Oedipus Rex
Oedipus Tyranneus
Oedipus The King
Historical background and structure
– Translations
– The original play was written in 430 BC
– Many translations made by Ancient Greek scholars over
the years
Theater of Ancient Greece
• Ritualistic nature of the art form
• Roots are tied to the festivals honoring the gods
• The gods would often be characters in the plays
• Determining the fate of the characters
• Reflecting religious beliefs
• Legendary kings and heroes would also be characters
• Usually protagonists
Theater of Ancient Greece
• Significant events
• Business and daily activities were suspended
• Participation was a civic duty
• Important
• Not merely entertainment
• Instructional Device
• Originally performed on stone threshing floors
• Orchestra was moved to the foot of the
temple of the god being honored
Physical structure of the theater
• Housed 15,000 people
• Acoustically perfect
Playwrights had
to incorporate
setting and
some
movements into
actors’ lines
• No painted scenery
• Hard to see the stage from top row seats
Actors
• Originally all the lines were spoken by the
chorus
• Thespis – first actor, 534 BC
– SPOKE as a god rather than SPOKE ABOUT a god
• Aeschylus (First of the Greek tragedians)
– incorporated a second actor
• Sophocles (2nd)
– Added a third actor
• Euripides (3rd and last)
– Employed the third actor
# per
scene
Actors
• Greek Actors
– Highly regarded
– Would be exempt from military duty to perform
• NO WOMEN
– Young boys (before voice changed) would often
play women
– Often, women were not even allowed to see the
plays
• If they did, they were in the seats furthest from the
stage
Debate?
• Monologues
• Stichomythia
– dialogue between two characters
– Essentially a debate between two characters
• Oversized and cumbersome
Costumes
– Developed grand gestures or movements that
signified emotions
• Chiton
– Long flowing robe usually linen or silk
• Cothurni
– Platform shoes to add height
Props
•
•
•
•
•
Heralds=wreaths
Travelers=hats
Kings=scepters
Warriors=spears
Elderly=sticks/canes
Masks
• Served as a megaphone
• Identified
– Age, gender, mood, rank
•
•
•
•
•
Allowed actors to play more than one scene
Fully hooded
Rested on the actor’s shoulders
Made of bark, cork, leather, or linen
Generalized features to represent EVERYMAN
– The instructional message pertained to everyone
Masks
• The beautiful
masks were for
tragedy
• The grotesque and
bizarre for comedy
Legend of Oedipus
– Well known to Sophocles before he wrote
– Well known to the audience as well
– Heightens the dramatic irony
– Oedipus first shows up in Homer’s Odyssey
Dramatic structure
• Generic
– Conflict to crisis to resolution
Greek Drama Structure
• Prologos (Prologue)
– Opening of the play
• Parados
– Entrance song of the chorus
– Named after the aisles from which the chorus enters
• Episodes (Scenes)
– Action performed by the actors
Greek Drama Structure
• Stasimons (Odes)
– Choral passages
– Alternate with the scenes
– Type of lyrical poem
• Dignified diction
– Contained
• Strophes
– the movement of the chorus in one direction
• Antistrophes
– The movement of the chorus in the opposite direction
Greek Drama Structure
• Exodus
– Conclusion
– Chorus sings their final lines as they exit
Role of the Chorus
– Evolved out of a chorus of individuals who recited
dithyrambs (short poems) to the god, Dionysus.
