Oedipus

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Aristotle, Poetics 1453a This is the sort of man
who is not pre-eminently virtuous and just, and
yet it is through no badness or villainy of his
own that he falls into the misfortune, but rather
through some hamartia in him, he being one of
those who are in high station and good fortune,
like Oedipus and Thyestes and the famous men of
such families as those. . . . The change must
be not to good fortune from bad but, on the
contrary, from good to bad fortune, and it must
not be due to villainy but to some great hamartia
in such a man as we have described, or of one who
is better rather than worse. This can be seen
also in actual practice. For at first poets
accepted any plots, but today the best tragedies
are written about a few families 20 Alcmaeon
for instance and Oedipus and Orestes and Meleager
and Thyestes and Telephus and all the others whom
it befell to suffer or inflict terrible disasters.
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Sphinx
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Oedi/pus Oidi/pous

• Oedipus the King, 980 But fear not that you
  will wed your mother. Many men before now have
  slept with their mothers in dreams. But he to
  whom these things are as though nothing bears his
  life most easily.

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Homer and Hesiods Oedipus

• Odyssey 11.271-80 And I saw the mother of
  Oedipodes, fair Epicaste, who wrought a monstrous
  deed in ignorance of mind, in that she wedded her
  own son, and he, when he had slain his own
  father, wedded her, and straightway the gods made
  these things known among men. 275 Then he lived
  as lord of the Cadmeans in lovely Thebe,
  suffering woes through the baneful counsels of
  the gods, but she went down to the house of
  Hades, the strong warder. She made fast a noose
  on high from a lofty beam, overpowered by her
  sorrow, but for him she left behind woes 280
  full many, even all that the Avengers of a mother
  bring to pass.
• Hesiod, Works and Days 161-3 Grim war and dread
  battle destroyed a part of them, some in the land
  of Cadmus at seven-gated Thebes when they fought
  for the flocks of Oedipus

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1 Cadmus looks for his sister Europa Oedipu
s marries his mother, Jocasta Antigone buries
her brother Polynices, despite prohibition
2 The Spartoi kill each other Oedipus kills
his father Eteocles kills his brother,
Polynices
3 Cadmus kills the Serpent Oedipus kills
the Sphinx
4 Laius ( left-sided) son of Labdacus (
lame) Oedipus ( swell-foot)
The overvaluation of blood relations is to their
undervaluationas the attempt to escape
autochthony is to the impossibility of succeeding
in it. Claude Lévi-Strauss
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Sophocles, first victory 468Theban Plays, not a
trilogy Antigone late 440s Oedipus Tyrannus 428
? Oedipus at Colonus 402
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• Aristotle, Poetics 6 1449b25 Tragedy is a
  representation (mimesis) of a serious, complete
  action that has importance, in embellished
  speech, with each of speech's elements used
  separately in the various parts of the play,
  represented by people acting (drama) and not by
  narration, accomplishing by means of pity and
  fear the catharsis of such emotions.

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Parthenon
Theatre of Dionysus
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orchestra
skênê
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• Great Dionysia (March) Lennaea (January)
• day one - procession of statue of Dionysus,
  sacrifice
• dithyrambic contest accompanied by flute
• day two - five comedies
• days 3-5 three tragedies each day plus satyr
  play
• 1000 active participants, 14,000 spectators
• each play only performed once
• chor-egoi and playwrights
• 3 or possibly four actors, choral leader
• poets become didaskaloi, directors of the plays
• judges chosen by lot from those nominated by
  their tribes
• 5 votes used from 10 cast
• competition between choruses
• audience consists probably only of men

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Reversal

• A peripeteia is a change of the actions to their
  opposite. . . in accordance with probability and
  necessity. E.g. in the Oedipus, the man who
  comes to bring delight to Oedipus and to rid him
  of his terror about his mother, does the opposite
  by revealing who Oedipus is.

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Revelation

• An anagnorisis . . . is a change from ignorance
  to knowledge . . . among people with regard to
  peoples good fortune or misfortune. A
  recognition is finest when it occurs at the same
  time as a peripeteia, as it does in the Oedipus.

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Plot - mythos

• The mythos should be constructed in such a way
  that, even without seeing it, someone who hears
  about the incidents will shudder and feel pity at
  the outcome, as someone may feel upon hearing the
  plot of the Oedipus.

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hamartia, hamartêma in Prometheus Bound

• Such is his hamartia for this he is bound to
  make requital to the gods, 10 so that he may
  learn to bear with the tyranny of Zeus and cease
  his man-loving ways.
• Of my own will, yes, of my own will I committed
  a hamartêma I will not deny it. By helping
  mortals I found suffering for myself 270
  nevertheless I did not think I would be punished
  in this way wasting away upon cliffs in
  mid-air, my portion this desolate and dreary
  crag.
• 1120 Pity me, mother, and do not kill me, your
  child, for my hamartiai.
• But after a time, when all my anguish was now
  softened, and when I began to feel that my heart
  had been excessive in punishing those past
  errors, 440 then it was that the city set about
  to drive me by force from the land, after all
  that time.