Igor Stravinsky’s 1927 opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex (with libretto by Jean Cocteau) contains quintessential Neoclassical qualities: it is a reduced, mechanical, and austere version of the Sophocles play, using older operatic devices within static harmonic momentum and ambiguous functionality. A closer look into the conception and intrinsic fabric of the work, however, betrays certain ideological bonds with the Russian neonationalist movement of the late 19th century. This movement had its origins in the visual arts but soon its principles carried over to music. The neonationalists valued the intrinsic properties of the folk subject (ornamentation in art, geometrical aspects of line, folk song) rather than the folk subject itself. In other words, the abstraction of the folk subject’s innate qualities, rather than mere quotation, served as the means to a wholly modern artwork. Neonationalist ideals would serve as the catalyst for Stravinsky’s modernist revolt in Le Sacre du Printemps (as explored by Richard Taruskin.) Although the movement itself is distanced from Stravinsky’s Neoclassical period and Oedipus Rex, its ideals can be traced from Le Sacre to Oedipus and beyond. In addition, the social and cultural milieu of Jean Cocteau in interwar France serves to position this work as distinctly modernist mainly through its abbreviation of the original source. In this study, I will explore the perpetuation of these ideals in Oedipus through its musical language and abstraction from sources to place it as an entirely new musical concept. / text

A series of scenes taken from Greek theatre were collaborated and chosen to form what became known as An Evening of Greek Theatre. Along with the normal challenges of creating a production, such as memorization, blocking, costuming, and others, came challenges that were unique to this particular one. The training we are most familiar with is in the confines of realism, and this particular production had little to do with realism. The stylization created an amalgamation of techniques, which became a functional process used to create An Evening of Greek Theatre. Along with these problems were other ones, such as dealing with the mythological significance of the characters and the stigmas that go with them. This, too, provided a breeding ground for creativity and experimentation. All this came together to form a successful and rewarding production.

The thesis is an attempt to understand tragic guilt. My starting point is a comparison of Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus with Shakespeare's Macbeth. The question of "guilt" is treated very differently in these two plays. Oedipus' guilt is a result of an action which is discovered, not chosen. He is the victim of a curse which lies upon his family and thus his own guilt is an ambiguous thing. He suffers against a background of a Law which demands punishment and a promise from a god that he shall be "saved". Oedipus at Colonus begins, as does Oedipus Rex, after the decisive act of murder and incest has been committed. But Macbeth begins before anything has been done; Macbeth is presented with a possibility and he chooses to believe that he can make it a reality. We are allowed to see the moment at which guilt appears in the individual. Macbeth becomes guilty before the very image of himself murdering Duncan. In Greek tragedy the guilt is often blood-guilt, a curse which descends from one member of a family to another and may devastate an entire house. But in Macbeth the guilt begins in the desires of one man. Macbeth is left with a personal despair which is different from the suffering that Oedipus undergoes. In the novels of Thomas Hardy, the perspective on guilt has shifted from the privacy that surrounds Macbeth at his death to the social world of nineteenth century England. Michael Henchard is perhaps closest to Macbeth in that he is destroyed more by the forces in his own personality than by the pressures of external society. But with Tess we have a heroine who is "pure", a woman who is defeated more as a result of the failings in a society than by any personal faults. There is little feeling of her having any particular "guilt". Jude Fawley's particular "tragedy" also must be seen in terms of the society that moves around him, its laws and conventions. The guilt is never entirely his own, nor is he simply an innocent victim. The presence of a definite society is hardly felt at all in the two novels of Conrad. Jim is a "romantic", a young man barely past adolescence who is obsessed with a concept of honour which he feels he has betrayed in a moment of cowardice. But he seems to become guilty in a deeper sense because of this obsession; he betrays others by choosing to live in an imaginary world of romantic achievement. Nostromo is also obsessed with a dream: to be a Man of the People. If Conrad's characters become guilty, it is because of their intense egoism, their inability to escape their passion for an idea. In Arthur Miller's The Crucible the guilt of an individual seems less important than the guilt present in a society. That guilt is an illusion based on a fear of not conforming to a rigorous law. We are left with the tragedy of a society which must find a victim to appease its own feeling of guilt. John Proctor is one of the chosen victims; a man who must die to save his integrity. But his death is the result of a web of guilt spread through an entire society. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1959 P57

