Different Stories: Sophoclean Narrative(s) in the Philoctetes

Abstract

The title of this paper might point to either of two much-discussed critical issues in Sophocles' Philoctetes: the different stories told at different times about the role of Philoctetes' bow in the taking of Troy, or the two different stories (one finally unrealized) suggested by the play's double ending. In fact, however, I shall be primarily concerned with neither of these, although my reading may by indirection shed light on both.' My subject here is rather the way in which the Philoctetes exemplifies a general feature of Sophoclean tragedy: the use of references to past and future events to suggest different stories belonging to different characters. It is often observed that Sophocles' usual mode of introducing information about past and future, about what is, in Aristotle's phrase, outside the drama2 is different from that of Aeschylus or Euripides. In place of a communal evocation of what precedes the play by the chorus, or a self-contained narrative of background information by a single character, divine or human, we characteristically find in Sophocles the gradual emergence, through dialogue, of what went before. And the events that follow his plays are rarely predicted explicitly or fully; instead, in each of his extant tragedies, Sophocles at some point gives us a glimpse (sometimes a mere hint) of what is to come.