myth lecture

1. The Tragedies of King Oedipus
In this lecture, we examine the myth of Oedipus, which
has had a profound impact on 20th century thought.
The lecture begins by summarizing Oedipus’s story; we
then look briefly at Freud’s famous interpretation of
the myth as presented in Sophocles’s Oedipus the
King and at Lévi-Strauss’s structuralist reading. We
next consider two interpretations that are more widely
accepted among classicists. The first of these sees the
central point of the play in the conflict between fate
and free will, while the second connects it with the
philosophical movement Sophism, current in Athens
when Sophocles was writing. The lecture concludes by
considering the difficulties of disentangling the myth of
Oedipus from the presentation by Sophocles.

2. The story of Oedipus has become, in this century, the most famous of all Greek
myths. The basic outline of the story as it appears in various ancient sources shows
many motifs from the familiar test-and-quest pattern.
The hero’s birth and conception are surrounded by difficulty.
Oedipus’s parents know that their son will kill his father, Laios, either because of an
oracle or because Laios was cursed by Pelops, whose son he had raped.
An elaboration of the story adds that the oracle says Oedipus will also marry his
mother, Jocasta.
The infant Oedipus is exposed and expected to die—in the cultural norms of the
time—but is instead rescued and brought up by foster parents.
He grows up in Corinth, ignorant of his true identity.

3. The young man performs
exceptional feats of
strength, cleverness, or
both. These often involve
encounters with monsters.
Oedipus shows exceptional
strength when he kills Laios
and all Laios’s attendants.
He shows exceptional
cleverness when he solves
the riddle of the Sphinx, a
monster that terrorizes
Thebes.

4. Successfully completing these
“tests” gains the young man a
bride.
When Oedipus solves the
Sphinx’s riddle, he is granted
the hand of the Queen of
Thebes in marriage.
Unfortunately, she is his
mother.
Oedipus’s discovery of the
truth of his actions leads to
Jocasta’s death and his own
self-blinding.

5. We are most familiar with this story through Sophocles’s great play Oedipus the King. Two of this
century’s most influential theorists of myth, Freud and Lévi-Strauss, have interpreted the Oedipus
myth, and other scholars have followed in their tracks.
Freud assumes that Sophocles’s play represents the desires of the unconscious; thus, it appeals to
modern audiences no less than to ancient ones as a kind of wish-fulfillment fantasy.
Scholars often object that Oedipus’s ignorance of his parentage is crucial to the myth and that if
Oedipus felt oedipal desires, he would have felt them toward his adoptive mother, not Jocasta.
Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex, whether correct or not, does not tell us much about the
myth itself, but offers a reason for its appeal.
The second main objection is the one we discussed as an objection to psychological theories of
myth in general: Freud assumes that the unconscious operates the same way cross-culturally and
through time.

6. Lévi-Strauss reads the myth as mediating between the
two conflicting accounts of human origin, autochthony
(“coming from the earth”) and sexual reproduction.
The riddles of the Sphinx and Oedipus’s uncertainty
about his parentage both concern the essential nature
of being human: What are human beings and where do
they come from?
Lévi-Strauss finds traces of autochthony in the
“lameness” characteristic of Oedipus’s family—very
often in autochthonic stories, the people who emerge
from the earth are lame.
The myth, which is about the origins of Oedipus,
mediates between the theory of autochthonous
human creation and the observed reality of sexual
reproduction.
Few classicists have been persuaded by this reading of
the myth.

