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Sophocles, Oedipus the King (430-28? BC)

Sophocles, Oedipus the King (430-28? BC). Aristotle, Poetics , Chs. 6, 11, 13. Oedipus the King : exemplary tragedy for A. Hero has reversal of fortune ( peripeteia ) after making an error of judgement ( hamartia ).

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Sophocles, Oedipus the King (430-28? BC)

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  1. Sophocles, Oedipus the King (430-28? BC)

  2. Aristotle, Poetics, Chs. 6, 11, 13 Oedipus the King: exemplary tragedy for A. Hero has reversal of fortune (peripeteia) after making an error of judgement (hamartia). His downturn (catastrophe) in fortune brings with it suffering (pathos) and this reversal in turn leads him to a realization (anagnorisis) and to knowledge. The audience feel pity (eleos) and fear (phobos), emotions that are purged (katharsis) in the process of watching the play.

  3. Oedipus’ roles turn into their opposites (Jean-Pierre Vernant) • Revealer becomes the revealed • Detective becomes criminal • Seeker becomes blinded one • Saviour becomes scapegoat • Hunter becomes hunted • [In Freud’s terms, analyst becomes patient.]

  4. Oedipus the King Oedipus: We have wealth and power, the mind reaches higher, grows, Breaks its own fetters, our lives are great and envied, And the world rewards us—with spitefulness and hate!

  5. The language of exceptionality But Apollo means One man – who is this man? (188) I am a stranger to this story, And to the crime. …I shall not Exempt myself, although I am a citizen only In name, and not in blood. (192) Be brave, for my sufferings can fall to no one But myself to bear! (239)

  6. The language of representation Oedipus: Each of you has one sorrow, his grief is his own – But I must feel for my country, for myself, And for you. (187) Chorus: Every man who has ever lived Is numbered with the dead; they fought with the world For happiness, yet all they won Was a shadow that slipped away to die. And you, Oedipus, are all those men. (233)

  7. Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred (1972) Tragedy apotropaic ritual (for turning away disaster). Idea of a scapegoat – absorbs all impulses towards violence and blame. Chosen as victim and killed ritually: the crisis and disorder of violence avoided in this way.

  8. Max Reinhardt’s 1910 production in Berlin (here transferred to Covent Garden)

  9. Emrys Jones: The constant comparativeness of [tragedy’s] method: we are never allowed to become identified with the point of view of any one of its characters. (The Origins of Shakespeare) Adrian Poole: It matters what angle you see a play from, as it does not in the cinema. You know at some level that this play looks different to the other people in the theatre. (Tragedy: Shakespeare and the Greek Example)

  10. Freud on Oedipus the King‘The Oedipus Complex’, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. James Strachey The action of the play consists in nothing other than the process of revealing, with cunning delays and ever-mounting excitement – a process that can be likened to the work of a psychoanalysis – that Oedipus himself is the murderer of Laius. There must be something that makes a voice within us ready to recognize the compelling force of destiny in Oedipus the King […]

  11. Written Antigone (‘part 3’) Oedipus the King (‘part 1’) Oedipus at Colonus (‘part 2’) Order of events in the story Oedipus the King (Oedipus is King of Thebes) Oedipus at Colonus (Oedipus leaves Thebes in exile, and dies) Antigone(His daughter comes into conflict with the ruler, Creon.) Antigone

  12. Henry Fuseli, Oedipus cursing Polynices [sic] (1786)

  13. ‘The unwritten and unshakeable laws’ of the gods (Antigone 454-55): • Kin-killing • Incest • Violation of oaths • Violation of the host-guest relationship • Disrespect towards parents, suppliants and the dead (Edith Hall, ‘The sociology of Athenian tragedy’)

  14. Do Aristotle’s elements of tragedy help?: • Peripeteia (reversal of fortune) Antigone? Creon? • Harmatia (error of judgement) Antigone ? Creon? • Agnorisis (recognition) Antigone? Creon? • Death (exile/ suffering) Antigone? Creon?

  15. Critical reading Oedipus the King Aristotle, Poetics (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968) Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. James Strachey (Penguin, 1991) Emrys Jones, The Origins of Shakespeare (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977) Adrian Poole, Tragedy: Shakespeare and the Greek Example (Oxford UP, 1987) J-P Vernant, ‘Ambiguity and Reversal in Oedipus Rex’, in Segal (ed.), Oxford Readings in Greek Tragedy (Oxford UP, 1983), pp. 189-210

  16. Antigone Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred (Johns Hopkins UP, 1977) Barbara Goff (ed.), History, Tragedy, Theory: Dialogues on Athenian Drama (U of Texas Press, 1997) Edith Hall, ‘The sociology of Athenian drama’, Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy (Cambridge UP, 2006) Christiane Sourvino-Inwood, ‘Assumptions and the Creation of Meaning: Reading Sophocles’ Antigone’, Journal of Hellenic Studies (1989), 109, 134-148 W. B. Tyrell and L. J. Bennett, ‘Sophocles’ Antigone and funeral oratory’, American Journal of Philology (1990),111, 441-56

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