Oedipus: The Greek Period
Oedipus the King The Greek period, in the fourth and fifth centuries of B.C., evolved from a small city called Athens, Europe. In this era, a sweep of talent and creativity placed a historical advance on theater, that will dominate for years to come. This spirit most likely emerged from the defeat of the Persian Empire, along with the sense of freedom and expression from the Athenian democracy. Four great writers derived from this ancient astonishment. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were three writers of tragedy, whereas Aristophanes was a famous comic dramatist. From these original works came the play festivals using masks and boots to accommodate for the size of the Greek theater. These tragedies the Athenians went to see consisted of five episodes, and one in particular, Oedipus the King, is made up of five choral odes, featuring the mystery behind the riddle of the sphinx. The dithyrambs were a beginning stage or rough draft of what the plays would soon come to be. Dionysis is the name of a theater where people like Thespis and other Greek actors performed, using the three unities to keep the audiences attention alarmed and suspense building.
Aeschylus was the first of the tragedy writers. He took the theaters origins and focused less on reciting patterns, dealing more with the presentation of action. Born under tyranny, he grew up during the period in which the Persian empire was attempting to conquer Athens. Aeschylus was born in 525 B.C. His youth was most likely spent in the city of Pallene with his father, Euphorion, and his brother. It was a repressive time, under the rule of Peisis...
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... the fate of Oedipus.
These tragedies started off as Dithyrambs which formed from myths to stories that wee translated into words of song in addition to physical movement. They were the first step toward a literary drama with both tragedy and comedy. These plays were demonstrated at the city of Dionysus featuring Greek actors such as Thespis.
The plays consisted of three unities. The unity of action, time and place. The all united to form a whole with a ‘certain degree of magnitude’ according to Aristotle. They were part of a trilogy.
The Greek theater was an extravagant event that allowed the people of the city of Athens to release their magic upon the world. They changed the theater and that change will last for many years to come. They set a standard for comedy and tragedy that will entertain and influence people forever.
By ruling in the favor of Mr. Quinlan, the New Jersey Supreme Court allowed for patient autonomy to be exercised by an incompetent patient. Though the legal implications of this decision vary from state to state, medical ethics now had to incorporate the possible refusal of a once competent patient unable to give that refusal. This concept is not one that was totally unexpected by the medical community. By developing machinery capable of sustaining life even in the case of severe deficit, it is only natural that medical ethics would need to adapt, growing to accommodate this new realm of consideration. Just as a competent person has the right to decide “how much to struggle, how much to suffer, how much bodily invasion to tolerate, and...
The ancient Greeks were fond believers of Fate. Fate, defined according to Webster’s, is “the principle or determining cause or will by which things in general are believed to come to be as they are or events to happen as the do.” The Greeks take on Fate was slightly modified. They believed that the gods determined Fate: “…fate, to which in a mysterious way the gods themselves were subject, was an impersonal force decreeing ultimate things only, and unconcerned with day by day affairs.” It was thought that these gods worked in subtle ways; this accounts for character flaws (called harmatia in Greek). Ancient Greeks thought the gods would alter a person’s character, in order for that person to suffer (or gain from) the appropriate outcome. Such was the case in Oedipus’s story.
Sophocles wrote the play, Oedipus the King. Oedipus the King was written around 420 BC, has been noted as the most powerful expression of Greek tragic drama (Hyesso). Oedipus, who was a stranger to Thebes, became king of the city after the murder of the city’s king, Laius, about fifteen or sixteen years before the start of the play. He was offered the throne because he was successful in saving the city from the Sphinx, an event referred to repeatedly in the text of the play. He did so by solving a riddle in which killed the Sphinx. He married Laius’ widow, Jocasta, and had four children with her. When Oedipus was born, there was a prophecy that said Oedipus was destined to kill his father and marry his mother. In order to prevent this, his parents pierced and bind Oedipus’s ankles and abandoned him in the mountain. They believe that Oedipus’s fate was in the God’s hands. When Oedipus grew up, he heard about this prophecy, and decided to flea town in order to avoid the possible outcome. What he did not know was that the parents who raised him, had ...
Oedipus Rex”, by Socrates, is a play that shows the fault of men and the ultimate power of the gods. Throughout the play, the main character, Oedipus, continually failed to recognize the fault in human condition, and these failures let to his ultimate demise. Oedipus failed to realize that he, himself was the true answer to the riddle of the Sphinx. Oedipus ignored the truth told to him by the oracles and the drunk at the party, also. These attempts to get around his fate which was determined by the gods was his biggest mistake. Oedipus was filled with hubris and this angered the gods. He believed he was more that a man. These beliefs cause him to ignore the limits he had in being a man. Oedipus needed to look at Teiresias as his window to his future.
Oedipus, by Sophocles, was written around 441 B.C. Sophocles’ story is considered a Greek tragedy. Aeschylus is the person who coined the term, but “it was Sophocles who brought it to perfection” (Struck). Oedipus is one of the most famous classical dramas, and it is because of Aristotle the story reached that status. Aristotle stated his opinions in his book Poetics, which made it popular (Thorburne 384). In the story, Oedipus displays hubris when he defies the gods and runs away from his true fate which leads to his downfall.
