Friday, October 17, 2014

Could Sophocles' Oedipus Rex be a secular play ?

This strikes me as a rather interesting question, but I
would say that from the ancient Greek perspective none of their plays could be regarded
as secular because they were performed in honor of some divinity, namely
Dionysus.


Also, a glance through Sophocles' play shows a
deep concern with the validity of oracles and truth contained in oracles, especially
those issued by Apollo at Delphi. Because the play is concerned with such religious
matters, it is difficult to see how the play could be
secular.


That being said, I'm sure that some modern staging
of the play could manage to repress much of the religious content of the play and
secularize it. Oedipus' continued blindness to the mound of evidence that he killed
Laius strikes me a similar to the denial of wrongdoing that we frequently find on the
lips of modern politicians.

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