Oedipus Scholarship Flashcards
Rutherford fate
‘in tragedy, all events seem imbued with a sinister inevitability.’
‘the ultimate tragedy of fate.’
Rutherford humans and fate
‘the characters’ failure indicated their moral limitations, the inability of human beings to understand the divine plan.’
Hurlbut Oedipus’ fate
‘Oedipus is morally innocent. He meets a fate that he seems not to deserve: a guiltless man, he suffers.’
Koper Oedipus symbolic
‘a symbol that represents quite consciously the dilemma presented by our mixed capacity for good and evil.’
Allan Oedipus
‘one of the more sympathetic heroes of tragedy’
Allan divine motivation
‘the opacity of divine motivation…focuses the audience’s attention on the chilling fact that terrible things can happen to basically sympathetic people.’
Drew Griffith Oedipus’ guilt
‘he killed Laius by free choice, thereby abdicating any claim to essential moral innocence.’
Rush Rehm contemporary Athens
‘the setting evoking both the ancient Thebes of myth and contemporary Athens.’
Musrillo religious propaganda
‘reading too much into our text to understand the play as a piece of religious propaganda’
Peradotto divine justice
‘the Greek tragic poets do not believe that divinites persecute mortals.’
Coughanowr Oedipus
‘a rather weak and temperamental average man.’
Kane lesson of the play
‘if there is any lesson in the play it is that intelligence acting in a perpetual vacuum can be worse than mere ignorance.’
E.R. Donn
‘what causes his ruin is his strength and courage, his loyalty to Thebes and his loyalty to the truth’
