HUM-8 Lecture Notes - Lecture 26: Eteocles, Labdacus, Polynices
Document Summary
Sophocles, in his changes, creates tremendous dramatic tension by making the audience aware of what oedipus is not. Greek myths are never done for their own sake, they are what the greeks had when they were doing other things. Nb: sophocles makes the audience care about oedipus bcs he is a good guy, with the flaw of temper, but he means well, and all his mistakes are understandable, given conditions. But most of all sophocles makes us care bcs he makes us know oedipus from outside but also from behind the mask, as it were. Structuralism gives us a way to look at a myth qua myth, version against version to figure out what it all means. Myth is subject to group control, adapted from generation to generation, must be culturally relevant. Levi strauss says the answer is cultural contradictions. The myth mediates between two contradictions and provides a way to live with them unresolved.
