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).
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.
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.]
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!
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)
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)
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.
Max Reinhardt’s 1910 production in Berlin (here
transferred to Covent Garden)
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)
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 evermounting 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 […]
Antigone
Written
Antigone (‘part 3’)
Order of events in the
story
Oedipus the King (Oedipus is
King of Thebes)
Oedipus the King (‘part
1’)
Oedipus at Colonus
(Oedipus leaves Thebes in exile, and
dies)
Oedipus at Colonus
(‘part 2’)
Antigone
(His daughter comes into
conflict with the ruler, Creon.)
Henry Fuseli, Oedipus cursing
Polynices [sic] (1786)
‘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’)
Do Aristotle’s elements of tragedy help?:
•Peripeteia (reversal of fortune)
Antigone?
Creon?
•Harmatia (error of judgement)
Creon?
Antigone ?
•Agnorisis (recognition)
Creon?
Antigone?
• Death (exile/ suffering)
Creon?
Antigone?
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
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