Oedipus —Myth, Reality and the Distribution of Guilt
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
What Is Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism?1
2013 Spring issue FINAL.pdf_2011 Fall edition 4/17/13 12:18 PM Page 8 8 fort da (2013), 19 (1), 8-28 WHAT IS PSYCHOANALYTIC LITERARY CRITICISM?1 by Benjamin H. Ogden, Ph.D., and Thomas H. Ogden, M.D. The history of psychoanalytic literary criticism is as old as psychoanaly- sis, but it has undergone considerable change since Freud’s famous readings of Hamlet (1900), the novels of Dostoevsky (1928), and the story of Moses (1939). The methodology of psychoanalytic literary criticism introduced by Freud and adopted by most psychoanalysts and non-analysts through the greater part of the 20th century is founded on the idea that writers create sto- ries and characters that reflect their own unconscious psychology. A text is a mirror of the unconscious mind of the writer, much as dreams are creations of the unconscious mind that are disguised in order to escape repression (“censorship”), thus gaining access to preconscious and conscious aware- ness (our remembered dreams). Through readings of this sort, psychoana- lytic literary criticism brought established analytic formulations to bear on the text, for instance, constellations of feeling understandable in terms of the Oedipus complex, castration anxiety, the incest taboo, oral, anal, and phal- lic stages of psychosexual development, and the like. The best known, and most widely studied, early examples of this type of formulaic Freudian reading are Ernest Jones’s (1949) reading of Hamlet (in which he concludes that Hamlet is unable to fulfill his duty to kill his uncle because that murder is too closely linked in his repressed unconscious to his forbidden oedipal wishes to murder his father and marry his mother); and Marie Bonaparte’s (1933) study of Edgar Allen Poe, which owed much to Freud’s (1908) “Creative Writers and Day-dreaming.” As psychoanalytic theories of early childhood development grew more nuanced, so did the range of concepts that psychoanalysts used to decode lit- erary texts. -
Surviving Antigone: Anouilh, Adaptation, and the Archive
SURVIVING ANTIGONE: ANOUILH, ADAPTATION AND THE ARCHIVE Katelyn J. Buis A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS May 2014 Committee: Cynthia Baron, Advisor Jonathan Chambers ii ABSTRACT Dr. Cynthia Baron, Advisor The myth of Antigone has been established as a preeminent one in political and philosophical debate. One incarnation of the myth is of particular interest here. Jean Anouilh’s Antigone opened in Paris, 1944. A political and then philosophical debate immediately arose in response to the show. Anouilh’s Antigone remains a well-known play, yet few people know about its controversial history or the significance of its translation into English immediately after the war. It is this history and adaptation of Anouilh’s contested Antigone that defines my inquiry. I intend to reopen interpretive discourse about this play by exploring its origins, its journey, and the archival limitations and motivations controlling its legacy and reception to this day. By creating a space in which multiple readings of this play can exist, I consider adaptation studies and archival theory and practice in the form of theatre history, with a view to dismantle some of the misconceptions this play has experienced for over sixty years. This is an investigation into the survival of Anouilh’s Antigone since its premiere in 1944. I begin with a brief overview of the original performance of Jean Anouilh’s Antigone and the significant political controversy it caused. The second chapter centers on the changing reception of Anouilh’s Antigone beginning with the liberation of Paris to its premiere on the Broadway stage the following year. -
Antigone's Line
Bulletin de la Société Américaine de Philosophie de Langue Française Volume 14, Number 2, Fall 2005 Antigone’s Line Mary Beth Mader “Leader: What is your lineage, stranger? Tell us—who was your father? Oedipus: God help me! Dear girl, what must I suffer now? Antigone: Say it. You’re driven right to the edge.”1 Sophocles’ Antigone has solicited many superlatives. Hölderlin considered the play to be the most difficult, the most enigmatic and the most essentially Greek of plays. This paper treats a matter of enigma in the play, one that is crucial to understanding the central stakes of the drama. Its main purpose is to propose a novel account of this enigma and briefly to contrast this account with two other readings of the play. One passage in particular has prompted the view that the play is extremely enigmatic; it is a passage that has been read with astonishment by many commentators and taken to demand explanation. This is Antigone’s defense speech at lines 905-914. Here, she famously provides what appear to her to be reasons for her burying her brother Polynices against the explicit command of her king and uncle, Creon. Her claim is that she would not have deliberately violated Creon’s command, would not have ANTIGONE’S LINE intentionally broken his law or edict, had this edict barred her from burying a child or a husband of hers. She states that if her husband or child had died “there might have been another.” But since both her mother and father are dead, she reasons, “no brother could ever spring to light again.”2 Reasoning of this sort has a precedent in a tale found in Herodotus’ Histories, and Aristotle cites it in Rhetoric as an example of giving an explanation for something that one’s auditors may at first find incredible.3 To Aristotle, then, Antigone’s defense speech appears to have been “rhetorically satisfactory,” as Bernard Knox says.4 However, such a reception is rare among commentators.5 1. -
