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Oedipus represents two enduring themes of Greek myth and drama: the flawed nature of humanity and an individual's role in the course of destiny in a harsh universe. In the best-known version of the myth, Oedipus was born to King Laius and Queen Jocasta of Thebes. Laius wished to thwart the prophecy, so he sent a shepherd-servant to leave ...
Oedipus Rex, also known by its Greek title, Oedipus Tyrannus (Ancient Greek: Οἰδίπους Τύραννος, pronounced [oidípuːs týrannos]), or Oedipus the King, is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles. While some scholars have argued that the play was first performed c. 429 BC, this is highly uncertain. [1]
The Creon of Oedipus Rex is in some ways different and in some ways similar to the Creon of Antigone. In Oedipus Rex, he appears to favor the will of the gods above decrees of state. Even when Oedipus says that, once dethroned, he must be exiled, Creon waits for the approval of the gods to carry out the order once he has been crowned king.
Oedipus then became king of Thebes, as husband of the widowed Jocasta. The couple had four children, including two sons, Polynices and Eteocles. When the seer Teiresias revealed Oedipus' horrible crimes - patricide, regicide and incest, no less - Oedipus was forced to abdicate. Jocasta killed herself, and Oedipus was shunned by his own children.
However, Theseus defends Oedipus and rescues both Antigone and her sister who was also taken prisoner. At the end of the play, both Antigone and her sister mourn the death of their father. Theseus offers them the comfort of knowing that Oedipus has received a proper burial, but by his wishes, they cannot go to the site.
The influential early 20th Century French Theatre critic Antonin Artaud considered Seneca's Oedipus and Thyestes models for his Theatre of Cruelty, originally speaking and writing about Seneca's use of 'the plague' in Oedipus in a famous lecture on 'Theatre and the Plague' given at the Sorbonne (April 6, 1933) and later revised and printed in ...
Bracha L. Ettinger introduced a Laius Complex 'per se', not in terms of 'counter-Oedipus' but prior to it, in the frame of feminist psychoanalysis in terms of the analyst's desire to destroy the patient and exploit its creativity and sexuality, not as a counter-transferential reaction to the patient (as 'son' or 'daughter'), but as a direct ...
[3] [5] The blind Oedipus has a scene with Jocasta and possibly Periboea in which the fact that his biological parents are Laius and Jocasta is revealed. [3] Menoetes, another servant of Laius who had originally exposed Oedipus when he was born, might have played a role in this recognition scene as well. [3]