SOURCE: Howarth, W. D. “Antigone in 1944.” InAnouilh: Antigone, pp. 47-52. London: Edward Arnold, 1983.

In the following essay, Howarth details the critical reception of Antigone in wartime France.

The study of the reception of Anouilh's play in 1944, and of its relationship to the political situation which existed, first under the German occupation and then after the liberation of Paris, has become much easier since the publication of an important monograph on the subject by Manfred Flügge¹. Quite apart from the unusually broad range of Dr Flügge's enquiry, which sets Antigone in the general context of political attitudes current in France in the 1930s and 40s, he has accumulated an invaluable compendium of critical comment on the play from reviews and other ephemeral sources; moreover, he has had the rare good fortune (not vouchsafed to all who have written on Anouilh and his work, by any means...