Oedipus Rex Research Articles

Metafísica y estética de la ceguera en el 'Edipo Rey' de Sófocles

El objetivo de este artículo es doble: por un lado, se trata de refutar un tópico de la literatura filosófica moderna y contemporánea sobre el presunto valor de la ceguera en cuanto visión más profunda respecto a la visión física, una especie de sabiduría directa, intuitiva, espiritual. Dicha idea, en los últimos dos siglos ha alimentado no sólo una mitología estética (lo “espiritual en el arte”, la “visibilidad de lo invisible”, etc.) sino también una metafísica que se podría resumir en el desprecio gnoseológico del Aparecer, pues la verdad estaría siempre detrás de los fenómenos, en la oscuridad de lo indeterminado, donde sólo unos pocos tendrían acceso: esta es la tiranía de la ceguera como paradigma cultural. La distorsión sistemática de la hermenéutica de los textos griegos, se ha introducido así en el lenguaje cotidiano, deformando lentamente toda nuestra concepción del valor teorético de lo visual y a la vez del legado griego. Por esta razón, el segundo objetivo del artículo, en desmontar las razones de este constructo, será el de ofrecer una lectura alternativa de la cultura visual griega, en este caso especialmente a través de la obra de Sófocles “Edipo Rey”, donde la mayoría de estos tópicos pretenden fundamentarse.

Oedipus Rex: In the Light of Kant's and Plato's Ideas of 'Good'

The debate regarding human morality and human conscience is a crucial part of history in the present and the future of humanity. This debate on what's in actuality is 'good' and right, and what is 'bad' or the evil is an integral part of philosophy, Be specific on the philosophy literature and basic ethical considerations. This research defines and differentiates between good actions and moralistic thoughts. For this purpose, Plato and Immanuel Kant were selected for the moralistic comparison. The philosophy of Kant regarding good and virtuous actions performed through free will and the shift from transcendental aesthetics towards transcendental logic is observed and compared with the theories presented by Plato. Plato details the movement of human morals and intellectuality from sheer ignorance towards knowledge or the intellectual realm with the analogy of the Cave and the Simile of the Divided Line. This moralistic comparison is drawn through the moral analysis on the text of Oedipus the King by Sophocles. This research concludes that although the two philosophies diverge and differ in their perspectives of the good but strive for man to achieve and attain the 'good' and wisdom. However, this research is limited in the sense that not all the angles of these philosophers' theories were analyzed and some parts of the text under consideration was left untouched. This research is open for further study.

The Ugly Psyche: Arendt and the Right to Opacity

Abstract Arendt was famously dismissive of the work of psychologists, claiming that they did nothing more than reveal the pervasive ugliness and monotony of the psyche. If we want to know who people are, she argued, we should observe what they do and say rather than delving into the turmoil of their inner lives; if we want to understand humanity, we would be better off reading Oedipus Rex than hearing about someone’s Oedipus complex. The rejection has a certain coherence in the context of her understanding of public life as the realm of appearance and opinion, but examining it through the specific question of ugliness complicates that understanding. While beauty invites us to contemplate the world and admire it, ugliness repels our attention and sows the seed of a worry that the world might not want to be known. Working with Eichmann in Jerusalem, The Life of the Mind: Thinking, the Kant lectures and a striking Denktagebuch entry in which she reacts with revulsion to Matisse’s Heads of Jeannette, I argue that Arendt’s response to the ugly psyche requires a re-examination of the sensus communis. If the psyche does not want to be known, and if not all points of view are open to imaginative occupation, the ideal and practice of enlarged mentality must reckon with a right to opacity.

