For this assignment, you will read Sophocles’s tragic play Antigone and write an essay in which you: Apply what you learned about authoritarian views of gender to study Creon’s language in the Sophocles play Antigone.

The essay and works cited sheet must comply with current MLA standards of practice.  For assistance with MLA format or citation basics, go back to the section on MLA layout for essays.

The essay must be approximately three to four full pages of text.

An essay without cited/analyzed evidence and/or a work cited page is incomplete and will receive a significantly reduced grade.

In-Text Citation 

Parenthetic citation for a play is not quite the same as citation for sentences in paragraphs.  Here are some elements to remember:

• Cite the play by line numbers.  Ordinarily, we cite by page number.  For a play with fixed lines (lines with a set number of syllables as in poetry), we cite by act, scene, and line.  In the case of Antigone, we don’t have traditional labels for acts and scenes, so you will cite by line numbers.  Use the line counts (numbers floating to the right of the lines of text) in the University of Alberta .pdf to help you figure out the correct line number/s when you cite.
• Insert forward slashes to indicate line breaks in the play.  If you quote a piece of the play that is more than one line but less than three lines, insert a forward slash to represent a line break (the point at which one line ends and the reader must shift down to the next line).  A forward slash looks like this: /
• Use block format for drama when necessary.  If you quote a piece of the play that is more than three lines in length or an exchange between two characters, you must use MLA block format for drama.  Do not attempt to pad the length of the essay with lengthy quoted passages.

Rules for Block Format

• On a new line, indent by half an inch, type the character’s name in all caps followed by a period, place the first quoted line just after the name of the character, and place subsequent lines below the name indented a further half inch.  The parenthetic citation must appear after the end-of-sentence punctuation in block form.
• When quoting dialogue, format similarly to the description in the preceding bullet. 
• If the text you quote begins partway through a line of text in the play, use the space bar to make the words align visually with the line below—in the same orientation as in the published text.

Format the essay and works cited page according to current MLA practice. 

A Play

To generate the citation for a play published by itself, you will need the author’s name, the title, the publisher, and the year of publication.  Whenever applicable, you’ll also need the editor’s and/or translator’s name; the number or letter for that edition or volume; and/or, the series name.  Be sure to use full professional names (with diacritical marks) for any author, editor, or translator.  If the author is unknown, begin with the title.

Author Last, Author First.  Play Title.  Translated by First Last, edited by First Last, ? ed., vol. ?, Publisher, Year.  Series.

If you use the University of Alberta .pdf, the text is not a numbered volume or edition, so you’ll leave out those elements.  Since it is a .pdf, you’ll need to add that element at the end of the citation.

Sophocles.  Antigone.  Translated by F. Storr, edited by E.E. Garvin, Loeb Classical Library, 2013.  PDF.