– Originally consisted of 50 men who sang and danced
to music
– Performing in the chorus was part of civic duty
– Trained and costumed
– Aeschylus’ Plays (12 men)
– Often part of the action
– Sophocles’ Plays (15 men)
– Commentators
– Euripides
– Expressed the playwrights philosophical beliefs
Role of the Chorus
• Diminished in importance as Greek tragedy
evolved
• Collective character
• Tangible, audible link between the audience
and the central characters
• Provided a release from tension
Role of the Chorus
• At times advised central characters
• Often functioned as the conscience of the
people
• Helped establish mood and heightened drama
through movement and song
• Added theatricality
• Helped the pacing of the play
Role of the Chorus
• Pointed out moments the audience should
reflect on the play or the lesson gleaned
• Could be in the play or outside of it
– Direct participation
– Commentary
• Separated one scene from another
• Usually a spokesperson for the chorus who
interacted with the central characters
– Choragos
Literary Devices
Paradox
Paradox
• A seeming contradiction/A play on ideas
• Teiresias
– Blind prophet with extraordinary powers of
divination
• Oedipus
– Physically can see (at the beginning)
– Accused of being blind to the truth
– Blinds himself at the end
• Oedipus to Teiresias
Paradox
– You child of endless night. You can not hurt me or any
other man who sees the sun. (p 1323, 360)
• Teiresias to Oedipus
– Listen to me. You mock my blindness, do you? But I say
that you, with both your eyes are blind. (p 1324, 398)
– You do not even know the blind wrongs/that you have
done [your parents] on earth and in the world below. (p
1325, 403-404
– But the double lash of your parents’ curse will whip
you/Out of this land some day, with only night upon your
precious eyes. (p 1325, 407)
• Oedipus blinds himself after discovering the
truth.
Literary Devices
Imagery – Mount Kithairon
Mount Kithairon
• Mountain is symbolic in Greek Literature
– Represents man’s unattainable quest for
perfection
– Separates the distance between God and Man
• Image ever present in Oedipus’ search for
identity
Mount Kithairon
• Rocky, hazardous climb to dangerous heights
of disclosure for Oedipus (pinnacle of
metaphors, eh?)
• Odes 2 & 3 remind the audience of the tragic
fall from uncertain heights which is inevitable
to the man who ignores the order of the
universe
Mount Kithairon
• Supposed location of the Dionysian rites
– Dionysius - God of fertility, harvest, wind
• Home of all foundlings (orphans)
• Oedipus is found there
• Oedipus returns there at the end to die where
he was originally left to die which brings his
life full circle
Quotes
• P. 1333 678 “And left him to die on a lonely
mountainside.”
• P 1342 975 “I came upon you in the woody
vales of Kithairon.”
• P 1344 1030 “Kithairon, now by Heaven I
see…”
• P 1356 1038 “But let me go…to Kithairon…”
Literary Devices
Imagery –
Light vs.. Dark
Day vs.. Night
Light vs. Dark
• P 1316 “I must bring what is dark to light”
• P 1327 “Laios’s dark death staining Oedipus
the King.”
• P 1340 “the new prophesies in the light of the
old.”
Day vs.. Night
• P 1318 193 “for the day ravages what the
night spares”
• P 1323 359-360 “You child of total night! I
would not touch you; Neither would any man
who sees the sun.”
• P 1325 “Out of this land some day, with only
night upon your precious eyes.”
Literary Devices
Imagery –
Sight vs.. blindness
Sight vs.. Blindness
Oedipus to Teiresias
• P 1321 287/291 “Teiresias: seer…Blind though
you are, you know the city lies sick…”
• P 1322 307 “Why are your eyes so cold?”
• P 1323 332 “if you had eyes”
• P 1323 352 “You sightless, witless, senseless,
mad old man!”
• P 1323 359-360 “You total child of the night! I
would not touch you; neither would anyone
who sees the sun”
Sight vs.. Blindness
Teiresias to Oedipus
• P 1322 323 “If you could only see the nature
of your feelings”
• P 1323 352 “You can not see the evil.”
• P 1324 “…I say to you, with both your eyes,
you are blind.”
• P 1326 439-440 “A blind man, who has his
eyes now”
Sight vs.. Blindness
Miscellaneous
• P 1313 25 “Your own eyes must tell you:
Thebes tossed on a murdering sea” (Priest)
• P 1315 109 “I learned of him from others; I
never saw him” (Oedipus)
• P 1332 638 “And in its [city] eyes I am just”
(Kreon)
• P 1334 “I am not sure that the blind man can
not see.” (Oedipus)
Irony
• A contrast between what appears to be and
what actually exists, between what is
expected and what is experienced.
