Sophocles: Oedipus the King (Volume A)

Sophocles

• Athens, Colonus• education• golden age• Peloponnesian War

(431 B.C.E.)

• theater changes• tritagonist

• tragedy and imitation• style: embellished, different parts• catharsis• 6 elements: plot, character, language,

thought, spectacle, and melody• plot: recognition, catharsis, reversal• unhappy endings• probability and inevitability• deus ex machina• chorus

Aristotle’s Poetics: Tragedy

Elements of Plot

• recognition (anagnorisis)

• catharsis • reversal (peripeteia)

Catharsis, Hamartia

Thebes, Corinth

Delphic Oracle: Know Thyself

Sphinx

• feminine• merciless• cunning• lion-bird-woman

Adoption

• Delphic Oracle• exposure• blood guilt• adoption• Corinth, Thebes

Tiresias

• physical blindness versus visions and prophecy

• judge for the gods

• democracy• Oedipus/ Creon• Antigone• Oedipus at Colonus

Politics

“Don’t claim any man god’s friend until he has passed through life and crossed the border into death—never having been god’s victim” (lines 1744–46)

Chorus/ Play’s Lesson

Discussion Questions

Oedipus’s pride might be considered a tragic flaw, but does pride truly bring about his downfall? Looked at another way, could the pestilence afflicting Thebes be rooted out without Oedipus’s single-minded determination to solve the latest riddle, regardless of the consequences?

Oedipus blames Apollo for bringing his sorrow to completion but claims that the act of putting his eyes out was his own. Certainly there is a sense that Oedipus does not deserve his fate, but what, then, is he responsible for, and what does the audience learn from the experience of the play?

Discussion Questions

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The Norton Anthology

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