Lecture 2: Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus

Public lecture read by Professor Sandor Goodhart (Purdue University) at the Emmanuel Levinas’ Centre, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences on the 19th of September, 2024.

PRIMARY READING: Sophocles (1971) Oedipus Tyrannus. Translated by P. Vellacott. In P. Vellacott, Sophocles and Oedipus. East Lansing: University of Michigan Press.

In Sophocles’ play Oedipus Tyrannis, the king of the city-state of Thebes offers his help to end a plague that is depopulating the city. After an investigation, he discovers the plague to be the gods revenge crimes committed by the king himself long ago—namely, for parricide and incest, for killing a man on the road who turns out to be his father and marrying upon his arrival in the city after answering some riddles imposed by a death-bearing Sphinx his mother. But we can show with the protagonist’s help that Oedipus may not have killed his father, and that if he adopts the mythic guilt for both crimes, and assumes guilt in the mind of the Chorus of the city’s Elders for the city’s troubles, the play is less about discovering the empirical truth than observing the hero’s mytho-poetic appropriation and wondering with the writer to what extent it is necessary.