– Why?
•
•
•
•
Heighten suspense
Add humor
Assist in character development/depth
Assists foreshadowing
Irony
• Verbal Irony: when a character says one thing
but means another
– Teiresias says to Oedipus “I say that you, with both
your eyes, are blind.” Oedipus can see, but
Teiresias is referring to insight. Ironically, once
Oedipus gains insight, he physically blinds himself.
Irony
• Situational Irony: what happens is different
from what’s expected to happen
– It is ironic that the murderer whom Oedipus seeks
to cast from Thebes in order to lift the curse on
the city is Oedipus, himself.
– Teiresias, the prophet, is blind
Irony
• Dramatic Irony: The audience or reader is
aware of information of which the characters
are unaware
– When Oedipus states “by avenging the murdered
King I protect myself” or “until now I was a
stranger to this tale, as I had been a stranger to
the crime”
Tragedy
• Aristotle’s definition from Poetics
– Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is
serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in
language that is embellished with each kind of
artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in
separate parts of the play; in the form of action,
not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting
the proper purgation for these emotions
• Aristotle considered Oedipus Rex to be the
perfect tragedy
Definition broken down
1. The writer of tragedy imitates a serious and complete action,
of a certain magnitude, represented by what characters on
stage say and do.
2. “Action” is the motivation from which deeds emanate, or the
rational purpose of the play.
3. The element of pathos is essential to the whole.
4. Plot is that arrangement of carefully selected, carefully
sequenced, tragic incidents to represent one complete action.
5. The plot consists of parts or types of incidents in the
beginning, middle, and the end of the play.
Quantitative Parts: Prologos, Parados, Episodes, Choric Odes, and Exodos.
Organic Parts:
Reversal/peripteia of the situation;
Recognition/anagnorisis a change from ignorance to knowledge;
Pathos/Scene of suffering a moment of passion
6. Plots vary by kind
Complex vs. Simple
Ethically motivated vs. Pathetically
7. The story must seem probable
8. Plot is divided into two main parts
Complication – part of the play which extends from
the Prologos to the turning point
Unraveling or Denouement – part of the play which
extends from the turning point to the end
9. A play can be unified only if it represents one
action, and the best plays are unified by a
single plot and a single catastrophe
10. The central action of the play springs from
character and thought, manifested in the
dialogue.
11. The chorus: most direction represents the
action (or purpose) of the play
12. Characters should be carefully delineated to
contrast sharply with one another, should be
full of life individually, should vary ethically,
should be probable, consistent, and should
reflect the central action of the play in the
development of the character
13. The tragic hero should be a ruler or a leader, whose
character is good and whose misfortune is brought
about by some error or frailty.
14. Language should be elevated in verse (which in 5th
century BC was similar to blank verse today) and
should reflect rhetorical strategies of persuasion.
15. The special quality of man’s pleasure in tragedy
comes from the purgation of the passions of fear
and pity felt by the audience as they watch the fate
of the tragic hero unfold, recognizing in it the
universal human lot.
HAMARTIA = TRAGIC FLAW
Themes
• Hubris (hybris) – excessive pride which leads
to a fall
• How man deals with inevitable pain in his life
will define his humanity
• No one is as blind as he who by the act of free
will will not see
• Error and disaster can happen to anyone
• Human beings are relatively powerless before
fate or the gods and that a cautious humility is
the best attitude toward life.
Themes
• Human beings can demonstrate remarkable
powers of intellectual depth and insight and
have a great capacity for knowledge, but that
even the smartest human being is inevitably
going to err.
• Man is insignificant and flawed
• The desire and quest for understanding of the
mysteries of the universe is a noble one
Importance
• Archetypal chronicle of human frailty, pride,
and punishment
• The perfect tragedy in Aristotle’s mind