Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex

First presented between 429 and 425 B.C., Oedipus Rex is the most well known extant tragedy by the fifth century Greek dramatist Sophocles. The sheer volume of performances and reinterpretations of the work in the intervening centuries speaks to its enduring power. Sophocles’ Oedipus was itself a new version of an older myth, the story of an abandoned child who unwittingly fulfills a prophecy that he will murder his father and marry his mother. In this tragic episode, Sigmund Freud found a manifestation of the human urges he called the Oedipus Complex, a psychoanalytic reading of Sophocles’ play that literary critics have spent the last century combating. This collection of essays draws upon a rich history of criticism and commentary on Oedipus Rex to examine the questions of fate, free will, heroism, and humanity that the tragedy continues to provoke.