O texto da tragédia grega Édipo Rei de Sófocles, do século V a.C., permite até os dias de hoje inúmeros estudos sobre seu mito, face a tamanha riqueza existente em seu mitologema. Pressuposto a tantas pesquisas existentes, elaboramos uma visão inerente aos estudos realizados, compondo uma dissertação comparativa, revisitando o texto de Sófocles e incluindo uma nova ótica sobre a tragédia do rei de Tebas. Porém, antes de mergulharmos na essência do mito, procuramos entender a tragédia grega e seu período de existência. Da mesma forma, investigamos o homem Sófocles, artista e poeta na sociedade em que viveu, e suas relações sociais e políticas com seu amigo e estrategista Péricles. Ponto imprescindível da dissertação é a constatação de que Sófocles fundiu em um só personagem feminino a figura das duas esposas de Laio, condensadas em Jocasta. Tornada mãe e esposa de Édipo, o personagem de Jocasta aumentou profundamente o efeito dramático desejado pelo autor grego, criando um dos maiores textos trágicos da antiguidade que chegaram até hoje. Sem perder a essência do texto sofocliano, decodificamos o mito em suas diversas vertentes, situamos as condições sociais nas relações da mulher no século V a.C., e, assim, estabelecemos as relações que envolveram Édipo e Jocasta no conjunto poético da tragédia reelaborada por Sófocles. / The text of the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex, by Sophocles, 5th century BC, allows us, until the present days, to make innumerous studies about its myth, due to the immense richness of its mythologem. Considering so many existing researches, we have elaborated a vision inherent to the studies already done, writing a comparative dissertation, revisiting Sophoclestext and throwing some new light upon the tragedy of the King of Thebes. However, before plunging into the essence of the myth, we have tried to understand the Greek tragedy and its existing context. In the same way, we have investigated the man Sophocles, artist and poet in the society he lived in, and his social and political relationship with his friend and strategist Pericles. The essential point of the dissertation is the thesis that Sophocles has melted, in a single feminine character, the profiles of the two wives of Laius, condensed in Jocasta. Transformed into mother and wife of Edipo, the character Jocasta deeply increased the dramatic effect desired by the Greek author, creating one of the greatest tragic text of antiquity that have arrived to present days. Without losing the essence of the sophoclean text, we have decoded the myth in its various aspects, contextualized the social conditions of the womens relations in the 5th century BC, and, finally, we have established the relations that involved Edipo and Jocasta in the poetic set of the tragedy re-elaborated by Sophocles.

Zugl.: Berlin, Techn. Universiẗat, Diss.

O texto da tragédia grega Édipo Rei de Sófocles, do século V a.C., permite até os dias de hoje inúmeros estudos sobre seu mito, face a tamanha riqueza existente em seu mitologema. Pressuposto a tantas pesquisas existentes, elaboramos uma visão inerente aos estudos realizados, compondo uma dissertação comparativa, revisitando o texto de Sófocles e incluindo uma nova ótica sobre a tragédia do rei de Tebas. Porém, antes de mergulharmos na essência do mito, procuramos entender a tragédia grega e seu período de existência. Da mesma forma, investigamos o homem Sófocles, artista e poeta na sociedade em que viveu, e suas relações sociais e políticas com seu amigo e estrategista Péricles. Ponto imprescindível da dissertação é a constatação de que Sófocles fundiu em um só personagem feminino a figura das duas esposas de Laio, condensadas em Jocasta. Tornada mãe e esposa de Édipo, o personagem de Jocasta aumentou profundamente o efeito dramático desejado pelo autor grego, criando um dos maiores textos trágicos da antiguidade que chegaram até hoje. Sem perder a essência do texto sofocliano, decodificamos o mito em suas diversas vertentes, situamos as condições sociais nas relações da mulher no século V a.C., e, assim, estabelecemos as relações que envolveram Édipo e Jocasta no conjunto poético da tragédia reelaborada por Sófocles. / The text of the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex, by Sophocles, 5th century BC, allows us, until the present days, to make innumerous studies about its myth, due to the immense richness of its mythologem. Considering so many existing researches, we have elaborated a vision inherent to the studies already done, writing a comparative dissertation, revisiting Sophoclestext and throwing some new light upon the tragedy of the King of Thebes. However, before plunging into the essence of the myth, we have tried to understand the Greek tragedy and its existing context. In the same way, we have investigated the man Sophocles, artist and poet in the society he lived in, and his social and political relationship with his friend and strategist Pericles. The essential point of the dissertation is the thesis that Sophocles has melted, in a single feminine character, the profiles of the two wives of Laius, condensed in Jocasta. Transformed into mother and wife of Edipo, the character Jocasta deeply increased the dramatic effect desired by the Greek author, creating one of the greatest tragic text of antiquity that have arrived to present days. Without losing the essence of the sophoclean text, we have decoded the myth in its various aspects, contextualized the social conditions of the womens relations in the 5th century BC, and, finally, we have established the relations that involved Edipo and Jocasta in the poetic set of the tragedy re-elaborated by Sophocles.

