Oedipus : Vision and viewpoint

Orlaladuck

We never actually got down to this one but I took a wild shot at it a while ago and guessed Sophocles' outlook was to humanise the myth and capture democracy in ancient Greece (shown through the chorus and role of the king)
Can anyone just tell me if this is correct and is there any other little points I should know? As said we never got to this one in class, so this is from my own guessing.

MilesReilly

by humanising myth you mean, people losing faith in the gods?
at the time the Athenian empire became very wealthy + so athenians began to philosophie and contemplate/ people began to question all accepted beliefs including religion

Protagoras: "Man is the measure of all things"

Oedipus Rex focuses on how important it is to seek the truth "Know Thy self"
be it good or bad

fate VS Freewill

Sophocles "Oedipus presents us with a terrible affirmation of mans subordinate position in the universe but at the same time, a heroic vision of mans victory in defeat"

Jocasta: She provides a depressing irony in so far as her life, whilst spent rejecting/fighting the gods/fate, she has inadvertently spent it dictated to by the will of the gods.

view on oracle
Jocasta "Chance rules our lives, and the future is all unknown"

she can be seen as a humanist- she represents modern thinking in Athens at the time.


I just wrote stuff out from notes, hope it helps in some way. I do classics myself, I wish I could have done Oedipus for english.

lc2010

Orlaladuck wrote: »

We never actually got down to this one but I took a wild shot at it a while ago and guessed Sophocles' outlook was to humanise the myth and capture democracy in ancient Greece (shown through the chorus and role of the king)
Can anyone just tell me if this is correct and is there any other little points I should know? As said we never got to this one in class, so this is from my own guessing.

Basically yeah the first bits right not really sure about the whole democracy bit though!! It is so hard to compare!!!!
Basically goes from optimistic to pessimistic. Typical greek tragedy as the disaster is caused by trying to prove the oracle wrong. The v + vp is different because audience are already well aware of the myth.
Hope this helps! We must be like the only two classes doing this!!

Orlaladuck

Thank youu You pretty much cleared up what I thought and saved me!
Fate VS freewill is Perfect as well, can compare that to the truman show now.
By humanising the myth I mean that Sophocles took Oedipus and gave him human qualities which we can relate to - arrogance, denial, acceptance and then acts as a tragic hero. Him and lear have so much in common but we're not doing lear as a comparative -.-.

and lc2010, Yeah I think we are - noone else I know does it D=!