Metamorphoses of Oedipus in Modern French Literature. From an Intellectual Drama to a Psychoanalytical Reflection on Ideal Love

Oedipus Rex, a tragedy created twenty-five centuries ago, is still a source of inspiration for many writers. However, the overall message of modern interpretations of the Oedipus myth differs considerably from the message of Sophocles’ play; these works are no longer the stories of a man punished by gods for his haughtiness (hybris). André Gide modernizes Sophocles’ tragedy, transforming it into a lesson in secular humanism. The play by Jean Cocteau focuses on the transition from ignorance to awareness. Alain Robbe-Grillet creates an anti-story about the contemporary version of Oedipus, whose lot is determined, not by gods, but by chance and unconscious desires. As for the psychoanalytical interpretation of the myth by Jacqueline Harpman, it is first of all the reflection on ideal love, fully realized in an incestuous relationship between the son and his mother.

Retracing the Tragic Hero in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and Philip Roth's The Human Stain: تتبع البطل المأساوي في سوفوكليس الملك أوديب وفيليب روث وصمة عار الإنسان

This paper reevaluates the fundamental status of Coleman Silk in Philip Roth’s The Human Stain and Oedipus in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex by testing their characters against Aristotelian tragic hero's elements. In spite of the verifiable comparisons to Oedipus, Coleman is not a neglected figure, but a subverted one that underpins Roth's proposal of "the different nature" of inconceivable postmodern American tragedy. In Philip Roth’s The Human Stain, the protagonist Coleman Silk is implicitly linked to Sophocles' classical figure Oedipus in Oedipus Rex. The plot is interwoven with allusions to Greek tragedies, but in The Human Stain Coleman lacks the stature and the real character of Oedipus. In addition, Coleman lacks, to some extent, the real elements of a tragic hero that constitute the Catharsis: the process of releasing and providing relief; a conflict which raises the question; is Coleman really a tragic hero? According to Aristotle, the tragic hero should experience a dilemma and a massive transformation from valuable standards to lower depth, and this person should suffer particularly after committing a mistake, or even thinking about his past deeds. The tragic hero should be relatively a commendable person whose comeuppance is brought about by his own fallacies which he did not commit out of defect or wickedness, but out of his own serendipity. Following the ancient Greek concept which asserts that fluke is associated with actions, Coleman is a fortuitous man at first, unlike Oedipus, despite being born as a black man. Because of this unlucky fact, he is capable of changing his identity and rising up to the level of preeminence.

Oedipus Rex as a philosophical and political strategy

This article studies Michel Foucault’s interpretation of the tragedy Oedipus Rex. The analysis seeks to uncover the various intellectual strategies around his study. First, Foucault takes a position in the political debate about prisons in France in the early 1970s. Second, his analysis of the tragedy contributes to position his work in the field of the philosophical history of truth, by singularising his project and separating it from the dominant models of the history of philosophy. Third, Foucault aims to differentiate himself from the results of the historical work of the Paris School. This article analyses how Foucault depends on these interpretations and how it helps him to acquire philosophical relevance. Through the sociology of intellectual history’s perspective, the article elaborates the contributions and limits of Foucault’s perspective.

Response to A.D. Mills Review of The Ancient Unconscious: Psychoanalysis and the Ancient Text