7. Other scholars connect the Oedipus myth with initiation rites, which sometimes include
symbolic killing of the father.
The most common reading of Sophocles’s play (if not of the underling myth) among
literary critics and classicists is that its main topic is the conflict between fate and free will.
Max Ernst
Oedipus Rex

8. The actions taken by
Laios, Jocasta, and
Oedipus himself all lead
to the inexorable working
out of fate.
By trying to avoid fate,
these characters
guarantee its fulfillment.
They are fated to commit
the deeds they commit,
but this fate works
through their own freely
chosen actions.
The blind Oedipus goes into exile led by his daughter Antigone, 1835: King Oedipus and Antigone. Statue by Rudolph Tegner

9. Some scholars object that this is an anachronistic reading.
The conflict that moderns find between the idea of fate and free will does
not seem to have troubled the Greeks.
Classical Greek, in fact, has no term for “free will.”
Another way to look at the play is to see Oedipus as the paradigm of a
rationalist intellectual, seeking to establish truth through the use of his own
intellect, rather than through relying on the god’s oracles.
Modern critics often assume that this is a good thing and see Oedipus as a
kind of humanist hero, battling for truth for its own sake.

10. In the context of 5th-century Athens, however, most people would probably have seen such
intellectual independence as a bad thing.
Sophocles is drawing on one of the most controversial movements of his day, the teachings of the
“Sophists.”
Among other subjects, the Sophists, itinerant teachers, taught rhetoric and techniques of
argumentation.
The most famous Sophist was Protagoras, best remembered for his dictum “man is the measure of
all things.”
They questioned the validity of oracles, which implies questioning the existence or relevance of the
gods.
Their opponents accused them of corrupting morals and weakening religious beliefs. Socrates was
executed on just such grounds, although he vehemently denied being a Sophist.

11. In this context, Oedipus becomes an
example of a Sophist.
His refusal to accept the oracle and the
words of the prophet Teiresias shows the
distrust of religious traditions that was
characteristic of the Sophists.
He is also like a Sophist in his insistence
on using his own intelligence and his
determination to reason out the puzzles
of his own origin and who killed Laios.
Sophocles’s play seems to indicate that
the human intellect alone is not sufficient
for understanding the world, that the
gods’ oracles are valid, and that the gods
must be taken into account.
The Plague of Thebes, oil on canvas,
Charles François Jalabeat (French, 1819-1901)

12. All these reading show the difficulty in
separating the Oedipus myth from
Sophocles’s particular telling of it.
The text of Oedipus the King has become so
central in Western literature that it has even
overshadowed Sophocles’s retelling of the
aftermath of Oedipus’s story in his last play,
Oedipus at Colonos.
Can we cut through the later interpretations
and around Sophocles’s hegemony to try to
uncover the original significance of the myth?
The most unusual thing about this myth is its
association of parricide and incest, two
elements that are not normally part of the
same classical myth.
Oedipus Cursing his Son, Polyneices
By Henry Fuseli, 1741-1825

13. Many Greek myths can be
found about sons killing or
almost killing fathers and vice
versa.
Parricide, and even lesser
violence against fathers, was
regarded with absolute
horror as the worst
imaginable crime.
We tend to see the incest
with Jocasta as a worse crime
that the killing Laios, but this
may be anachronistic.

14. Jan Bremmer suggests that the incest was
added to the story to underline the horror
of the parricide.
Parricide, cannibalism, and incest are the
worst imaginable transgressions.
Cannibalism does not appear in Oedipus’s
story (unless we see it as displaced onto the
Sphinx), but the incest here functions as the
cannibalism does in the House of Atreus: to
underline the horror of the murder.
As Bremmer puts it, “the monstrosity of the
transgression is commented upon by letting
the protagonist commit a further
monstrosity.”

15. Oedipus’s eventual
heroization at Colonos is a
reminder that heroes, in the
sense of guardian spirits,
were not necessarily noted
for good deeds.
Oedipus’s crimes mark him as
different from the rest of
humankind.
This difference qualifies him
to be a hero.

16. In this context, it is interesting to
consider Burkert’s reading of the myth.
Burkett connects the myth with the
scapegoat or pharmakos, a person
who is driven out of a city to free it
from some disaster, such as a plague.
The pharmakos must be disgusting or
foul in some way; this quality enables
him to be able to divert the disaster
from the city.
In this regard, Oedipus’s pollution
enables him both to lift the plague from
Thebes and to protect Athens.
Antoni Brodowski, Oedipus and Antigone, 1828.