Searching For Oedipus

Oedipus the King is the first tragic play in Sophocles' classic Oedipus trilogy. The plays tells the story of a man who eventually becomes the King of Thebes while fulfilling an extremely tragic prophecy.

In Searching for Oedipus, attorney Ken Glazer recounts his decades-long quest to answer the Riddle of Oedipus: why Oedipus Rex, after 2,500 years, still wields such enormous power. Along the way he slices through the scholarly debate, laying bare the many ways this ancient masterpiece still speaks to us today.

This book explores the answers to fundamental questions about the human mind and human behaviour with the help of two ancient texts. The first is Oedipus Rex (Oedipus Tyrannus) by Sophocles, written in the 5th century BCE. The second is human DNA, with its origins around 4 billion years ago, and continuously revised by chance and evolution. With Sophocles as a guide, the authors take a journey into the Genomic era, an age marked by ever-expanding insights into the human genome. Over the course of this journey, the book explores themes of free will, fate, and chance; prediction, misinterpretation, and the burden that comes with knowledge of the future; self-fulfilling and self-defeating prophecies; the forces that contribute to similarities and differences among people; roots and lineage; and the judgement of oneself and others. Using Oedipus Rex as its lens, this novel work provides an engaging overview of behavioural genetics that demonstrates its relevance across the humanities and the social and life sciences. It will appeal in particular to students and scholars of genetics, education, psychology, sociology, and law.

The ancient Greek tragedy about the exiled king’s final days—and the power struggle between his two sons. The second book in the trilogy that begins with Oedipus Rex and concludes with Antigone, Oedipus at Colonus is the story of an aged and blinded Oedipus anticipating his death as foretold by an earlier prophecy. Accompanied by his daughters, Antigone and Ismene, he takes up residence in the village of Colonus near Athens—where the locals fear his very presence will curse them. Nonetheless they allow him to stay, and Ismene informs him his sons are battling each other for the throne of Thebes. An oracle has pronounced that the location of their disgraced father’s final resting place will determine which of them is to prevail. Unfortunately, an old enemy has his own plans for the burial, in this heart-wrenching play about two generations plagued by misfortune from the world’s great ancient Greek tragedian.

One of the greatest of the classic Greek tragedies and a masterpiece of dramatic construction. Catastrophe ensues when King Oedipus discovers he has inadvertently killed his father and married his mother. Masterly use of dramatic irony greatly intensifies impact of agonizing events. Sophocles' finest play, Oedipus Rex ranks as a towering landmark of Western drama. A selection of the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

A collection of eight critical essays on the classical tragedy, arranged in the chronological order of their original publication.

The stirring tale of a legendary royal family's fall and ultimate redemption, the Theban trilogy endures as the crowning achievement of Greek drama. Essential reading for English and classical studies majors.

Oedipus, King of Thebes, sends his brother-in-law, Creon, to ask advice of the oracle at Delphi, concerning a plague ravaging Thebes. Creon returns to report that the plague is the result of religious pollution, since the murderer of their former king, Laius, has never been caught. Oedipus vows to find the murderer and curses him for causing the plague.Oedipus summons the blind prophet Tiresias for help. When Tiresias arrives he claims to know the answers to Oedipus's questions, but refuses to speak, instead telling him to abandon his search. Oedipus is enraged by Tiresias' refusal, and verbally accuses him of complicity in Laius' murder. Outraged, Tiresias tells the king that Oedipus himself is the murderer ("You yourself are the criminal you seek"). Oedipus cannot see how this could be, and concludes that the prophet must have been paid off by Creon in an attempt to undermine him. The two argue vehemently, as Oedipus mocks Tiresias' lack of sight, and Tiresias in turn tells Oedipus that he himself is blind. Eventually Tiresias leaves, muttering darkly that when the murderer is discovered he shall be a native citizen of Thebes, brother and father to his own children, and son and husband to his own mother.