LITR 4533:
TRAGEDY

Text-Objective Discussion 2008

Tuesday, 10 June 2008: begin Sophocles, Oedipus the King (pages 1-24 of handout / email, up to Jocasta's emergence from palace) + handout on Sigmund Freud and The Oedipus Complex in Oedipus the King and Hamlet (both the Oedipus & Hamlet texts will be emailed to students)

Text-objective discussion: Bryan McDonald

Oedipus the King

 

Building dramatic irony and foreshadowing:

·         Accumulation of grief, pain, and irony

·         Fall of a seemingly “grand,” yet gullible and self obsessed, tragic protagonist.

 

Creates an inescapable breach of morality

·         Violations of basic moral principles (incest)

·         Offer no comical or forgiving manner to escape wrong-doings

            

“And for the man who did the guilty deed,

 

Whether alone he lurks, or leagued with more,

 

I pray that he may waste his life away,”

 

 

“And now that I am lord,
Successor to his throne, his bed, his wife,”

 

“As if this manner concerned my father”