Oedipus

The story of Oedipus, the most meaning-laden of myths, has traveled down through history in many guises and forms. Can any one version claim to be definitive? Lowell Edmunds' authoritative survey takes variation as the force driving the myth's longevity and popularity. Refraining from seeking for an original form, Edmunds relates the changes in content to changes in meaning, eschewing the notion that one particular version of the myth can be set as standard.

Lowell Edmunds is Professor of Classics at Rutgers University and an eminent author and researcher

Series foreword	p. ix
List of maps	p. xiii
List of illustrations	p. xv
Why Oedipus?	p. 1
Introducing Oedipus	p. 3
The question of an authentic version	p. 3
Segmenting the narrative into motifs	p. 5
Freud and Sophocles	p. 7
Scope of this book	p. 9
Key Themes	p. 11
Oedipus Before Tragedy	p. 13
Laius	p. 16
Reconstructing the story	p. 16
The Sphinx	p. 17
The riddle of the riddle	p. 18
"Straightway the gods made it known"	p. 20
The curse of Oedipus on his sons	p. 22
"Through the destructive counsels of the gods"	p. 23
The sons of the Seven; Teiresias	p. 25
Enter Apollo	p. 25
The cults of Oedipus and of Oedipus and Laius	p. 26
Overview	p. 31
Oedipus On Stage: Fifth-Century Tragedy	p. 32
Aeschylus' Theban trilogy	p. 34
Euripides	p. 37
Sophocles and the Oedipus myth	p. 43
Oedipus in the fourth century and after	p. 55
Overview	p. 55
Latin Oedipus: Rome and the Middle Ages	p. 57
Seneca's Theban tragedies	p. 60
Statius' Thebaid	p. 62
Oedipus in the Middle Ages	p. 64
Future of the medieval Oedipus	p. 78
Overview	p. 79
Oedipus Afterwards	p. 81
Rediscovery of Sophocles: From the Renaissance to the Eighteenth Century	p. 83
Oedipus in Italy	p. 84
Oedipus in Germany	p. 87
The seventeenth century: Oedipus in France	p. 89
Decline of the Poetics	p. 99
Overview	p. 99
The Inward Turn: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries	p. 100
Holderlin and Hegel	p. 100
Wagner's Oedipus	p. 105
The Sphinx in art	p. 106
Josephin Peladan and Hugo von Hofmannsthal	p. 111
Sigmund Freud	p. 113
"An Oedipemic has broken out"	p. 116
Vladimir Propp and Claude Levi-Strauss	p. 121
The challenge of the Sphinx	p. 124
Overview	p. 128
Conclusions and Continuations	p. 129
Character of Oedipus	p. 130
Virtual spaces	p. 132
Reduction and amplification	p. 134
Conceptual work on the Oedipus myth	p. 137
Incoherence	p. 139
Individual perspectives on the tradition	p. 140
Notes	p. 142
Further reading	p. 152
Works cited	p. 157
Abbreviations	p. 169
Index	p. 171
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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Summary

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