Loxias and Phoebus in Tragedy: Convention and Violation

Sapiens Ubique Civis, 2022

5th century Attic theatre was a mass phenomenon and the audience was the focal point of this collective dimension. The tragic subject was based on the epic tradition, which was part of spectators’ cultural heritage: the tragedian could not overlook these expectations. This study aims to investigate the dramatic key role of minor characters, which represents a privileged tool to introduce novelty in the repertoire. The reconfiguration of them, even drastic, did not necessarily imply a disruption of the epic core, and so the marginal position of servants, pedagogues, nurses, and messengers, was crucial. The λόγος is the only mean at their disposal, that’s the reason why they so frequently pronounce warnings and training. But are these humble characters capable of being righteous advisors, for a good παιδεία? The case of Phaedra’s nurse in Euripides’ Hippolytus offers an intriguing opportunity for study.

Le présent article cherche à établir les influences possibles sur la théorie aristotélicienne de la tragédie. Les études érudites des influences textuelles en poétique ont jusqu’ici essayé de mettre en lumière ce que les théories post-aristotéliciennes de l’art doivent à l’Art Poétique d’Aristote, comment elles s’en écartent ou lui résistent. Cependant, la question de savoir à qui/quoi la théorie d’Aristote pourrait être redevable est restée marginale jusqu’à ce jour. Ce travail tente de combler ce vide épistémologique et heuristique. Il soutient que, comme Aristote a écrit son ouvrage au moins deux siècles après l’institutionnalisation de la tragédie en Grèce, sa théorie formaliste doit avoir été influencée par la pratique des plus grands poètes tragiques de l’âge d’or de la tragédie classique grecque. Pour étayer cette opinion, l’article essaye de dépister et d’illustrer les principes aristotéliciens de la construction dramatique dans Œdipe Roi de Sophocle, une tragédie qui est ici considérée comme l’une des influences majeures probables sur l’Art Poétique d’Aristote.

In approaching this issue, it will be helpful to use two analytically distinct methods, to wit, the diachronic, which allows us to speculate about how the myth reached the hands of Lydgate (Guerin 2005, 183–191); and the synchronic, to clarify the similarities and differences between the two authors. Thus, approaching the subject diachronically, the first pages of this paper will attempt to delineate the main milestones in the long tradition of the myth of Oedipus, beginning from the time of Ancient Rome; and, afterwards, a synchronic analysis will examine various motifs as they have survived, disappeared or been transformed in the medieval poem. The final part will explore the possible reasons for these changes.

International journal of research in English, 2021

The current exploration work manages the dramatic ironies which are utilized in the popular Greek tragedy "Oedipus the King" composed by Sophocles. "Oedipus the king" is likewise known by the Latin title "Oedipus Rex" which is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles and was first acted in 429 B.C. Oedipus Rex Chronicles the tale of Oedipus, a man who turns into the king of Thebes who was predetermined from birth to kill his father Laius and wed his mother Jocasta. The play is an illustration of an exemplary misfortune (tragedy), recognizably containing an accentuation on how Oedipus' own issues add to the deplorable saint's ruin, rather than having destiny be the sole reason. "Oedipus Rex", delivered by Sophocles in the development of his forces, is his show-stopper. Aristotle additionally viewed this play as Sophocles best and he often alluded to it as the ideal kind of shocking arrangement. Its significance lies in the mix of a flawlessly developed plot with the significance understanding into human rationale and condition. In this paper we examined the dramatic ironies of this renowned Greek tragedy.

Logeion 10, 2020

Taking its cue from two recent articles on Euripides’ Oedipus (Liapis 2014, Finglass 2017), this paper addresses neglected evidence on fragments attributed to that play and reconsiders the question of their authenticity. A distinct dichotomy emerges between, on the one hand, fragments transmitted in authors relying on f lorilegia and, on the other, fragments ultimately deriving from non-f lorilegic sources. While the latter are above suspicion, there is reason to doubt the authenticity of the former. The paper also argues that there was no cross-pollination between the transmission of the authentic and the spurious Oedipus in antiquity, and that the latter’s readership was limited to milieus with links to rhetoric and education. Finally, the paper offers some general remarks which should be of consequence not only for the fragments of Euripides’ Oedipus, but also for the study of fragmentary Greek tragedies in general.

This book is to a large extent the result of my four-year research in Belgium, carried out at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. I am very grateful first of all to the English Department. Guido Latré did much to help my research work attain its present form. From the very beginning of our acquaintance he sought to secure all conceivable means to enhance the completion of my project. I am more than grateful to Ortwin de Graef for his inspiring criticism that compelled me to revise my methodology. His provoking remarks and original insights often led me to rethink the presuppositions of the individual chapters and helped to reformulate them in a way that proved most productive. I have gained much from Luke van der Stockt (Classical Philology), and also from William Desmond and Arnold Burms (Department of Philosophy).

Skenè Studies I - 2, 2019

open access under: https://textsandstudies.skeneproject.it/index.php/TS/catalog/series/Studies-1 chapter 7 https://textsandstudies.skeneproject.it/index.php/TS/catalog/view/67/13/424-1 ABSTRACT Sophocles bases his posthumous Oedipus at Colonus on the famous treatment of the transformation of the Furies to the Kindly Ones in Eumenides, the last play of Aeschylus’ Oresteia that has gained the status of a master-play. Accordingly Sophocles shapes the plot and its main character on a cultic reality and on the ritual concept of chthonic heroes and gods. The Erinyes/Eumenides, to whose grove Oedipus arrives, function as the model for Sophocles’ most questionable hero. Their quintessential polarity between the dreadful dimension of death and euphemistic names to veil it, between mythic scenarios of anger, curse, hate as well as cultic blessing and plenty is the basic pattern of a play that stages Oedipus as a chthonic hero in the making. He acts right from the beginning as the hero he is going to become. Sophocles makes Oedipus oscillate between staging a real mystic miracle and a problematic manipulation of religious facts in order to take revenge on his Theban homeland by finding support from his new city of Athens. This open perspective involves the audience in thinking about what really happened and reflecting about the relation between ritual, religion, politics, and their manipulations by men for their own purposes. In this way it comes quite close to Euripides’ Bacchae written about the same time. OC is thus in many respects like a metatheatrical exploration of the constitutive gap of signifier and signified to be gradually closed by the blind director who gathers, like the blind and unwitting audience, the piecemeal information divulged as the play progresses. KEYWORDS: Oedipus; Sophocles; Erinyes; Eumenides; Oresteia; chthonic polarity; heroization; cultic hero in the making; Kolonos as tumulus; metatheatre; oracles; manipulation; curse; blessing; military support; indeterminacy; narratological strategy; mimesis; politics; mystery; religious and metatheatrical exploration

Symbolae Philologorum Posnaniensium Graecae et Latinae

The author of Oedipus Rex manages to reconstruct the hero’s life path against the background of the map of Greece of his day. In doing so he constructs the imaginary of the protagonist’s identity, one that is inextricably linked to his mental blindness as opposed to the tragic, self-inflicted blindness meted out to himself as a punishment for his crimes.