Oedipus

by Sophocles Sophocles

Overview

The great masterpiece on which Aristotle based his aesthetic theory of drama in the Poetics and from which Freud derived the Oedipus complex. King Oedipus puts out a sentence on the unknown murderer of his father Laius. By a gradual unfolding of incidents, Oedipus learns that he was the assassin and that Jocasta, his wife, is also his mother.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781854596109
Publisher:	Theatre Communications Group
Publication date:	09/01/2001
Series:	Drama Classics , #47
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	4.10(w) x 6.30(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Sophocles (496
BC–406 BC), one of the great Greek dramatists of the ancient world, was born to a wealthy family at Colonus, near Athens. He had a charmed childhood, was highly educated and a personal friend of prominent statesmen, and, as a good
Athenian, served faithfully as a treasurer and general for Athens when it was expanding its empire and influence. Though he wrote approximately 123 plays,
only seven tragedies survive in their entirety: Ajax, Antigone, Trachinian Women, Oedipus the King, Electra,
Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus.
With Sophocles, Greek tragedy reached its most characteristic form; he frequently beat out rivals Aeschylus and Euripides in annual drama competitions.