Oedipus

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Lecture #2 - Oedipus the King

A. Background: Play written between 441-427 B.C.; Greek
theatre as an outgrowth of religious celebrations; competition; sets of
four plays performed together, a trilogy of tragedies followed by a
comedy (usually); (distinction between tragedy and comedy
(Aristophanes)); Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides; many others lost;
only partial records of these three.

B. Much of what we know about how the Greeks themselves
thought of tragedy derived from Aristotle. Speech in verse (metre,
rhythm, music); scenery; masks; spectacle. Read definition from
poetics (1).

C. Catharsis (pity and fear) - "expurgation" vs. "establishment of
equilibrium."

D. Achievement of catharsis through plot, not through effects or
characters. Tragedy is about the fortune or misfortune which
human beings achieve or suffer (through action or happening at
least). Reversals and recognitions (surprising, unpredictable events)
key in producing pity and fear. Yet the plot must be complex yet
tight, the events, including the reversals, a necessary result of other
events - not just arbitrary buffeting at the hands of fortune. Oedipus
the King is Aristotle's paradigm of a tragedy which works this way.

E. Examples from the text:

1) Oedipus brought to Thebes (and to kill his father, marry his
mother) by his attempt to avoid these eventualities.
2) Jocasta's attempt to put his mind at rest about killing his
father - "don't believe seers, e.g. they were wrong about Laius being
killed by his son" - the very thing that starts Oedipus on the
suspicion that he is guilty.
3) Messenger's attempt to calm him re marrying mother - "not
real parents" -catapults him closer to the realisation.

Notion of irony - verbal ("I know the name, I never met the
man") and actional (above). Many of the audience would have
known the story all along. (But not all - see Aristotle.)
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