Reviewing vision in Sophocles’ Oedipus The King

Abstract

For much of this century Oedipus The King (Oedipus Rex! Oedipus Tyrannus) has figured prominently in Western consciousness, both as a major representative of Ancient Greek drama and as the source of the metaphor elaborated by Freud in support of his early theories of the unconscious mind. During that period commentary on the play has generally aligned itself closely with the perspective of Oedipus, the play's principal victim, who at the climax stabs out his own eyes in despair at the inadequacy of vision in a world ordered by perfidious and possibly malevolent gods.