ArLT Summer School 2007
Problems in the interpretation of Oedipus the King
Scott Scullion
22nd July 2007
Problems in OT. Central problem - religious pollution.
Picking a few lines is out.
Cultural studies tried to understand everything in generalisations, without individuals.
Scott assumes that Soph, like Eur, wrote to change culture, inc religion.
Are events doubly determined? Once by gods, then by human choice.
In OT faith and the gods bring about that something nasty happens to a basically good man.
This underplays the human response.
'Ambiguity and Reversal' Vernant says 1189ff chorus gives clue to the meaning of OT.
He studies puns. 'The figure of O the sage placed far above other men is revered like a god... at the end of the drama this figure is reduced to its opposite.'Bernard Knox tries to find O equated with the gods.
O sends to Delphi to find the gods' word, unlike Ajax who takes divine claims on himself.
Vernan's pharmakos interpretation (scapegoat) recalls Thuc driving out of family that brought pollution on Athens before the Peloponnesian War.
OT 167ff describes the plague.
The play should end with O going into exile, leaving a message of hope for the city.
See Seneca's Oedipus ending.
Taplin reminds that O is not driven out. (Handout 1) Creon refuses to expel him.
(Handout 2) Creon orders O into the house, etc.
Creon, despite the gods' command, refuses to expel O. No driving out of scapegoat.
Why then stick to Vernan's theory? It is an appealing concept nowadays.
Why does Soph reverse expectations? Driving out Laius' murderer is emphasised in the first half of the play.
Robert Parker's great book Miasma. A person must be shunned. Cf Plato Laws 8.81 d e - sending an accursed person into Coventry.
Cf also Iph Taur Orestes says: At first people wouldn't receive me; then fed me apart, without talking to him.
Cf also O Col: O won't ask King to touch him.
But in OT people do touch O, tho' doubly polluted by parricide and incest.
See extract 2. Did the chorus touch O in the original production? Prob left it to Creon, who enters. "No human being can bear my ills but I."
O has conflicting desires - for human touch and for banishment.
Extract 3 about touching the children. Sharing food he has touched.
Extract 4 'Come to these hands that are your brother's.'
To Creon: Touch with your hand - touch O, or touch the children? Prob O.
What is at stake? O want people to touch him, knowing his hands are polluted, and knowing that people will be loath to touch him. Oliver Taplin first gathered the touch references.
Jebb notes touch only in connection with "No human being can bear my ills but I."
There is no reconciliation between O's pollution and the city's need to drive out the murderer.
But in the plague the city is already bearing O's ills.
Parker: The children already have polluted blood c.f. Alcmaeonid expulsion. This in Thuc is the only evidence for inherited pollution. O speaks only of
oneide reproach, not pollution.
We still lack a satisfying way out of dilemmas. We must be missing something.
Creon reminds O that he is agos, pollution. But later he isn't taken inside, and Creon touches him.
See O's curse speech - item 6.
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1 whoever knows ...
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2 indict himself - he'll be banished only
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3 If you point out a foreigner, he'll be rewarded
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4 If he doesn't come forward, he is cursed
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5 If he escapes detection may he nevertheless be unhappy
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6
Some people delete 246-251 as a superfluous second curse. But the first lines are not curse, but instructions. The second lines are a curse.
O didn't try to evade detection. He denounced himself, so deserves reward, and exile without further punishment.
But Teiresias and O himself say O condemned himself in the curse speech.
O is going over the top here. Emotional self-condemnation.
Teiresias leaves with angry words. Traditional approach says Teiresias is right, Creon is wrong. They say Sophocles is before all concerned with the gods. One says the gods are grim, the other that they are just but inscrutible.
Parricide and incest draw both social condemnation and internal self-condemnation. O sins unwillingly and unknowingly. 'It was Apollo, my friends ...'
Play brings us from world of external sanctions into a world where internal sanctions are enough.
Teiresias represents the old world, Creon the new. Creon's response of pity and compassion is the right one.
"Touch me..." is appeal to leave the old world and come to the new.
Parker: In Euripides pollution has lost its sting. Theseus asked Heracles (who has killed his own children) to unveil. Polluted mortal can't pollute the divine heaven.
Adrastus in Herodotus unwittingly kills Croesus' son. Croesus has compassion on him and blames the gods (though Adrastus then commits suicide). Thucydides doesn't believe in pollution. Pollution was a topical issue.
Spartans called for Alcmaeonids, including Pericles, to be expelled. The Athenians didn't do it. OT may have been a comment on this.
For Sophocles, fate is a literary device. He doesn't believe in the depressing view of human life that the chorus expresses.
