Oedipus

Oedipus 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 oedipus, about, play, good, yet, tragedy, through, read, human, events, answer, ability, words, theme, riddle, reason, real, plot, pity, person, out, fear, control, bad, attempt, apollo, wrong, verbal, tragic, time, think, things, special, sense, self