Constructing Daddy: the Absent Father, Revisionist Masculinity And/In Queer Cultural Representations
disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory Volume 9 manholes Article 3 4-15-2000 (De)Constructing Daddy: The Absent Father, Revisionist Masculinity and/in Queer Cultural Representations Andrew Schopp University of Tennessee Martin DOI: https://doi.org/10.13023/disclosure.09.03 Follow this and additional works at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/disclosure Part of the English Language and Literature Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Schopp, Andrew (2000) "(De)Constructing Daddy: The Absent Father, Revisionist Masculinity and/in Queer Cultural Representations," disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory: Vol. 9 , Article 3. DOI: https://doi.org/10.13023/disclosure.09.03 Available at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/disclosure/vol9/iss1/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory. Questions about the journal can be sent to [email protected] Andrew Schopp (De )Constructing Daddy: The Absent Father, Revisionist Masculinity and/in Queer Cul tural Representations Contemporary cultur i almo l ob e eel with a11 Ab ent Fath r mythology. Whether literal or metaphoric, th Ab e 11l Fath r fi gure in nu merou cultural repr enlalion and ha b n po it d a th e ~ oure of v rything from problem ati c mal e beha vior lo male anxieti es about what it m an to b ma culine. Ilow v r, th e Ab enl Fath r i. an especially troubling fi gu r for gay men. I I t ronormal i ve approach to xuali Ly and p yc hologi ·al developm n t, from Freud 1 lo Jung2 Lo ronl mporary religiou ri ght mini tri that would ''cure" queers/1 have con tructed and maintain cl a cultural paradigm in whi ch th e ho mo xual mal e (mo l oft n een a a male who fail al ma culinit. -
Antigone Introductory Lecture Notes Greek Drama and the Elements of Tragedy
Antigone Introductory Lecture Notes Greek Drama and the Elements of Tragedy Understanding Greek Theatre I. The Festival of Dionysus Dionysus - Festival of Dionysus - II. Conventions of Greek Drama Actors - Chorus - o Functions Costuming Scenery and Action Composition and Structure o Composition . o Structure . Prologue - . Parados - III. Tragedy Tragedy: Aristotle o Aristotle’s Unity of Time, Place, and Action . Time: . Place: . Action: o Action of the play arouses extreme pity and fear in the audience – pity for the protagonist and a sympathetic fear. (Tragedy cont.) o Purpose of tragedy: o Catharsis - Tragic Hero o Hamartia: o Paripateia: The Fall Revelation IV. Sophocles and the Oedipus Myth Sophocles Notes on Greek Burial Traditions: The Oedipus Myth o King Laius rules Thebes with his queen, Jocasta. An oracle prophesies that his son will grow to kill him, so Laius pierces his infant son’s ankles and feet and orders Jocasta to kill him. She cannot, so she sends a servant to do it, who leaves him for dead in the mountains. o The infant is found by a servant of the King of Corinth and is then raised by the King and Queen of Corinth, who name him Oedipus (meaning “swollen foot”). o When Oedipus is a young man, an oracle tells him that he will kill his father and marry his mother so, to try to escape his fate, he flees Corinth. Along the road, he gets into an argument with a stranger and kills him. That stranger is Laius. Part 1 of the prophecy is fulfilled. o Oedipus reaches Thebes, where a sphinx is plaguing the city, but will stop if someone answers a riddle. -
Oedipus Myth Inadequate and I Put Forward an Alternative Hypothesis of Social Survival, Based on the Demands of Societal Functioning
Benin and Thebes: Elementary Forms of Civilization PETER P. EKEH This chapter deals with comparative themes in Oedipal myths. Oedipal myths in classical Greek city-state civilization will be compared with Oedipal myths in Benin city-state civilization in Africa. I use this comparative strategy in order to shed light on the functioning of elementary city-state civilizations and to generalize from the elementary forms of civilization to the dynamics of more complex modern forms of civilization. In doing so, I find Freud's on or publication of and Fromm's interpretations of the Oedipus myth inadequate and I put forward an alternative hypothesis of social survival, based on the demands of societal functioning. The comparison of Greek city-state civilization with their counter parts outside the Euro-America cultural matrix runs against stand personal use only. Citati ard practice. It is fashionable in Western scholarship to trace the rums. Nutzung nur für persönliche Zwecke. origins of Western culture and society to Greek city-state civiliza tion. In sociology, for example, Talcott Parsons (1966) recently tten permission of the copyright holder. characterized ancient Greece as a "seed bed" society on which modern Western institutions grew. Equal, ifnot greater, importance • is assigned by historians and philosophers to the significance of Greek city-state civilization for the evolution of modern Western ; culture. While such common tendency of linking Greek city-state i civilization to the characteristics of modern Western culture seems generally beneficial to our understanding of modern institutions and material prohibited without express wri express without prohibited material Propriety of the Erich Fromm Document Center. -
