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HUEN 1010 Dr. Fredricksmeyer Contextualizing Oedipus Rex Greek Irrationalism and Tragedy Greek rationalism Apollo Greek Irrationalism Dionysus and the Freudian id Freud: id-ego-superego Dionysian vs. Apollonian Birth of Tragedy Death in Venice Greek Golden Mean/Balance Tragedy's connection with Dionysus/Irrationalism and the Freudian id tragedy = trag (goat)/o[e]d (song) Aristotle’s Poetics—double origin, both connected with goats satyrica dithyrambs (in honor of Dionysus) City (or Great) Dionysia and other festivals Tragedy and Greek Theater Drama: actors, dialogue, chorus, tetralogy (in Athens) Great artistic scope within broad limits Tragic sequence (Aristotle’s Poetics): a) aristocratic/powerful hero b) hero between good and evil c) corrupted by power d) makes an unintentional mistake e) this leads to a reversal—from prosperity into suffering f) the reversal can be caused, or followed by, a discovery all to produce the emotions in the audience of fear and pity, and thus produce the purgation (catharsis) of these emotions Dramatic or tragic irony Relationships usually of two types: a) between man and god (much more on this later) b) between members of dysfunctional families Actors—exclusively male Generic and universal—masks kothornoi Chorus (in rectangular formation) includes different sorts, but all choruses in some way representative of the polis Audience: ca. 14,000; almost exclusively male Venue: include the Theater of Dionysus at Athens Stage Orchestra Altar Skenê Mechanê Deus ex machina violence not depicted on stage Greatest 5th century tragedians Aeschylus Sophocles Euripides Oedipus Rex Sophocles (496-06 BCE) priest; general; imperial treasurer 123 plays OR's date: 429-25 BCE prequel detective story unity of time irony symbolic interpretation: concrete: pins psychologicalFreud's theory of infant development: oral, anal, phallic Oedipal Complex castration anxiety Oedipus and the Oedipal Complex? structuralist interpretation: binary opposites (Claude Lévi-Strauss) Tiresias vs. Oedipus blindness darkness knowledge divine knowledge sight light ignorance human knowledge ironic alignment/motif of blindness/insight prophecy vs. secular humanism (Protagoras/sophists) limitations of human knowledge Oedipus = “Knowing" (oed- = Lat. vid) or “Swollen Foot” ([o]ed- / pus) Sphinx’ riddle theme of proper/improper use of power Oedipus as ideal Athenian theme of tyrant/hubris ship of state metaphors Athenian Real Politik (see Imperialism) theme of proper/improper reproduction (and patricide) (cf. Thucydides—Athenian plague 430/29) medical terminology/metaphor Hippocratic Corpus and 5th cent. Greek medicine pollution/shared guilt agricultural metaphor Sphinx as proleptic punishment freedom of will vs. fate morality/immorality double motivation reversals
