Burgess’s interest in the Oedipus myth coalesced further in 1972, when he was commissioned to produce a new translation of Oedipus Tyrannos by Sophocles for the Tyrone Guthrie theatre in Minneapolis. In 2017, this translation was reproduced by BBC Radio 3, starring Mancunian actor Christopher Eccleston.
Read moreAnthony Burgess’s other invented languages Part 3: The Riddle of Sicily in the Caribbean
The early 1970s were to become somewhat of a golden era for Burgess in terms of language invention. What’s interesting about this phase of glossopoeia in Burgess’s fiction is firstly, that it transcends the novel as genre or form, and secondly, that it migrates out of what we previously termed created dialects of English, such as Nadsat, into creating languages beyond the remit or linguistic framework of English.
Read moreAnthony Burgess’s other invented languages, Part 2 – The Sixties, Shakespeare and Strine
Anthony Burgess might be thought of as more of a dabbler in invented literary languages than the glossopoia demonstrated by a Tolkien or a Le Guin. This is despite that fact that his one foray into a novel written in an invented language, A Clockwork Orange, remains his most successful work almost three decades after his death, as it was throughout his life. After all, he never repeated the linguistic experiment of ACO, except in terms of its cultural proliferation, as stageplay, movie, or musical.
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