new from Amazon (instead of list of reading, right table)
Sophocles and Aristotle
No way I can change the structure of the class every time I teach it! [ and I did it, again! ]
"According to me and Aristotle, Hamlet is a tragedy, because..." -- 5 points[ in class assignment ]
Consider that many of the events in the traditional story of Oedipus (killing his father, solving the riddle of the Sphinx, marrying his mother, etc.) have already occurred when the play opens. Why? Why does Sophocles concentrate on the life of Oedipus after his becoming king of Thebes?
How would you describe the character of Oedipus? What sort of a person is he? Consider how Oedipus sees himself (as seen for example in the play's opening speech and his later dialogues with Creon and Tiresias). What character traits and dispositions are dominant in his personality?
What is the effect of Oedipus's insistence and promises regarding the hunting down and punishing of the murderer of Laius? What does this suggest concerning his character as well as the meaning of Sophocles's play?
What may be the purpose and significance of the interactions between Oedipus and characters like Tiresias and Creon?
Why does Tiresias hesitate to tell Oedipus the truth of his identity?
What is the significance of Oedipus's slow coming into awareness of that identity?
What is the significance of the physical blindness of the prophet Tiresias? Is blindness an important and repeated symbolic motif in the plain? How can we interpret Oedipus's act of self-blinding? Is his physical blindness symbolically similar to or different from that of Tiresias?
What do you make of the various situations at the end of the play (the suicide of Jocasta, Oedipus's self-blinding and exile, his prediction of a miserable life for his own children)? Why are the outcomes so tragic and extreme? What is the significance of the curse/prophecy which seems to haunt the family of Oedipus?
Is Oedipus an innocent victim of an unjust fate or does he bear some responsibility in the outcome of his life? Is his fate the result of unavoidable necessity or does he contribute to it through his own choices? Could he have changed the fate described in the prophecies? How?
Myth : makes us believe in unbelievable?
Impossible?
Impossible is the best proposition to start a story!
...
How likely that brother would kill brother and marry his wife? (Hamlet)
...
PS
Theme(s) : Father and Son (Generations)
Dramatic Literature I
New: the four+ levels in DramLit [ 1-2-3-4 ]
Oedipus in question : in class point-by-point :
Useful Questions to Ask Yourself about a Script Under Review 1. Is there anything special about the title? Does it focus on a character, the milieu, or a theme? Is it taken from a quotation or is an allusion? Does it contain a point of view or suggest a mood?
2. Make a note of unrealistic elements and consider their meaning. Does it include documentary material and, if so, to what effect?
3. Is there a main theme? Consider the tempo of the various sections?
4. How many acts and scenes are there? What motivates the divisions of the play and how are they marked (curtains, blackouts, etc.)?
5. What are the retrospective elements of the play and are they explicit or implicit?
6. Is there secondary action and what is its relationship with the main action?
7. Consider the characters entrances and exits and how they are motivated?
8. Is there any difference between playing time (the time it takes to perform the play) and illusory time (the time the action is supposed to take)? What is the relationship between the two, if any?
9. Where is the play enacted? Is the playwright vague or exact about the environment? Is this important?
10. How does the playwright economize with the number of roles? Could any be omitted or doubled? What function do the various secondary characters have?
11. Who is the protagonist? The antagonist?
12. What are the relationships among the characters and how do they change?
13. Is the play in verse, prose, or a mixture?
14. Is the play a translation? Can you compare it to the original? With other translations? Are there significant differences?
15. Is the playwright making significant points of interpretation with the use of punctuation? With breaks and overlaps? With silence?
A baby was left at the hospital (South) and the young couple moved away as far as possible (Canada?)...
A Jewish girl falls in love with a young German during WWI (France); she gives a baby away, when the two got separated. When reunited, they have to hide her identity...
Sphinx ?
Preditions -- how our young Oedipus learns about his fate?
... What is the guilt/crime/sin/mistake/error of Oedipus?
What is "modern chorus"? Newspapers, media?
Story of Antigone -- today.
What if Oedipus wouldn't believe the prophecy? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophecy [ dismissed it and stay at Corinth ]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oedipus
Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus :
Oedipus becomes a wanderer, pursued by Creon and his men. He finally finds refuge at the holy wilderness right outside of Athens, where it is said that Theseus took care of him and his daughter, Antigone. He died a peaceful death and his grave is said to be sacred to the gods.
-- "people of Thebes" : what is the best equivalent nowadays.
...
Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes:
Seven Against Thebes follows a similar plot to Antigone. When Oedipus stepped down as King of Thebes, he gave the kingdom to his two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, who agreed to alternate the throne every year. After the first year, Eteocles refused to step down and Polynices attacked Thebes with his supporters (the eponymous Seven against Thebes). The two brothers killed each other in single combat. Their maternal uncle, King Creon, who had ascended to the throne of Thebes, decreed that Polynices is not to be buried.
Due to the popularity of Sophocles's Antigone, the ending of Seven Against Thebes was rewritten about fifty years after Aeschylus's death. Where the play (and the trilogy of which it is the last play) was meant to end with somber mourning for the dead brothers, it instead contains the ending where Antigone, their sister, defied the order and buries her brother. Antigone is ordered to be buried alive so she hangs herself rather than be buried alive.
ref:
French author Jean Cocteau retold the Oedipus myth in the surrealist play The Infernal Machine (La Machine infernale).
The Steven Berkoff play Greek is another modern appropriation of the story of Oedipus.
In The Doors' song The End, Jim Morrison refers to the Oedipus Complex he himself felt in his life, singing "Father, yes son, I want to kill you. Mother, I want to, fuck you."
John Barth's "Giles Goat-Boy" includes a humorously bad Free Verse translation of Oedipus Rex entitled "Taliped Decanus".
Jason Wishnow created a movie of the Oedipus story,[1] performed by vegetables, which has been screened at a number of film festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival, where it received its world premier. The movie also features the voice of Billy Dee Williams as the bartender.
Oedipus makes a brief appearance in History of the World, Part I. He is supposedly blind, yet he recognizes Josephus (Gregory Hines). He greets Josephus, to which Josephus replies tongue-in-cheek, "What's up, mother fucker." The events of The Roman Empire would not have coincided (in place or time) with those of the life of Oedipus.
Peter Schickele, in his alias as P. D. Q. Bach, created the humorous oratorio Oedipus Tex, a western setting of the story.
In Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite, Jocasta, played by Olympia Dukakis, talks about the events as Oedipus stumbles around in the background, adding, "I hate to tell you what they call my son in Harlem", after the chorus leader (F. Murray Abraham) notes that the murder started an entire psychiatric profession. During the end credits, Oedipus necks with Jocasta.
In 2006 the musical parody Oedipus for Kids came out.
Tom Lehrer's song "Oedipus Rex" is a humorous retelling of the story of Oedipus.
Billy Joe Shaver set the story in the American west in the song "Aunt Jessie's Chicken Ranch."
Regina Spektor's song "Oedipus" retells the story of Oedipus.