Response to A.D. Mills Review of The Ancient Unconscious: Psychoanalysis and the Ancient Text Vered Lev Kenaan (bio) Oedipal Time Psychoanalysis has been linked to classical antiquity from its birth. The study of Hellenic and Roman antiquities was a formative inspiration for the development of the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. But how should we today understand the relationship between the study of the Greco-Roman world and the modern analytic and therapeutic theory of the soul? As a classicist and a comparatist studying Freud's fascination with antiquity, it became clear to me that the key to this question is in the Freudian unconscious, whose textual and cultural potential is the core of my book, The Ancient Unconscious. The unconscious is located neither in antiquity nor in modernity. It functions, rather, as an intersection between ancient and modern plots, and shows itself in the juxtaposition of ancient and modern texts. Take, for example, Freud's 1936 essay "A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis," where he recalls and analyzes a dramatic episode in his history. This episode is a central junction in my book. In 1936 Freud, at 80, was still in Vienna, three years before he died as an exile in London. In his essay he returns to a memory of his visit to Athens in 1904 when he was 48 years old. This memory, and its uncanny aftermath in consciousness, had continued to occupy Freud since then. His account of the episode amalgamates different textual phases of his memory, and through them Freud reflects on the dynamic and changing senses of antiquity that have unfolded through different points in his life. The memory concerns a journey that Freud and his younger brother, Alexander, made to Athens from Trieste. The opportunity to go abroad to Athens came unexpectedly and filled the brothers with a strange gloom and tormenting deliberations; these are eventually shown to camouflage their high expectations of visiting the Acropolis. The ancient destination aroused great excitement in the two travelers. Ancient Athens, a synecdoche [End Page 766] for classical antiquity, had been an object of fascination for Freud, who had studied Greek and Latin at the gymnasium in Vienna. For Freud, climbing on the Acropolis is an act of pilgrimage. As an archeological site, the Acropolis stirs him to imagine its Olympian dwellers, prompting an overflow of ideas of sublime beauty. Moreover, on its slopes he could still observe the ancient remains of the theater of Dionysus where Sophocles' Oedipus Rex was performed in the fifth century BCE. Oedipus and Freud are the two main protagonists of my book The Ancient Unconscious, and while they are well known to you, I hope that the way I connect them in my book will give you a new perspective. The book grew out of research on dreams and dream interpretation in antiquity, including, among other things, the oedipal dream. And of course I asked myself was there really such a thing as an oedipal dream in the ancient world? How could one think about their unconscious minds? This question led me to delve into the unconscious from an assumption of an evident and even essential difference between ancient and modern dreams. The ancient dream looks forward to the unknown future, while the modern dream as Freud formulated it moves towards the forgotten past. I became interested in these two temporal poles and saw a similarity between ancient and modern dreams; in both a textual system is at work in which past and present are allied and mutually resonant. Freud's ascent to the Acropolis offered me a metaphor for the double movement I wanted to describe in my book, one that is central to the Oedipus myth: a bidirectional flow in time. If I were to describe in one sentence what the book aims to do, it would be that it seeks to articulate the dynamic current of time in the unconscious, which finds mythic expression in the dialectical to and fro movement of Oedipus. The anachronic products of the unconscious are expressions of an Oedipal time. In making room for a fusion of times as central to our psychological experience, we also discover the cultural and...

A Critical Study of Oedipus Rex and the identity of Women in Ancient Greece

Oedipus Rex, is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles and was performed first around 429 B.C.Role of gender in society is as old as human society itself. In Oedipus Rex” a women named Jocasta is the main character and experiences all the complicated events of the female gender from her child hood throughout her life. She begins life as daughter of Menoeceus of Thebes and becomes the queen of the king (Laius).Moved by number of events like proclaiming and human weakness the play cross the climax. Besides the role of women in Greece is defined. Where the gender biasness is explained by certain events.

Narratology Redux

Narratology Redux

Four-footed Weakness: Childhood and Neoteny in Oedipus Rex

That Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex is concerned with childhood is something of a truism, but there are ways in which this holds true that go beyond its contribution to the Freudian theory of infantile sexuality. The riddle posed by the sphinx, whose solving cements Oedipus’ incestuous marriage, foregrounds infancy and its similarities to and differences from other life stages. More than that, it illustrates a difference between humans (whose number of feet changes) and other animals via a recapitulationist perspective that summarises the evolution of the human in one individual's life. However, I argue that, rather than foregrounding childhood, the play explores a peculiar trait of human infancy: neoteny. While this biological term refers to the retention of juvenile characteristics into adulthood, it has been critically deployed not only to suggest that humans are neotenic because their adult state after sexual maturation resembles the young of primates, but also that this resemblance stems from a premature birth and a prolonged, helpless infancy. I read the play as an intervention on the logic of the riddle that opposes neoteny to recapitulation. In the play, the difference between begetting (φύω, phuō) and rearing (τρέφω, trephō) is constantly worked over through the exploration of the difference between biological and adoptive fathers, between nature and nurture, which lays bare the conceptual work of neoteny.

