CBCS SEM 1 Oedipus Rex as a classical tragedy or Greek tragedy/ Aristotelian view of Oedipus Rex

 

Oedipus Rex as a classical tragedy or Greek tragedy/ Aristotelian view of Oedipus Rex

Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex is probably the most famous tragedy ever written.Sophocles first produced the play in Athens around 430 B.C. at the Great Dionysia, a religious and cultural festival held in honor of the god Dionysus. Ever since Aristotle's high praise regarding its structure and characterization in his Poetics, Oedipus Rex has been considered one of the most outstanding examples of classical tragic drama.Following Aristotle's appraisal, many prominent authors including Voltaire, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud reacted at length to the play's themes of incest and patricide. In the twentieth century, the most influential of these thinkers, Freud, showed that Oedipus's fate is that of every man; the"Oedipus Complex" is the definitive mother−son relationship.

In the play Oedipus, King of Thebes, upon hearing that his city is being ravaged by fire and plague, sends his brother−in−law Creon to find a remedy from the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi. When Creon returns Oedipus begins investigating the death of his predecessor, Laius,and discovers through various means that he himself was the one who had unknowingly killed Laius and the married his own mother, Jocasta. Jocasta commits suicide, Oedipus blinds himself, takes leave of his children,and is led away.The myth of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex is revolved on the three interactive perspectives of fate, truth and self-will, making the play a most remarkable one in the fifth century Greece when allthe plays focused on the manifestation of God’s will under which man’s behavior was undoubtedly directed. W hat gives the play its tragic intensity is not the horror it arouses of patricide or incest but the meaning of fate that God bestows to Oedipus in his endeavor of truth seeking.

In tragedy, the tragic protagonist inspires inhis audience the twin emotions of pity and fear. Usually a person of virtue and status, the tragic hero can be ascapegoat of the gods or a victim of circumstances. Their fate often death or exile establishes a new andbetter social order. Not only does it make the viewer aware of human suffering, tragedy illustrates the manner in which pride or hubris can lead to the downfall even of the strongest of characters. It is part of the playwright's intention thataudiences will identify with these fallen heroes−and possibly rethink the manner in which they live their lives. Aristotle, has used the term catharsis to capture the sense of purgationand purification that watching a tragedy yield in a viewer, relief that they are not in the position of theprotagonist and awareness that one slip of fate could place them in such circumstances.

The dramatic structure of Greek drama is helpfully outlined by Aristotle in the twelfth book of Poetics. In thisclassical tragedy, a Prologue shows Oedipus consulting the priest who speaks for the Theban elders, the first choral ode or ‘parodos’ is performed, four acts are presented and followed by odes called ‘stasimons’, and in the ‘exodos’, or final act, the fate of Oedipus is revealed.The Greek chorus, like the genre of tragedy itself, is reputed to be a remnant of the ritualistic and ceremonial origins of Greek tragedy. In terms of form, the choral ode has a tripartite structure which bears traces of its use as a song and dance pattern. Thethree parts are called, respectively, the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode; their metrical structures varyand are usually very complex. If the strophe established the dance pattern, in the antistrophe the dancers tracebackwards the same steps, ending the ode in a different way with the epode.

Aristotle gave Oedipus Rex high praise for its outstanding fulfillment of therequirements he set out for tragedy, including reversal of situation, characterization, well−constructed plot,and rationality of action.Oedipus Rexcontains an excellent moment of "reversal" in the scene in which the messenger comes to tell Oedipus of the death of Polybus, whom he believes to be Oedipus's father. According to Aristotle, becauseOedipus learns from him inadvertently that Polybus is not his father, "by revealing who he is, he produces theopposite effect." ‘Anagnoriris’, the shift from ignorance to knowledge and ‘peripetia’, a reversal in fortune or a change in the state of things occur simultaneously in the play as Oedipus’ desire to know his parentage brings him face to face with his worst nightmare. The focus on fate reveals another aspect of a tragedy as outlined by Aristotle: dramatic irony. Good tragedies are crammed with irony. The audience knows the outcome of the story already, but the hero does not, making his actions seem painfully ignorant in the face of what is to come. Whenever a character attempts to change fate, this is ironic to an audience who knows that the tragic outcome of the story - as they know it in the myth - cannot be avoided.

Thus thegreatness of Oedipus Rex as a tragedy lies in the combination of a faultlessly-constructed plot with the profoundest insight into human motive and circumstance. It is the story of the impact of a totally undeserved misfortune upon a man of no exceptional faults or virtues. It reveals, with a merciless sincerity, the pitfalls lying about the path of a manthwarted by fate, hubris and his own free will.