Ismene’s Hat: Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus 313–14

2021 ◽  
Vol 116 (4) ◽  
pp. 588-592
Author(s):  
Laurialan Reitzammer
Keyword(s):  
Oedipus At Colonus

Se perdre afin de se retrouver : l'importance du passage entre l’absence et la présence dans Œdipe sur la route de Henry Bauchau

2012 ◽  
pp. 116-123
Author(s):  
Alicja Ślusarska
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Meaning Of Life ◽  
The Road ◽  
De Se ◽  
The City ◽  
Oedipus At Colonus

Retracing in his novel the labyrinthine journey that leads Oedipus from the place of his abomination (Thebes) to the city of his future glory (Colonus), Henry Bauchau fills the emptiness between Sophocles’s Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus. Bauchau’s hero, a powerful king, loses everything and stabs his eyes out when the cruel truth about his real identity is revealed. Blind, homeless, devoid of meaning of life, Oedipus leaves on a journey to pass away anywhere. However, his way to death turns out to be, thanks to benevolent presence of others and art’s liberating power, the road to personal elucidation. The story of Bauchau’s Oedipus, who finally recognizes himself as a truly human, is based therefore on the passage between absence and presence, between darkness and lucidity, on the union of contradictions which symbolize the complexity of human nature. This paper attempts to analyse different representations of absence in Bauchau’s novel. Afterwards, the article focuses on the ways which facilitate Oedipus’s road leading from depersonalization to rediscovery of his own identity.

King Lear and its Origins

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kerrigan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
King Lear ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Desire For Death ◽  
History Play ◽  
Oedipus At Colonus

The agreed, major sources of King Lear are the anonymous history play King Leir and Sidney’s Arcadia. To these and other early modern ‘originals’ this chapter adds classical tragedies by Seneca, Euripides, and Sophocles—most conspicuously his Oedipus at Colonus, which was readily available in Latin translation. The ancient tragedies resonate with King Lear thanks to conventions of literary imitation that were well understood in the Jacobean period, but their presence is also symptomatic of a drive within the play to get back to the origins of nature, injustice, and causation. The influences of Plutarch and Montaigne are also highlighted. The portrayal of death (or the illusion of it) and the desire for death, in the play and its sources, are analysed. Focusing on the scenes at Dover Cliff and the division of the kingdom/s, this chapter moves to a new account of the complications of the play’s conclusion in both quarto and Folio texts.

Motion in Classical Literature

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. O. Hutchinson
Keyword(s):  
Visual Art ◽  
Ancient Philosophy ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Group Motion ◽  
Ancient Literature ◽  
Narrative Poems ◽  
Oedipus At Colonus

Ancient literature is full of people, gods, and animals in impressive motion. But while the importance of space has been realized recently, motion has had little attention, for all its prominence in literature, and its interest to ancient philosophy. Motion is bound up with decisions, emotions, character; its specific features are expressive. The book starts with motion in visual art: this leads to the characteristics of literary depiction. Literary works discussed are: Homer’s Iliad; Ovid’s Metamorphoses; Tacitus’ Annals; Sophocles’ Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus; Parmenides’ On Nature; Seneca’s Natural Questions. The two narrative poems here diverge rewardingly, as do philosophical poetry and prose; in the prose narrative, as in the philosophical poem, the absence of motion, and metaphorical motion, are important; the dramas scrutinize motion verbally and visually. Each discussion pursues the general roles of motion in a work, with detail on its language of motion; then passages are analysed closely, to show how much emerges when this aspect is scrutinized. A conclusion brings works and passages together. It considers the differences made by genre and by the time of writing. Among aspects of motion which emerge as important are speed, scale, shape of movement, motion and fixity, movement of one person and a group, motion willed and imposed, motion in images and unrealized possibilities. A companion website makes it easier to see passages and analyses together; it offers videos of readings to convey the vitality and subtlety with which motion is portrayed.

fall and rise of King Oedipus

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Khegan Delport
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
Seminal Work ◽  
Oedipus At Colonus

This essay is placed within a continuing debate on the appropriateness of a Christian deployment of tragedy. According David Bentley Hart, tragedy legitimates a sacrificial and scapegoating logic that is in contradiction with the Christian gospel. It promotes exclusion and therefore is imaginatively and metaphysically conservative in its import. In the ensuing argument, I hope to show through one example how even Greek tragedy can resist some of these claims. Drawing on the seminal work of Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, I argue that Sophocles’ Oedipus cycle, firstly, demonstrates the inability of nomos to grasp the exception of Oedipus, and that this might constitute a critique rather than a simple legitimation of the civic order. Secondly, the narrative arc of Oedipus Tyrannus and Oedipus at Colonus point towards incorporation rather than final exclusion, and that his apotheosis could be read as resisting deleterious tropes of a final holocaust of the tragic figure. In the final section, drawing on Rowan Williams, I discuss the problems associated with literary Christologies in general, and whether it could be theologically feasible to talk about the Theban cycle as exhibiting a ‘proto-Christology’.

The Poet at Colonus: Nightingales in Sophocles

Mnemosyne ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 54 (6) ◽  
pp. 646-658 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aara Suksi
Keyword(s):  
Poetic Tradition ◽  
Transformative Function ◽  
Oedipus At Colonus

AbstractThe presence of the nightingales in Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus evokes associations of a long mythico-poetic tradition in which the nightingale is known not only for her sweet song, but also for her association with lament, arising from the tragic myth of Procne and Tereus. These associations make the nightingale an important symbol of tragic poetry and its transformative function, and their presence at Colonus reminds us that Sophocles himself was born there.

Cursing-Prayers and Female Vengeance in the Ancient Greek World1

2018 ◽  
pp. 141-159
Author(s):  
Lydia Matthews ◽  
Irene Salvo
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Social Function ◽  
Judicial System ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Civic Community ◽  
Legal Forms ◽  
Modern Turkey ◽  
Oedipus At Colonus

This chapter analyses women praying for revenge in ancient Greece in literary texts (such as Homer’s Iliad, and Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus) alongside thirteen prayers for justice written exclusively by women and found in Knidos (Caria, modern Turkey). It argues that because women did not have direct access to legal forms of retribution and often had complaints that fell outside the normal judicial system (such as a husband’s adultery), cursing-prayers prayers had an important psychological and social function for women, providing a legitimate outlet for potentially disruptive feelings through an established ritual that was recognized as meaningful by the civic community. Like lamentation, cursing allowed women to express anger and hatred within socially acceptable roles and practices, providing women with a legitimate, communal medium in which to air grievances and to rectify or revenge the injuries done to them.

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