Bite Out Your Tongue

Bite Out Your Tongue

Oedipus, Odysseus and the Return of Memory

The analogy between Oedipus and Odysseus is striking and provides an intriguing case of intertextuality once their relationship is investigated through the fascinating links that the plot of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex maintains with the episode of the foot washing of the Odyssey, Book 19. I argue, that the Homeric Odysseus provided Sophocles with an inspiring model for imitation: A middle-aged man carries on his body a childhood scar of which he has been oblivious for many years. After many years of absence, a homecoming brings with it a return of memory: the traumatic scarification begins to surface. Oedipus’ and Odysseus’ scars bring home something that has collapsed into forgetfulness. Returning to Auerbach’s “Odysseus Scar” the article discusses the scar as a junction of forgetting and remembering and show how Odysseus’ memory and Oedipus’ forgetfulness are intertwined.

Édipo, Odisseu e o retorno da memória

A analogia entre Édipo e Odisseu é impressionante e apresenta um caso interessante de intertextualidade, uma vez que sua relação é investigada a partir dos liames entre o enredo do Édipo Rei de Sófocles e o episódio da lavagem dos pés de Odisseu, no Canto XIX. Defendo que o Odisseu homérico forneceu a Sófocles um modelo inspirador para imitação: um homem de meia-idade carrega no seu corpo uma marca de infância da qual se manteve alheio por muitos anos. Após vários anos ausente, o retorno ao lar traz consigo o retorno da memória: a traumática escarificação vem à tona. As cicatrizes de Édipo e Odisseu trazem de volta algo que caíra no esquecimento. Voltando à “Cicatriz de Odisseu” de Auerbach, este artigo aborda a cicatriz como uma junção do esquecimento e da recordação, e mostra como a memória Odisseu e o esquecimento de Édipo estão entrelaçados.

Oedipus goes to the opera: Psychoanalytic inquiry in Enescu’s Œdipe and Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex

Psychoanalytic inquiry into operas based on the life of Oedipus may provide further knowledge on the Oedipus complex. Therefore, we chose to analyze Enescu’s Œdipe and Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex. Two distinct methodologies were used in our study. The first explored the concept of free association through musical themes in the operas. The second involved the comparative study of the Oedipus myth in order to provide a deeper understanding of Oedipus’s character. We observed that Oedipus displayed symptoms of his complex through the traits of aggressiveness and arrogance. Moreover, we noticed that Oedipus was compelled by the necessity of finding out who his real parents were and by unconsciously accomplishing the prophecy. Oedipus assumed the responsibility to free the Thebans from plague. Yet, it was too late, for the feared part of the prophecy was already accomplished. He provided a wrong answer to the Sphinx and then received the most severe punishment, one that would have ostracism as its outcome. It was, however, not too late for Oedipus to finally discover who his real parents were. Nevertheless, afraid of losing his place as King of Thebes, he investigated the plague’s causes. This resulted in his aggression as he resisted discovering “where babies come from.”

HELICONIAN NYMPHS, OEDIPUS’ ANCESTRY AND WILAMOWITZ'S CONJECTURE (SOPH. OT 1108)

The third stasimon of Oedipus Rex (OT) is the climax of the play, separating the conversation with the Corinthian messenger from the interrogation of the shepherd, so crucial for the narrative. Indeed, the question τίς σε, τέκνον, τίς σ’ ἔτικτε, critical for the plot, comes right at the beginning of its antistrophe. Sophocles, however, offers no easy answer to it. Instead, he provides yet another narrative misdirection, one that—for the last time—suggests that the paths of the king of Thebes and of his predecessor may have been divergent: the possibility that Oedipus’ divine ancestry would question the prophecy of Apollo. After enumerating Pan, Hermes and Apollo himself as possible parents, the song also mentions Dionysus and the ‘Heliconian nymphs’. The reference to Helicon has perplexed the readers for many years, since the text seems to focus on Cithaeron as the ‘birthplace’. As a result, editions and translations prefer the conjecture ἑλικωπίδων (Νυμφᾶν) proposed by U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff in 1879, over Ἑλικωνί(α)δων, the form present in all manuscripts. In this paper I argue that an analysis of our sources for Heliconian cults, an assessment of the performative context, and a close reading of the stasimon and its place in the narrative, all suggest that the manuscript reading should be retained.