A Glossary of Jungian Terms
A Glossary of Jungian Terms “““The“The AAlchemistslchemists thought that thethethe OOOpusOpuspuspus demanded not only laboratory work, the reading of books, meditation, and patience, but also lovelove””””.... -- The Practice of Psychotherapy Abaissement du niveau mental: French psychologist Pierre Janet's term, elaborated by Jung, for a weakening of the ego due to an unconscious drainage of its psychological energy. A lowering of attention or consciousness. Often observed just before creative work or during those incubation periods when the unconscious prepares a new stage of growth. Absolute knowledge: the acausal foreknowledge, relatively independent of limitations of time and space, possessed by the unconscious and apparent in constellated archetypes and in synchronicity . Acausal OOrderedness:rderedness: the underlying interconnectedness of psychic and physical processes. Synchronicity is one expression. Time is a concrete continuum possessing basic qualities that can manifest simultaneously in different places, as the ancient Chinese thought. Active IImaginationmagination ::: holding an image in awareness while fantasizing and associating to it to bring it to life and discover its nuances and unconscious roots. Also focuses and unifies the four orienting functions of consciousness. Active imagination is the indispensable second part of any deep analysis and bases itself on the imaginal nature of the psyche . AffectAffect----ego:ego: the modification of the ego or "I" by an emerging strongly toned complex . With painful feelings the modification can bring about a restriction, a withdrawal of many parts of the normal ego . Aion: a lion-headed, snake-encircled Mithraic God-image of time (also called Kronos or Deus Leontocephalus) who for Jung represented death/rebirth and a psychological union of opposites like light and darkness, male and female, creation and destruction. -
Masculinity and Shell Shock in the Poetry of Siegfried Sassoon: Soldier of Trauma and Poet of Abjection
Middlesex University Research Repository An open access repository of Middlesex University research http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk McCormack, Peter (2019) Masculinity and shell shock in the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon: soldier of trauma and poet of abjection. Masters thesis, Middlesex University. [Thesis] Final accepted version (with author’s formatting) This version is available at: https://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/26781/ Copyright: Middlesex University Research Repository makes the University’s research available electronically. Copyright and moral rights to this work are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners unless otherwise stated. The work is supplied on the understanding that any use for commercial gain is strictly forbidden. A copy may be downloaded for personal, non-commercial, research or study without prior permission and without charge. Works, including theses and research projects, may not be reproduced in any format or medium, or extensive quotations taken from them, or their content changed in any way, without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder(s). They may not be sold or exploited commercially in any format or medium without the prior written permission of the copyright holder(s). Full bibliographic details must be given when referring to, or quoting from full items including the author’s name, the title of the work, publication details where relevant (place, publisher, date), pag- ination, and for theses or dissertations the awarding institution, the degree type awarded, and the date of the award. If you believe that any material held in the repository infringes copyright law, please contact the Repository Team at Middlesex University via the following email address: [email protected] The item will be removed from the repository while any claim is being investigated. -
Antigone, by Sophocles
Antigone, by Sophocles In A Nutshell Sophocles is considered one of the great ancient Greek tragedians. Among Sophocles's most famous plays are the three parts of the Oedipus trilogy: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone. These plays follow the fall of a great king, Oedipus, and later the tragedies that his children suffer. The Oedipus trilogy has had a wide-reaching influence and is particularly notable for inspiring Sigmund Freud’s theory of the "Oedipus Complex," which describes a stage of psychological development in which a child sees their father as an adversarial competitor for his or her mother’s attention (or in non-psychology speak, it’s the kill-the-father-sleep-with-the-mother complex). Each play of the Oedipus trilogy offers a different spin on the Oedipus myth that Sophocles’s audience would have been familiar with. The plays were not performed together, but rather were performed separately, at the time each was written: Antigone in 440 B.C., Oedipus the King in 430 B.C., and Oedipus at Colonus in 401 B.C. Although the Oedipus plays were performed separately, they are largely coherent thematically when considered together. Instances of self-injury and suicide in Oedipus the King, for example, suggest the tenacity of life in a world controlled by fate, but considered more broadly in the context of all three plays, the prevalence of suicide and self-injury also suggests the sense of profound desperation and need for control experienced by humans controlled by fate. Despite their general coherence, some discrepancies do exist. -
