind of time bending going on Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ratski Posted August 25, 2009 Author Report Share Posted August 25, 2009 Okay thanks both of you! I understand this much better now and I agree with your last comment Sandwich (I've been having a hard time finding solid connections between the three plays and the Bible). Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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