How long does it take to read The Burial at Thebes?
a version of Sophocles' Antigone
The Burial at Thebes by Seamus Heaney takes about 1 hour 27 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 1 hour 27 minutes
An evening's read
First published 2004. 79 pages, about 21,725 words.
3 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 2 hours 25 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 1 hour 27 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 54 minutes |
The page count is the median across 5 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
"Commissioned to mark the centenary of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 2004, The Burial at Thebes is Seamus Heaney's new verse translation of Sophocles' great tragedy, Antigone - whose eponymous heroine is one of the most sharply individualized and compelling figures in western drama. Faithful to the 'local row' and to the fierce specificity of the play's time and place, The Burial at Thebes honours the separate and irreconcilable claims of its opposed voices, as they enact the ancient but perennial conflict between family and state in a time of crisis, pitching the morality of private allegiance against that of public service. Above all, The Burial at Thebes honours the sovereign urgency and grandeur of the Antigone, in which language speaks truth to power, then and now."--BOOK JACKET.
Subjects: Drama, Antigone (Greek mythology), Poetry (poetic works by one author), Drama (dramatic works by one author)