Sophocle's ANTIGONE Adapted by Lewis Galantiere from the Play By
Sophocle’s ANTIGONE Adapted by Lewis Galantiere From the play by Jean Anouilh Re-imagined for 5 Actors by Christopher Scott Dramatis Personae: Chorus/ Nurse Antigone Ismene/ Messenger Haemon/ The Guard Creon The Royal Palace in Thebes Chorus Well, here we are. These people that you see here are about to act out for you the story of Antigone. (He looks at Antigone,) That dark-haired girl sitting by herself, staring straight ahead, seeing nothing, is Antigone. She is thinking. She is thinking that the instant I finish telling you who's who and what's what in this play, she will burst forth as the dark, tense, serious girl, who is about to rise up and face the whole world alone—alone against the world and against Creon, her uncle, the King. Another thing that she is thinking is this: she is going to die. Antigone is young. She would much rather live than die. But there is no help for it. When you are on the side of the gods against the tyrant, of Man against the State, of purity against corruption—when, in short, your name is Antigone, there is only one part you can play; (Chorus turns and looks at her) and she will have to play hers through to the end. Mind you, Antigone doesn't know all these things about herself. I know them because it is my business to know them. That's what a Greek Chorus is for. All that she knows is that Creon won't allow her dead brother to be buried; and that despite Creon, she must bury him. -
The Story of Oedipus: Prequel to Antigone
The Story of Oedipus: Prequel to Antigone • LAIUS is left an orphaned minor by his father Labdacus • AMPHION AND ZETHUS rule Thebes (Build the Cadmeia) and exile Laius • Laius goes to live in Elis (PISA) with King Pelops (son of Tantalus son of Zeus) • Laius becomes very good friends with young Chrysippus, youngest child of King Pelops • Laius and Chrysippus run away together (or Laius rapes Chrysippus). Pelops curses Laius. • Laius returns to Thebes and becomes King • Laius marries his cousin Jocasta, but they are childless • Laius goes to Delphi and intends to ask Apollo's advice; Apollo announces that Laius will have a child who will kill him • Laius and Jocasta have a baby son (Oedipus) whom they plan to kill. The royal shepherd is ordered to dispose of the child on Mt. Cithaeron. Instead he gives Oedipus to the royal Corinthian shepherd. • The Royal Corinthian Shepherd takes the child back to the childless king and queen of Corinth (Polybus and Merope), who adopt him. • At about the age of 18, at a dinner party, one of Oedipus' friends makes a rude remark about his not being a real Corinthian but only adopted. Oedipus is shocked and shamed, and goes off to Delphi to ask Apollo about the truth. • Apollo tells Oedipus he is doomed to kill his father and sleep with his mother. • Oedipus unknowingly kills his father Laius (within hours, at The Three Ways) • Oedipus kills the SPHINX on the way from the Three Ways to Thebes • Oedipus is received at Thebes as a national hero, and invited to marry the recently widowed queen Jocasta. -
Plays of Sophocles
E A TEACHER’S GuidE TO THE SiGNET CLASSiCS EDITiON OF SOPHOCLES: THE COMPLETE PLAYS by Laura reis Mayer SerieS editorS: Jeanne M. McGlinn and JaMeS e. McGlinn TEACHER’S Guid 2 A Teacher’s Guide to the Signet Classics Edition of Sophocles: The Complete Plays TabLe of ConTenTs introduction ........................................................................................................................3 list of characters .............................................................................................................3 SynopSiS of the oEdipuS triloGy ..............................................................................4 prereadinG activiTies .......................................................................................................5 DURING READING ACTIVITiES..........................................................................................10 AfTER READING ACTIVITiES .............................................................................................14 ABOUT THE AuTHoR OF THiS GUIDE ...........................................................................19 ABOUT THE EDIToRS OF THiS GUIDE ...........................................................................19 Copyright © 2010 by Penguin Group (USa) For additional teacher’s manuals, catalogs, or descriptive brochures, please email [email protected] or write to: PenGUin GroUP (USa) inC. in Canada, write to: academic Marketing department PenGUin BooKS CANADA LTD. 375 Hudson Street academic Sales new York, nY 10014-3657 90 eglinton