Tragedies in the Greek theater when compared to tragedies in the Renaissance theater varied in similarities and differences. Greek theater encouraged the use of religious figures while Renaissance theater was supposed to be strictly pagan in its ideologies. Theater was most dominantly used to depict the social and religious constraints of the time period. For example, Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex are both portrayals of deceit, murder, and revenge all of which lead to the demise of its leading characters. Hamlet is depicted as a young man who is seeking revenge for his fathers death. Oedipus is a king who means to free the people of Thebes from a disease that has been plaguing them. They share similarities in that each of their love interest are conduits of their pain and anguish, further pushing the protagonists over the precipice. The voice of reason that they share is Creon in Oedipus Rex and Horatio in Hamlet. Their tragic flaw is that they are both ultimately and utterly doomed and no amount of guidance will steer them away from what has been predestined by fate. They are ultimately doomed to be their own Achilles heel.
The prohibitionist national policy towards drugs in U.S has been extremely contentious in the present times. After decades of the stance that costs billions how many each year, the paltry achievements and the countless negative externalities have led to a clamor for alternative policies instead of a “War on Drugs”.
Theater was an important part of Ancient Greek Civilization. History of Greek theatre began with religious festivals which aim to honor Dionysus, a god. During the festivals some citizens sing songs and perform improvisation plays and other participants of festivals judges this performances to decide which one of them was the best. These plays form the foundation of the Greek Theatre. Because of the competition between performers to create best performances, plays gained an aesthetic perspective and became a form of art. So, theatre as a part of religious rituals took attention of people and gained an importance in Ancient Greek Society.
Sophocles, a Greek author and philosopher, created a magnificent work of literature, Oedipus Rex. Oedipus Rex describes the legendary tales that King Oedipus of Thebes took in order to confirm that his biological parents were King Polybus of Corinth and his wife Merope. This tragedy of fate explores the depths of modern psychoanalysis as Oedipus unwittingly kills his father and marries his mother in an attempt to avoid the very prophecy he ultimately fulfills. The play was created by Sophocles, an intellectual philosopher that was born in 495 B.C. about a mile northwest of Athens. Sophocles has become one of the most prominent playwrights of the golden age. He was a son of a wealthy merchant, therefore, he enjoyed all the benefits of a thriving Greek empire. As an accomplished actor, Sophocles performed in many of his own plays, such as Oedipus Rex. The famous Sophocles is known as one of the greatest innovators of the theatre. The Theatre of Dionysus is where the greatest playwrights performed their infamous tales, it was a major open-air theatre build in Athens, the theatre was dedicated to the god of wine and fertility, it hosted the City Dionysia festival. The Theatre of Dionysus is where Oedipus Rex is first acknowledged to the world. Oedipus Rex embodies the nature of life and society in ancient Greece.
Theo D’haen, a professor at the University of Leuven, synthesizes that a postmodernist writer is one who uses a “combination of any number of techniques that were seen as innovative and perhaps even transgressive, especially with regard to all forms of referentiality, be it reference to some “real” reality as in realism or to a “psychological” reality as in modernism”(Theo D’haen 272). Following this explanation, the self-reflectiveness, interdependency, parody and mimetic reality that readers are exposed to when reading a metafictional piece, branches into the different interpretations presented by D’haen: a ‘real’ reality and a ‘psychological’ reality. The act of judging any work of art in relation to its representation of reality is a parallel to the reader’s assimilation of a mimetic reality, acknowledged by a physiological th...
The nervous systems also consist of neurons which are a nerve cell that carries out the functions of the nervous system by sending and receiving impulses. Another neuron that I have learned about would be motor neurons these neurons are very important because they help muscles to contract and gland secretion, these motor neurons are also known as efferent nerves. The efferent neurons give impulses from the neural cell body to the target muscle or organs. Motor neurons also have a process called the axon and dendrites that extend away from it in vary directions. Neurons usually have several dendrites and only one axon. (fleming-Mcphillips, 2011)
Here is a story where Oedipus the King, who has accomplished great things in his life, discovers that the gods were only playing with him. He has everything a man of that time could want; he is king of Thebes, he has a wonderful wife and children, and great fame through out the lands. He has lived a good life, but in the end everything is taken from him.
I've just changed completely from when I first (entered school). I used to take this little African body and force it into this European square peg. And you know, it didn't work. I kept trying to do it and trying to change who I was and tried to fit in. . . . When I finally decided to be the person that I am, I started feeling more comfortable. (Taylor 1995, p. 84).
Greek and Elizabethan theatre, while similar in some respects, had a few large differences. The Greeks believed in a certain unity of theme, which was prevalent throughout the production. Greek plays were often drawn from myth or of historical significance, so it seems that only ki...
Some of the dominant features of postmodern fictions include temporal disorder, the erosion of the sense of time, a foregrounding of words as fragmenting material signs, a pervasive and pointless use of pastiche, loose association of ideas, paranoia and the creation of vicious circles or a loss of destination between separate levels of discourse, which are all symptoms of the language disorders of postmodernist fictions.