Home ⋅ Published Books ⋅ The Riot Act - A Version of Antigone by Sophocles

The Riot Act - A Version of Antigone by Sophocles
Share by Email Share on Messenger Share on Whatsapp Share on Whatsapp

By: Tom Paulin
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: September 1985
Pages: 64
Categories: Play
Language: English
Available as: Paperback
On sale at:
ISBN-13: 9780571136131

he Riot Act is a 1984 play by Tom Paulin that adapts Sophocles's classic tragedy, Antigone, by setting the story in Northern Ireland during the early years of the Troubles. The play translates the ancient conflict into a contemporary, vernacular style, making the political and personal struggle between Creon and Antigone relevant to the sectarian violence of that era. In the adaptation, Paulin uses the drama to explore themes of civil war, political and personal commitment, and the clash between state authority and individual conscience.

Other Books From this Category

View More From This Category

Other Books From this Author

  • 6 Nov 2025 - Faber & Faber

    Namanlagh

    By Tom Paulin

    WINNER OF THE PEN HEANEY PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE T. S. ELIOT PRIZE I guess I must have been in two minds about the new day as the daylight gods began to march in straight lines going I don't...

  • 1 May 2014 - Faber & Faber

    New Selected Poems of Tom Paulin

    By Tom Paulin

    Since his precise, potent and subtle portraits of Northern Irish life first came to public attention in the 1970s, Tom Paulin has been an unmissable writer on the contemporary poetry scene. This selec...

  • 5 Apr 2012 - Faber & Faber

    Love's Bonfire

    By Tom Paulin

    Tom Paulin's first collection since The Road to Inver in 2004, Love's Bonfire sets poems about early life and marriage beside up-to-the minute and minutely registered perceptions of post-settlement Ir...

  • 4 Aug 2011 - Faber & Faber

    The Secret Life of Poems: A Poetry Primer

    By Tom Paulin

    The Secret Life of Poems is a primer which offers a poem - or on occasion an excerpt - succeeding with commentary in which rhythm, form, metre and sources are the order of the day, not ethical comment...

  • 4 Feb 2010 - Nick Hearn Books

    Medea

    By Tom Paulin

    Betrayed by a husband she sacrificed everything for, Medea unleashes a horrific vengeance on her enemies, by murdering her own children. Featuring one of the most powerful female roles in the histo...

  • 25 Mar 2009 - Faber & Faber

    Crusoe's Secret: The Aesthetics of Dissent

    By Tom Paulin

    Comprised of pieces spanning five centuries, Crusoe's Secret explores the culture of English dissent, whether through canonical works - Paradise Lost, Robinson Crusoe, Clarissa - or moving between epi...

  • 7 Oct 2004 - Faber & Faber

    The Road to Inver

    By Tom Paulin

    The Road to Inver gathers the verse translations of Tom Paulin from four decades, and brings together distinguished versions of classical and European poets which have appeared in his previous collect...

  • 19 May 2003 - Faber & Faber

    The Invasion Handbook

    By Tom Paulin

    In The Invasion Handbook Tom Paulin sets out to recount the origins of the Second World War. The result is a triumph of technique, a simultaneous vision which proceeds by quotation and collage, catalo...

  • 11 Jan 2002 - Faber & Faber

    The Strange Museum

    By Tom Paulin

    For this poet, history is change. The past is a fundamentalist museum that can hold a society in a deadly stasis which will inevitably be broken by violence. Change should be peaceful, politically int...

  • 3 Sep 2001 - Faber & Faber

    Fivemiletown

    By Tom Paulin

    A reissue of Paulin's "corrosive and uproarious litany of bad sex, bad politics and bad religion" from the 1980s.

  • 21 Sep 1998 - Faber & Faber

    Liberty Tree

    By Tom Paulin

    Ulster is the setting for most of Tom Paulin's Liberty Tree. Many of his poems are studded with Ulsterisms, examples of what Paulin has elsewhere called "a language without a lexicon" creating "a form...

  • 1 Sep 1998 - Faber & Faber

    The Day-star of Liberty: William Hazlitt's Radical Style

    By Tom Paulin

    Analyzing the writer William Hazlett's radicalism and its foundation in Unitarian culture, this book argues that Hazlitt was in effect a republican epic poet in prose (as distinct from prose poet), an...

  • 7 Oct 1996 - Faber & Faber

    Writing to the Moment: Selected Critical Essays, 1980-95

    By Tom Paulin

    A collection of essays, reviews and introductions - many with a marked political slant - plus some overtly political writings, by a poet and critic who is also a champion of British and Irish dissent....

  • 6 Jan 1994 - Faber & Faber

    Walking a Line

    By Tom Paulin

    A collection of poems by Tom Paulin, who is also known as an essayist and from his appearances on television and radio. The title of the book is taken from a statement by the modernist painter Paul Kl...

  • 5 Apr 1993 - Faber & Faber

    Tom Paulin - Selected Poems 1972 - 1990

    By Tom Paulin

    This collection of poems, from 1972 to 1990, is selected from "A State of Justice", "The Strange Museum", "Liberty Tree" and "Seize the Fire". This book also includes a verse translation of Sophocles'...

  • 20 Jul 1992 - Faber & Faber

    Minotaur – Poetry and the Nation State

    By Tom Paulin

    One of the most powerful poets of his generation consolidates his reputation as an exceptionally forthright and astringent critic in this book that analyzes the relationship between English-language l...

  • 5 Nov 1990 - Faber & Faber

    The Faber Book of Vernacular Verse

    By Tom Paulin

    In this anthology, Tom Paulin aims to represent the extended family of vernacular poets and to show how Christina Rosetti, Hopkins, Whitman and other poets have drawn on the energies of popular speech...

  • 7 Mar 1977 - Faber & Faber

    A state of Justice

    By Tom Paulin

    Tom Paulin won the Somerset Maugham award for his first Faber collection, A State of Justice, and was awarded a NESTA grant for an ambitious cross-generic project to present the Second World War in a ...

View More From This Author

About Us

Irish Interest in based on one very simple idea: to bring the contents of any Irish bookshop to people everywhere, especially those outside Ireland who do not have the possibility of keeping abreast of new books published in Ireland. The Irish Interest web platform is purely a provider of information about new publications. The aim of the site is to have every publishing house in Ireland adding their latest titles as they become available. Hyperlinks to each title bring users of the site directly to the publisher's web area or to a sales site where books can be purchased.

Privacy Policy

Irishinterest.ie and its owners strive at all times to preserver the privacy of all personal information stored on its website and servers. Information deemed to be private and confidential will not be communicated to any parties or divulged in any way. Cookies and similar technologies Irishinterest.ie and its owners are not responsible for external data collection entities. Third party sites with access to Irishinterest.ie may be able to acquire or assimilate data. Cookies and similar technologies can be utilized by third parties accessing our site without our knowledge.

Terms & Conditions

Irishinterest.ie, Irishinterest.com, and its owners take no responsibility for information issued on its site that is posted by third parties. It is the sole responsibility of the third parties who utilize the site for publication of any information to ensure that such information is correct and does not infringe laws and the rights of others who may be affected by publication of such information. Disputed material will be removed pending clarification.