CLASSIC 45C Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Hamartia, Laius, Peripeteia
10 May 2017
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Tragedies consist of prologue, episodes (spoken parts) that alternate with choral odes (sung parts), and exodus: pollution, physical/city, moral/individual, the private and public intersect, there"s a plague, no more babies, free will vs. Determination: is oedipus free or predestined to his fate/jerked around by gods, hamartia: translated as sin ; but in ancient greek means error , curse/hereditary guilt, oracle at delphi. Tells o that he"ll kill father and marry mother: others" decisions, luck. The crossroads, encountering laius: did gods make him go there or was it his free will, has to be stated directly in the text. Anger, concern for city, intellectual curiosity, suspiciousness: gets angry at tiresias and creon and his wife, self-punishment. Blinds himself: no god asked him to do so. But oedipus is not ordinary so he does not apply: apollo"s prophecy, tiresias"s prophecy, tiresias"s prophecy as riddle, sight vs. blindness, physical and mental.
