Oedipus Rex
Melvyn Bragg and guests on Sophocles' tragedy, sometimes called the best play ever written. With Edith Hall, Nick Lowe and Fiona Macintosh.
Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex begins with a warning: the murderer of the old king of Thebes, Laius, has never been identified or caught, and he’s still at large in the city. Oedipus is the current king of Thebes, and he sets out to solve the crime.
His investigations lead to a devastating conclusion. Not only is Oedipus himself the killer, but Laius was his father, and Laius’ wife Jocasta, who Oedipus has married, is his mother.
Oedipus Rex was composed during the golden age of Athens, in the 5th century BC. Sophocles probably wrote it to explore the dynamics of power in an undemocratic society. It has unsettled audiences from the very start: it is the only one of Sophocles’ plays that didn’t win first prize at Athens’ annual drama festival. But it’s had exceptionally good write-ups from the critics:
Aristotle called it the greatest example of the dramatic arts. Freud believed it laid bare the deepest structures of human desire.
With:
Nick Lowe, Reader in Classical Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London
Fiona Macintosh, Professor of Classical Reception and Fellow of St Hilda’s College at the University of Oxford
Edith Hall, Professor of Classics at Durham University
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Links and further reading
CONTRIBUTORS
Edith Hall at Durham University
Nick Lowe at Royal Holloway, University of London
Fiona Macintosh at the University of Oxford
READING LISTRichard H. Armstrong, Compulsion for Antiquity: Freud and the Ancient World (Cornell University Press, 2005)
E. R. Dodds, The Ancient Concept of Progress and Other Essays on Greek Literature and Belief (first published 1973; Oxford University Press, 1990), especially ‘On Misunderstanding the Oedipus Rex’
Lowell Edmunds, Oedipus (Routledge, 2006)
Edith Hall, Greek Tragedy: Suffering under the Sun (Oxford University Press, 2010)
Bernard Knox, Oedipus at Thebes: Sophocles’ Tragic Hero and His Time (Yale University Press, 1998)
Nick Lowe, The Classical Plot and the Invention of Western Narrative (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Fiona Macintosh, Sophocles: Oedipus Tyrannus (Cambridge University Press, 2009)
Kirk Ormand (ed.), A Companion to Sophocles (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012)
Peter Rudnytsky, Freud and Oedipus (Columbia University Press, 1992)
Charles Segal, Oedipus Tyrannus: Tragic Heroism and the Limits of Knowledge (Oxford University Press, 2001)
Ruth Scodel, An Introduction to Greek Tragedy (Cambridge University Press, 2010)
Sophocles (trans. P. J. Finglass), Oedipus the King: Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries 57 (Cambridge University Press, 2018)
Sophocles (ed. Edith Hall, trans. H. D. F. Kitto), Antigone, Oedipus the King, Electra (Oxford University Press, 2008)
Sophocles (trans. David Kovacs), Oedipus the King: A New Verse Translation (Oxford University Press, 2020)
Sophocles (ed. and trans. Jenny March), Oedipus Tyrannus (Liverpool University Press, 2020)
Sophocles (trans. Oliver Taplin), Four Tragedies: A New Verse Translation (Oxford University Press, 2015)
Oliver Taplin, Greek Tragedy in Action (first published 1978; Routledge, 2002)
Oliver Taplin, Pots & Plays: Interactions between Tragedy and Greek Vase-painting of the Fourth Century BC (J. Paul Getty Museum, 2007)
RELATED LINKS
‘Oedipal Quiz: Little Boys in Greek Tragedy’ by Edith Hall, 2016
Broadcasts
- Thu 8 Jun 202309:00BBC Radio 4
- Thu 8 Jun 202321:30BBC Radio 4
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