Sam Shepard was a playwright who used a variety of stories and styles to explore and understand the country he called home, The United States of America. This thesis launches the process of understanding how Greek tragedy had influenced the work of Shepard in his explorations by looking at Shepard’s final play before his passing, A Particle of Dread (Oedipus Variations). Using the concept of miasma that has been established as important to Greek tragedy to analyze A Particle of Dread and its primary source work, Oedipus Rex, this thesis reveals the extent of the ancient tragic form’s presence in Shepard’s last play. To do so, I approach the work in a combination of theory and practice. I first use dramaturgical analysis of Oedipus Rex, to explain what tragic role miasma has in Sophocles’ play. This is followed by a mirrored dramaturgical analysis of A Particle of Dread to uncover and compare what place miasma (and therefore tragedy) has in Shepard’s play. Following this is the review and analysis of five performance workshops exploring scenes of Shepard’s play which used a combination of performance and lighting to physicalize that dramaturgical work so as to further it and hopefully reveal new aspects through their embodiment. This dramaturgical and practical work results in the discovery of how and to what end Shepard has chosen to use the Grecian content style to analyze and commentate on Western society. The work also offers the chance to compare how the engagement with pollution has changed from the characters of 5th Century BCE Greece to 2014 America, and what that might mean for 2020 onwards.

Ο Μίνως Βολανάκης ήταν ένας σημαντικός σκηνοθέτης της ελληνικής θεατρικής σκηνής, παρότι δεν απασχόλησε ακόμη τους μελετητές του θεάτρου. Τα βιβλιογραφικά κενά και η δράση του, τόσο στην Ελλάδα όσο και στο εξωτερικό, οδήγησαν στην εκπόνηση της παρούσας μελέτης, η οποία επικεντρώνεται στον τρόπο προσέγγισης του αρχαίου ελληνικού δράματος από τον Βολανάκη.Στόχος της εργασίας ήταν η μελέτη τριών παραστάσεων αρχαίας τραγωδίας, της Ηλέκτρας του Σοφοκλή (1975) και της Μήδειας του Ευριπίδη (1976) για το Κρατικό Θέατρο Βορείου Ελλάδος και του Οιδίποδα Τυράννου του Σοφοκλή (1982) για το Εθνικό Θέατρο, και η εξαγωγή συμπερασμάτων σχετικά με τον τρόπο προσέγγισης της αρχαίας ελληνικής τραγωδίας από τον σκηνοθέτη. Ένα από τα θέματα που μελετήθηκαν ήταν η επιλογή του σκηνοθέτη να αναθέτει στις παραστάσεις του τους πρωταγωνιστικούς ρόλους σε πολύ γνωστούς ηθοποιούς, χωρίς να έχουν απαραίτητα προηγούμενη εμπειρία στην αρχαία τραγωδία και χωρίς να προβληματίζεται ιδιαίτερα για το αν ήταν καλή η υπόκρισή τους. Τέλος, εξετάστηκε η ενδεχόμενη συμβολή του Μίνωος Βολανάκη στον εκσυγχρονισμό των παραστάσεων της αρχαίας ελληνικής τραγωδίας στην Ελλάδα. / Minos Volanakis was a popular director of the greek theatre scene, though he has not yet attracted the scholars of theater. The literature gaps and his action, both in Greece and abroad, led to the preparation of this study, which focuses on how Volanakis approached the ancient Greek drama. The aim of my work was to study three performances of ancient tragedy, Sophocles' Electra (1975) and Medea of Euripides (1976) for the State Theater of Northern Greece and Oedipus Rex by Sophocles (1982) for the National Theatre, and draw conclusions about how the director approached the ancient Greek tragedy. One of the issues studied was the director's choice to delegate the leading roles of his performances to well-known actors, who had not necessarily have previous experience in the ancient tragedy. The next issue studied was that he did not particularly worry whether their acting was good enough. To conclude, I studied the possible contribution of Minos Volanakis in the modernization of performances of ancient Greek tragedy in Greece.