Karakterisering in Antigone

In recent decades insights from the cognitive sciences, especially the cognitive-psychological study of theory of mind/mindreading, have increasingly been brought to bear on the study of literary character portrayal, including in Antigone. This article argues that the scope of cognitive approaches to characterization should be extended beyond mindreading alone to include insights from psycholinguistics (on discourse processing) and social psychology (on attribution). Combining all these approaches, the paper analyses the characterization of Antigone and Kreon in Antigone. It is argued that Antigone’s mind is portrayed as difficult to read on account of the extreme nature of her intentions and beliefs, and that Kreon is portrayed as an overzealous and overconfident mindreader. The two characters are also different in how they connect short-term mind states (intentions, beliefs) to long-term character traits: Antigone tends to explain her own behaviour in terms of short-term reasons, while Kreon regularly infers long-term dispositions and traits from other people’s actions. The conclusion briefly discusses the question whether it is ‘legitimate’ to ponder the beliefs, desires, and character traits hidden behind the masks of Greek tragic characters.