Perdita and Oedipus: A Tale of Two Adoptions

The paper proposes Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale (WT) as foundation narrative for attachment‐informed psychotherapy, and a counterpart to Oedipus Rex (OR), covering similar psychological territory but in a strikingly different way. Both start with a father's rejection of a baby and its rescue and adoption by distant shepherds. Both revolve around murderousness and desire in a mother–father–child triangle, but in WT the prime mover is filicide rather than parricide. WT points to the positive aspects of the care‐giving dynamic. The main characters of WT, in contrast to OR's phallocentrism, are the rejected Queen Hermione, her handmaiden Paulina and Perdita herself. Their relationships are characterized by attachment security: this gives Paulina the courage to confront and instigate mentalizing in Leontes, the psychotic king, and for Perdita to find her sexuality through her transgressive love for Florizel. The environmental benefits of adoption are highlighted as WT's tragi‐comic dynamic moves from chaos to renewal and rebirth: Hermione survives the ‘attack on the good object’; Leontes recovers from his jealous hatred and subsequent depression; ruptures are repaired. WT depicts secure attachments as bulwarks against loss, and the key to resilience in the face of trauma.

Changing Paradigms: Some Epistemological and Philosophical Aspects in Dealing with Oedipus Rex

Changing Paradigms: Some Epistemological and Philosophical Aspects in Dealing with Oedipus Rex

Stephen Gill Pens Poetry for Personal Therapy

About 300 years before Christ, Aristotle describes catharsis in his Poetics to show the impact of true tragedy on the audience. In the nineteenth century, Josef Breuer, the companion of Sigmund Freud, was the first to use Aristotelian concept in the realm of psychology. One template of catharsis is the use of a musical instrument for a tired person to feel relaxed. In literature, one example is Oedipus Rex in which Oedipus unknowingly marries his biological mother. Another example is Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. It is often said that reading any work about murder or to see it on the television can be a healing therapy.

La tragedia griega en el teatro contemporáneo: un análisis de <i>Incendios</i> de Wajdi Mouawad

The present study focuses on the analysis of contemporary literature which has a textual formality that is forged, both structurally and, in a sense, thematically, by the fundamental aspects of classical Greek tragedy. In order to do this, we would take the example of Incendies, the work of the Lebanese playwright Wajdi Mouawad, where autobiographical hints are interspersed with sources of classical Greek tragedy, the most evident of which is the one of Oedipus Rex; that is to say the relation between the mother and the son and the discovery of the Truth, which already appears in Aristotle’s Poetics. We also find the case of Cadmo and the search for a kidnapped family member and the importance of learning the language so as to understand the events that take place.

Entangled Paths and Ghostly Resonances:Bleak HouseandOedipus Rex

This essay begins with the question of why Prince Turveydrop and his infant daughter are both afflicted with disabilities toward the end of the novel. I argue that we can best answer this question by reading Dickens's novel through the lens of Sophocles's Oedipus Rex. Drawing upon Wai Chee Dimock's concept of “deep time,” which views literature as “a crisscrossing set of pathways, open ended and ever multiplying, weaving in and out of other geographies, other language and cultures” (3), I look at the ways in which Oedipus Rex (429 BCE) is woven throughout Bleak House (1852–53). I look especially at the questions of infanticide, or, more generally, the death of children, and that of disability or lameness. Here I draw upon Jean Pierre Vernant's reading of lameness in Sophocles's play, in which he argues that for the Greeks, the life of each individual “must be articulated on the sequence of generations, must respect that sequence,” or else chaos will follow. To a degree that is not found in any of Dickens's other novels, I argue, Bleak House portrays a shattering of temporal order and a world in which this sequence of generations is violated.