Definition of "Sophoclean"

It was one of those sequestered spots outside the gates of the world where may usually be found more meditation than action, and more passivity than meditation; where reasoning proceeds on narrow premises, and results in inferences wildly imaginative; yet where, from time to time, no less than in other places, dramas of a grandeur and unity truly Sophoclean are enacted in the real, by virtue of the concentrated passions and closely knit interdependence of the lives therein.

1886 May – 1887 April, Thomas Hardy, “chapter 1”, in The Woodlanders […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London, New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., published 1887

Of course, we would have been insulted if someone had accused us of cheating on an exam or confounding lie and lay, but we smiled charmingly when charged with wanting to murder our father—smiled and shrugged our shoulders. The attribution of Sophoclean passions to ditherers could only be heartening.

1988, Edmund White, chapter 4, in The Beautiful Room is Empty, New York: Vintage International, published 1994